Here is the story that Chris Scammon wrote about our trip to Baja California, Mexico (Feb - March 2012). (It is not super prevalent in my life right now I just stumbled upon it and thought to put it on my blog, so here it goes.)
THE TRIP
My name is
Charles Fisher Scammon. I am one of the
few relatives of the famous nineteenth century seaman, Captain Charles Melville
Scammon, commander of the San Francisco whaler Leonore, early member of the
United States Coast Guard, explorer, writer and expert on the life and death of
the gray whale. He was a mighty man of
the sea, born on the seacoast of New England, as were my father and
grandfather. But I was never at ease on
the sea and though I followed the famous Captain out to California, I moved to
where I really feel at home, to Nevada City in the foothills of the Sierra
Nevada Mountains.
Yet I find myself, in March of 2012, traveling
out of the comfort of the mountains down to the flat plains of central
California, down to San Diego and then to Mexico and then south through Baja,
to rendezvous with my famous forebear at the mythical place which the locals
call Laguna Ojo de Liebre, but has been known to generations of sailors,
mapmakers, and members of the family as Scammon’s Lagoon.
When I was
young my mother told me about Scammon’s Lagoon and how she had always dreamed
of visiting this magical place, the Marine Mecca for the Scammon family. She had been born and raised in the Blue
Ridge Mountains of Virginia but in the late nineteen thirties had made the
daring move of leaving the highland South for the rocky shores of New
England. She met my father on an outing
to the sea, near the fishing port of Gloucester, where he had spent his
childhood. I always associated him with
the ocean because of a childhood book he had given me about Gloucester, but we
were not an ocean-going family: we lived a suburban life outside of Boston. We
rarely went to the beach and most of my life was entered around the Charles
River, a fresh-water world of boating in the summer and skating in the
winter. Sometimes we went fishing but
the catch was usually a six-inch sunfish; there were no whales in my river.
And yet I
always remember a constant family reference to the famous Captain Scammon
humming in the background. He was famous
to us because he had a Lagoon named after him.
I’m not even sure I knew at that point about the whales, and in any case
Captain Scammon was not as famous as our relatives from my mother’s side of the
family, which included Meriwether Lewis.
Hard to compete with the star-power of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
So it was
not until my parents retired to Arizona that the idea of visiting Scammon’
Lagoon became a real topic of conversation.
There was a time when my parents were in their seventies that they had
the time and the energy to consider finishing off all the unfinished business
of their lives, including a little jaunt down to Baja to see the famous
Lagoon. I remember my mother saying many
times how important it was to her to make this trip, to the point of it being
some sort of evidence of religious devotion.
But the
reality of such a trip in those days was daunting. It was a long foray into a foreign country
with foreign money and a strange language.
There was no one my parents could stay with, and possibly not even a
convenient motel, which meant camping out somewhere, and my parents were not a
camping-out sort of couple. So they
never made the trip, but they passed on to me the notion that someday the Baja
hegira was a religious duty I would have to fulfill.
In 1987 I
moved with my wife Janet and my children Alex and Jessica from London to Nevada
City. We talked from time to time about
going to Baja, going to Scammon’s Lagoon, but the closest we got was a vacation
to the border town of San Felipe. The logistics of getting halfway down the
Baja peninsula still seemed overwhelming.
In 1999
Janet was the Director of the South Yuba River Citizens League (SYRCL) and
established the Wild and Scenic Film Festival, a huge environmental
extravaganza that brought a diverse group of filmmakers and environmentalists to
the streets of Nevada City. Two of these
filmmakers were Tom and Debra Weistar who were running a program for youth called
Finding the Good (FTG)which
included a trip to various environmentally-important places in Mexico. One of these sites was Scammon’s Lagoon. Realizing that I was related to the eponymous
Captain Scammon they began a ten-year campaign to lure me and the family down
to Baja. It sounded like a nice vacation
to me, but I sensed a latent fervor to their invitations which I could not
understand, and anyway, we were busy with kids and schools and trips back to
England. Besides, maybe Baja and this
Lagoon were being hyped beyond any reasonable expectation. So for the next ten film festivals we would
meet the Weistars and they would dangle images before us of an epic journey to
an immense body of water filled with giant whales and countless birds in the
mystical center of Baja, topped off with a generous portion of the best fish
tacos in all of Mexico. But we still
didn’t bite.
Then, in
2011, when I turned 66 and the wheels of time were forcing me to consider all
the things I really wanted to do in this life, Janet and I decided that 2012
had to be the year when we would quit messing about and seriously get our teeth
into this trip. So we called the
Weistars and told them that we were ready to go for three weeks in March. They were overjoyed. We were excited. Everything was finally falling into place. There was, however, just one question mark in
my mind. It was when Tom said, “And when
can we get together to discuss the film?”
Ah!! The
Film! That’s the part of the journey I
hadn’t expected. There is always some
part of a journey you don’t expect, but it usually comes somewhere in the
middle. But here it was before we had
even thought about basic logistics. The
film! Why had I not seen this
coming? And what would it be? I was concerned because, as I was beginning
to see, besides the whales the major actor in this drama was me! And I had no idea what my role was supposed
to be.
So for 3
months before we left for Baja we were continually discussing the PROJECT,
which was for Tom and Debra basically a question of ‘how do we make a film?”
For me it was more a question of ‘how do I have a nice vacation?’ Still, as time went on, I became more attuned
to imagining some great meaning in my re-connection with my famous past. I kept asking Tom just what he expected me to
say or do, or feel, but all he would say, in his laughing, cryptic way, was to
‘be natural.’ Now being natural is an
existential challenge at the best of times, but it’s a bit more complicated
when you have an 8-man film crew following you and a boom mike bobbing over
your head. And then there were the
conference calls with famous people around the world. I talked on the phone to a whale expert in
Australia, a woman who wanted to know my opinion about whether the mating
patterns of female whales is representative of the power of women in
society. I believe I said yes. And then there was a man in San Diego who
told me how influential Captain Scammon’s book had been in his life. I thanked him, but having not read the book I
really didn’t know what to say.
We had
meetings. Many, many meetings. We had meetings to plan the trip and meetings
to meet the crew and meetings to plan the talks to all the world-famous
environmentalists, and meetings to discuss the outcome of the previous meetings. Through all this I was slowly getting some sense
of the Weistar’s vision of the Second Coming of Scammon. They were merely making their normal trip to
Baja with a group of students and a group of interns, with the intention of
making a movie about the whales, with me as an added attraction. Or was I the star? I couldn’t tell, at least not from the
directors. But somewhere in the last few
weeks before we left I had my first revelation: they weren’t going to tell
me, so I might as well shut up and get on with the show, wherever it might
be going.
Obviously it
was going South. In early March we got
on a plane to San Diego where we were going to be picked up by Tom Weistar and
his crew. I remember stumbling out onto the sidewalk in the blinding southern
California sun, and before I could quite adjust my vision I heard Tom calling
out “Welcome to San Diego. What do you
think of your journey so far?” As my vision returned I realized there was some
young punk named Ori standing in front of me thrusting a large white microphone
in my face, actually waiting to record my answer to that ridiculous
question. I felt anger rising up out of
the burning sidewalk, up into my heart and throat, clouding my brain, leading
me to make some petulant reply which I
soon regretted when I saw that I was not only being recorded but photographed
and filmed as well. They asked me some
questions about Captain Scammon and this and that, which I struggled to
answer. Finally they put all their
recording toys away and allowed me to seek refuge in the Finding the Good van.
Now this van
is a mighty beast, capable of carrying a dozen students with all their gear,
tents, sleeping bags, plus computers, tracking devices, navigational aids,
cameras, binoculars, recording
equipment, and all manner of digital devices that I was at a loss to identify.
They let me sit in the front passenger seat of the van, a place with an immense
view of the world, and it was there that I began to take stock. Yes, I was starring in a film I didn’t
understand, but that was true of everybody all the time. And besides, I was
sitting in a van heading for an adventure in Baja thanks to the generosity and
incredible effort of my driver, the irresistible and irrepressible Tom Weistar,
the maestro of Mexico, the Neal Cassady of the New Age, a man who could drive for
twelve hours straight, who could negotiate the complex border crossing in
Tijuana, who knew where all the best fruit stands were all the way to Scammon’s
Lagoon, and who, as promised, took us to the best fish taco stand in all of
Mexico.
And so, as
we settled into the long and tiring trip down the spine of Baja I slipped into
that semi-conscious state akin to dreaming, listening to the sound of the
traffic and believing that the mind’s transformative magic could turn the
rumble of the road into the sound of the sea. I listened to the hum of huge
trucks, behemoths slowly swimming up behind us. They were waiting to get by,
waiting with exquisite timing and an ancient knowledge of the road, to pull
beside us and at the last second evade the oncoming traffic, powering around
the next rocky bend and disappearing. In
the pleasurable half-doze that is given to passengers riding shotgun, I tried
to imagine my old ancestor making his way south to find the home of the
whales. With vast stretches of time and
sea did he half-doze and imagine
himself discovering all the great cetacean secrets? Or was he all business, keeping his eye on
the road, totaling up the profit on a fully-laden ship pulling into the port of
San Francisco? Or was he worried, as I
could imagine, that he might not be successful, that he might not satisfy his
backers?
Getting to
see the whales at Scammon’s Lagoon, even in the 21st century, is not
an easy thing to do. First of all the
whales are only at the Lagoon for a short part of the year, and the time to
interact with them is variable.
Secondly, there is no airport nearby so you have to drive the long road from
the border through beautiful but harsh and repetitive desert, with frequent
stops at Army checkpoints to display your passport as well as your good
intentions. For me there was the added strain of stopping to have interviews with
local dignitaries, all of whom had to be photographed and recorded. Sometimes these interviews were a mutual
strain of incomprehension, but what was so impressive to me was the love
everyone had for the whales; these were not just ordinary gray whales, these
were Mexican gray whales and there was a great pride in the fact that
Mexico was taking a leading role in protecting them.
After a long
day of driving we arrived at Guerrero Negro, the nearest town to the Lagoon, a
reasonably prosperous Mexican town but definitely not a place catering to tourists,
just the last place to stop and pick up supplies before heading out to the
Lagoon, some 45 minutes away. And these last 45 minutes take you through barren
salt flats, because the Lagoon is almost entirely surrounded by the world’s
largest producer of salt. The shallow,
protected waters of the Lagoon which are so perfect for nursing whales are also
perfect for harvesting huge quantities of salt, piled into immense mountains of
white crystal, waiting to be taken by barge out to cargo ships moored just
outside the Lagoon.
So Scammon’s
Lagoon is not a normal tourist attraction.
What you find when you reach the Lagoon is a beautiful Visitor’s
Interpretive Center with a small café (featuring Mexico’s second-to-best fish
tacos) and little else. But when we arrive the Visitors’ Center is already
closed, so we make our way down to the campsite which Tom and Debra have used
for many years and we set up our tents with the rest of the Finding the Good squadron. We have already met this crew several times
before, but now we begin the slow process of filling in the gaps and fitting
into the day-to-day routines which have been established to make this
expedition work. Although FTG is
nominally an educational experience with a curriculum centered on the environment,
it seems to us outsiders that the real center is the interpersonal one; that
is, learning how to treat the natural environment starts with how to treat each
other, and as usual the best place to see community-in-action is around food,
and how the dishes get done.
Each day
there is a rotating list of jobs for each of the participants, from being
responsible for cooking the meals (with
all the ingredients referred to in Spanish, as part of the cultural immersion)
to getting all the dishes clean (not an easy task in a place where water has to
be shipped in). Before each meal there
is a group circle in which announcements are made, problems discussed and plans
laid out. It is where I see the loving
care with which Tom and Deb shape the direction of the group without seeming to
do any shaping at all. Inevitably there
are crises and interpersonal gripes, but it all seems to get handled without
much fuss, although I know there is a lot of work going on behind the scenes. I wonder whether the same sorts of problem-solving
are going on out in the Lagoon, mother whales nudging their young ones to find
a way to insure their own survival.
I have a lot
of questions to ask the whales. Tomorrow we will go out and maybe get close
enough to ask them.
Scammon’s
Lagoon is situated halfway down the Baja peninsula, shaped like a hook to catch
all of the northern winds and fogs, so to have a perfectly sunny and warm day
like we had that next day, is a rare and blessed event. Apparently Captain Scammon had almost missed
the Lagoon when he first came here. I
wonder if he was as nervous as I was when he realized that he had finally found
the right place. I was sitting at the
edge of the Lagoon in the early morning sun, half-listening to the sounds of
dishes being put away, half-listening to the muffled sounds of spouting whales
out in the very, very large Lagoon. I
was thinking that this was the day I was to meet the whales, an event I had
thought about for years and yet, because it had taken on such mythic
proportions, I was certainly not clear on what I should do. But clarity would have to wait. A cry went up from the camp that we should
all assemble to get in the vehicles and head for the Visitors’ Center. The boats had been rented; the cameras had
all been checked and put in plastic. The
microphones were already recording students’ impressions of the day, lunch had
been prepared, sunscreen applied, extra layers of clothing stuffed in
waterproof bags. We were almost ready to
go and I could feel everyone’s rising excitement. We were on the way to get in the boats, but
still there was one more formality that had to be filmed and recorded, an
interview I knew was coming and for which I was still mightily unprepared; the
meeting with the Keeper of the Lagoon, the whale-whisperer par excellence, the
mighty and powerful Shari Bondi.
Ever since
the Weistars had entangled me in this filmic adventure I had been hearing about
Shari Bondi, her mythic experience with two whales that saved her life, her
intense study of whales in Canada and then her journey south to Scammon’s
Lagoon where she consummated her love of whales by living full-time with them,
marrying a local fisherman who became the first whale-guide, and how she had
almost single-handedly set up rules to protect the whales from injury and
exploitation. Somehow from all this I
had conjured up a picture of this woman as a rather severe and distant
conservationist, a picture that was instantly erased when she came running down
the beach towards me, flung her arms about me and blurted out in trembling
voice that she had been waiting to meet
me for her whole life. I must say that I
was rather flattered by this exaggeration but I was still at a loss to
understand why she, and many, many others, were so thrilled to meet the relative
of the man who had nearly wiped out the entire gray whale population in the
last century.
There was
little time for reflection: we exchange greetings and then head for the pangas, which are relatively small boats
carrying eight to ten people, plus a lanchero
who commands the boat and is responsible for our safety as well as the safety
of the whales. The whole affair reminds
you of the whaling boats which set off from Captain Scammon’s ship with the
harpoon being the most obvious piece of gear, while for us the most obvious is
the multi-channel microphone on the end of a stick. All around us are breeching whales, thousands
of them at last count. The Lagoon is
much bigger than I imagined, and although there are so many whales they all
seem to be very far off. My son Alex and
I sit there thinking about the Scammon legacy.
Maybe today we will never see a whale up close because the whales will
tune into some ancient hostility or, at the very least, an ambivalence. Certainly they have a right to be wary, and
the whole point of the whales migrating down from Alaska to the warm waters of
Scammon’s Lagoon is to provide a safe place for giving birth and a place where
the mother whales can teach their calves how to swim and how to survive, a very
basic prerequisite for every mammal.
As our boat
slows down we watch and wait for the whales to approach, and notice that other
pangas are already enjoying whoops and shouts as the cautious mother whales inspect
the boats, searching for any sign of danger.
And then—Yes—a huge gray whale surfaces a few feet from our boat, and a
massive eye emerges to check us out. It
is a very odd this eye, because you feel a connection with an ancient and
unknowable creature from some other world, and at the same time you sense that
this being is really there to play, to have some fun with the kids, to pass the
time of day with these strange boats in what is otherwise a fairly boring
lagoon.
It’s almost
as if the mother whales are there to show off their children, and that they
crave being the center of attention, and it is clear they really enjoy being
stroked by everyone in the boat.
Everyone, that is, except me and Alex.
Over and over again the whales surface on the other side of the boat,
but when Alex and I get there they are gone.
And when they do appear on our side they tantalize us with an exquisite
dance, surfacing over and over again just out of our reach, like some reluctant
lover. It happens so often that the whole
boat is in on the joke, waiting to see our frustration and listening to our
theories about how the whales have been planning this for weeks—or maybe years.
I try to remain sanguine, but my disappointment is certainly showing,
particularly galling since the film crew is catching every twitch and
grimace. It goes on for half an hour,
until one mother whale, obviously more sensitive than the rest, finally takes
pity on me and eases up to my outstretched arm. And then the long journey is over. I feel great relief. Maybe it is the fact that the cameras are
recording the event and I know that I can finally stop acting a part. But as I stroke this mother and baby over and
over again I start to get a sense of what an extraordinary meeting this is,
that this monstrously large mammal and I should be relaxing in the pleasure of
each other’s company, when only a few years ago there was no contact at
all. It is quite astounding that these
wild beings should be seeking us out,
that they should be demanding our attention,
that they, after all we have done to them, should be so trusting of us and
vulnerable in our presence.
We spend
several hours watching, filming, caressing and playing with the whales that
day, and again the next day and the next.
It gives me plenty of time to sit back and think about what’s going on
out there, and what’s going on for me.
First of all I am beginning to understand why so many people are so
enthralled with this contact with the whales, why Sherri Bondi sings to them
and calls them by name. Is there any
other non-domestic animal that has this sort of personal, intimate relationship
with humans? I am blown away by the
mystery of why these whales should be so loving towards us, and wonder what it
must be like to be a whale calf and be the recipient of love from such a huge
heart. I am particularly grateful that I
have come here to witness this and to believe that, as far as I can tell, the
whales of Scammon’s Lagoon have forgiven me and my family.
There is
certainly much to forgive; we almost destroyed them all. But I am beginning to wonder whether I have
been looking at Captain Scammon from the wrong end of the telescope. I have been focusing on the destructive part
of his career, but there was more. The Captain spent only a few years hunting
the whales, but many years in researching, drawing and writing his extensive
book on cetology and the gray whale in particular. It was a labor of love. which was certainly
rare, and possibly unique, in 19th century America. After his whaling days Captain Scammon joined
the Revenue Marine, a precursor of the modern-day Coast Guard, and thus was in
the vanguard of those whose lives are dedicated to protecting the whales rather
than hunting them. As I look back at
this trip down to Baja I am struck by the many conservationists and
whale-lovers I have met who told me that their real introduction to the life of
whales was through The Marine Mammals of
the Northwestern Coast of North America by Captain Charles M. Scammon.
Now I am
back in the mountains of Northern California, far from the ocean. But each day I take a walk which takes me
past a pod of huge gray rocks, covered in blue-green lichen, which look more
and more like a family of whales rising up out of the sea. So each day I am reminded of the ocean and what
the whales have given me: a reminder of the importance of taking care of our
children, a model of loving kindness, and a lesson in the power of forgiveness.
And I want to attache a photo to go along with Chris' story. Such a good photo!
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