On an unexpectedly cloud filled July Sunday, I struck out west early in the morn. A reluctant two hour drive through highway city, country farm road, and winding mountain pass. Until finally the grey skies met grey waves in the usual anticlimactic Oregon coastline fashion. I believe that television and grand exaggeration have needlessly romanticized the visual impact one’s first viewing of the ocean brings. The sky after all is mostly air, and the sea mostly water. How extraordinary can one expect it to appear? Perhaps that’s why photography and paintings of the great pink and orange and blue rare instances of chance, where light and cloud and spray for but a brief moment seem more than they ordinarily are, are so captivating.

Having arrived still early to my destination, Depoe Bay. The world’s smallest naturally occurring harbor as I came to learn. Aside from general sight seeing and time wasting in a new coastal town, I had come to this very place at this very time of year to bare witness to one of nature’s greats. I had arrangements with a charter boat to go about against the surf and swell for the purposes of whale watching. If given such an opportunity I imagine there are few who would deny themselves such an experience, and I seized it whole handedly. Having heard about the whale’s from an Oregon native Uber driver recently I checked it out online and saw a boat available that same weekend. I booked immediately and now that I was standing there parked on the coast looking out, I was glad I had taken the chance. But I was early, and so looked up and down the single main street of this Depoe Bay with a hope for breakfast.

If I were astute and professional, I would have looked up or written down the name of the restaurant and bar for you now. However, I believe in recounting the experience as I had it. In fact I would say that the name of the place is inconsequential, perhaps it even detracts from my telling. What matters is this: across the street away from the sea there was a dive-ish looking restaurant advertising breakfast. I entered and found it appropriately quaint. An old 1990s reminiscent carpeted floor, seats with flattened cushions, and wooden tables polished more by use than any rag. I approved. I was led beyond the more family oriented restaurant seating and into a bar. A few patrons chatted with the woman behind the bar and as I was sat at a wall adjacent booth with view of the street through a window, an older waitress asked what I’d be having to drink. Coffee was an easy answer. This was the sort of time and place one got coffee, however stale or over-brewed or whatever thing some caffeine addict may say, I knew that it was going to be one the best cups I’d had in some time. The steaming cup was brought promptly and having flipped a coin in my mind to decide between pancakes and the bacon and eggs meal, I ordered over easy with a biscuit. No pancakes this time. I was a man today, on a hearty venture.

While I waited I found myself disappointed by my cup of coffee. The taste? Fine. The quantity? Adequate. Temperature? By no measure was this any different from the cup I was anticipating, except for one crucial metric. Instead of the yellowing thick walled, or strangely handled brown stained mug, I was served my coffee in a tall clear glass vessel. For some reason this greatly detracted from my enjoyment. I strongly believe coffee served in a clear container robs the liquid of its dignity. There is no mystery, no surprise. The apparent strength is immediately known, its color and hue not altered or contrasted, the presence or lack of grounds easily seen. Imagine serving a fine steak on a clear plate. A tomato soup in a clear bowl. These things are off putting in a way hard to describe but readily felt.

After finishing the meal, and even the coffee, I was in turn full and satisfied. The two eggs, four thick bacon strips, excellently browned hash, buttered biscuit, and delightful orange slice were all perfectly greasy and seemingly made to my unrefined palette. And just in time to check in for my charter. A short walk down the road and an exchange of information about my online reserve with a pleasant woman behind a storefront desk and I was ready to listen for the boarding call. In the short meantime I studied the bridge that covered the inlet to this, the world’s smallest harbor. It was incredible. Not fancy in architecture or construction, just a stone and concrete thing, with thick walling that held up the street high above the water below. Most interestingly to me was the pedestrian walkway that led underneath the bridge to avoid car traffic. I had not been on such a walkway before and it as I explored it, it felt like suddenly I had been missing something I never knew. It felt Victorian, or east coast such as New York City, or maybe Italian underneath the bridge close to the water. What’s more is that on the rocks below me, I spotted two harbor seals slapping this lardish tummies in the morning breeze. I had never been so close to an element of oceanic wildlife before. They seemed unperturbed by my staring.

I made my way back up to street level and heard the call out. “All aboard the Morning Star”. This seems like the sort of thing you name a boat. Trustworthy. I made my way down the boat ramp to the peer and watched as the vessel spin in the harbor to allow us on. About twenty others along with me for this watching. I was last to board, permitting to the various families and elderly folks to find there was to a comfortable spot on the boat. It was the largest water craft I had ever been upon. About 50 feet long and two storied. Not all that impressive, but a first for me. In fact, as we pulled on below the bridge and bobbed against the waves through the inlet and out onto the open sea, I found myself remarking. This is my first time out to sea. Something akin to fear, perhaps trepidation came onto that I was not expecting. Such words give a negative context. Let me put it like this. I think for the first time, apart from being on an airplane, I was untethered from terra firma. For a few minutes, as the coast was being left behind, I think I felt what those sailors stories always try and impart. A freedom, an unshackling. I was untethered from the ground on which I walked and live and out onto something inbetween. Floating on water, suspended between things immaterial. Caught atop water and below air. It was a feeling I didn’t know existed, and I could see how someone could come to love the feeling. All bonds back on land felt loosened. I was nothing out here, in a limbo. Should the depths arise and overtake us, surely dead. Yet! alive here and now on a frontier unknown to me. Time felt different out there. Clocks held no meaning. The tide would come as would anything in its own time. From when I left that shoddy wooden peer, to the time I returned, I would have changed but by and large the world I would return to would be exactly the same. That is a true sense of independence. I had never experienced such before.

And then the boat turned and the captain announced we were there. Not even a quarter mile from the coast. I could have easily swam back to shore if thrown from the boat. All of that romance and sense of adventure suddenly died. I felt like a fool. And I was! I had assumed the whales would be out in the deep sea, an unknown to me distance from shore. Nope. Their feeding grounds right there next to the cliffs. The boat was a luxury, one could just have easily witnessed the whales from on land. The feelings of grandeur and adventure and freedom I had imagined, were simply due to ignorance. I feel a little stupid and sour about it. The strange new world I had found for myself in the five or so minutes we had departed the harbor and were set out into the wide open ocean were only felt because I knew not how far away from land were we to go. In my mind I watched with a stirring of unease as the shore shrank impossibly from view. All for naught.

The captain informed us to be on the look out. And within breaths of coming to rest with the engines cut, the unmistakable sound of a whale’s breach and blow-hole breath was heard off to my left. Not 20 feet from the boat there it was. A grey whale spewing some water into the air and sinking back below the dark water, tail flicking as I descended. The onlookers cried out and I admit, my breath was taken from me. To think something so grand and treasured was 30 bucks and a short boat ride away.

As we listened and watched, a whale would emerge every 10 minutes or so. Its arrival marked by the sound of parting waves and the spray of its blow-hole. The thin crowd would ooo and aah and point. The captain would describe their behavior and call out the different positions of the whales. When they come up on their side and one sees the tail as though a fin protruding from the water, this is called ‘Sharking’. Most famously when the whale breaches and descends back down and curls its tail above the surface this is the ‘Tail Flick’. The whales dive to the ocean floor and stir up the much, then filter feed as they rise. It was indeed a sight worthy of a trip.

When the hour was up and we turned back, I people watched. This one woman, who must have had some special arrangement with the captain was on the upper deck. Her face was bright red with tears and she was explaining that, even though she had been out doing this for more than 40 years, she was always overcome with emotion. I mock her for this. So there, be mocked. But I cannot be so harsh, for I admit when I was surprised by the initial whale I did feel a swelling in my heart.

I cannot fathom why. They are large creatures and of the sea, which is majesty enough. Beside that though, I saw not the creatures face, looked not into its eye to find any understanding. As the captain had gone on in his explanation I began to recognize this as just another animal. Dull in color as the grey sky, covered in barnacle. Perhaps I merely did not see enough in my first viewing, or hear its great calls, or see it within its family unit. I found myself wondering whether it minded our watching of it. Was it a sign of intelligence that it knew we would not impede its feeding and thus continued, or was just hungry and didn’t even comprehend our watching. I know not. Am I to be impressed by its long seasonal travel? More so than any migratory bird or turtle or salmon? What makes the whale so special?

I think, like the feelings I had when setting first setting out with my distance from shore still unknown, my understanding of the humble whale is incomplete. At any moment, the reality of the situation may strike me and I will be again dumbfounded by my own ignorance. Yet again, it may be that I am constraining too much of my hope and imagination and soon as I recount my time viewing the whales, I will find a sudden inspiration.

Any who are able. Go and see the whales. And next time, its okay to order pancakes.