Seeing the whales reminded me of seeing the northern lights
that night in Wyoming when we were tired and cold and hadn’t
planned things out as usual but things planned themselves out
for us and we were going to stay in Powell another half day with
Bart and co. (which of course turned out to be a really great thing).
The northern lights appeared just above the edge of the horizon,
something really delicate and kind of shifting and disappearing,
a pale mainfestation on the periphery of the night sky. A curtain
Mike called it, which seemed appropriate as if over there in the
distance was a curtain made out of light and it was separating
something from something else on either side of the horizon
but no one was sure exactly what. But in Alaska, on Silver Bay,
I thought that the lights reminded me of those pictures I’d seen of
whales in the ocean, photographed from underneath – the way
the light from above filters around their form, delicate and shifting.
I like the idea of whales swimming in the night sky.