no points for trying
superpod, crying with strangers, & other Salish Sea stories
My mom says she misses my voice on here but I have been all salt, sun, and sea since July. I start my mornings early when I’m working. I’m up with the very first streaks of red in the sky. I haul water and make coffee then chat with my folks along for the ride, then I make breakfast. Then we paddle. Salt, sun, and sea. I do a lot of chatting, and hauling gear, and making food and making camp and breaking camp. I feel strong, except when I feel very very tired1.
On the days I don’t work I sleep for more hours than I thought possible. I fall asleep before the sun sets no matter how hard I try. I wake up in the middle of the night disoriented and dehydrated. I fall back asleep. I wake up when the sun rises and fall back asleep again.
In my head it is still the beginning of August, because I have not stopped to check the time since the beginning of August.
My first trip of the month was a family of six and we saw orcas and it was incredible. They cruised by our campsite at lunch, dorsal fins taller than the smallest daughter’s head. The girls squealed and ran after them.
My next trip was almost immediately after— a quick two-day to shuttle a father and daughter out to meet another group for a longer trip. I stayed an extra day, because they were meeting Andy as the other guide, and I thought it would be fun to stick around. I was correct.
Then I went immediately into another three day, an all women trip that absolutely rocked. We joked around the dinner table then loaded ourselves into the kayaks and paddled around the corner into the setting sun. A kids camp jumped off the cliffs and we passed other sunset watchers who shouted at us and laughed. The entire sky blazed orange, then pink, then dusty purple. The water matched the sky broken only by dark low islands, and it felt like the whole world was taking a moment to remind you how incredible it is. We paddled back to our camp slowly, taking our time to let it become dark enough to see the bioluminescence.
Above us starts flickered on and below us little blue sparks twinkled to match. Here in the Salish Sea, the bioluminescent show starts slow. People mistake it for bubbles off their paddle blade, but if you drag your fingers through it you can see it. The suspense starts to build — “that’s really it?!” — and then it gets dark for real.
Almost impossible to capture on a camera, bioluminescence is a little ephemeral. The darker it gets, the more of it you see until suddenly it’s the most incredible thing you’ve ever seen. Lines of blue glittering light streak off the bow of your boat, and you can send huge clouds of it forward by dragging your paddle through it. Paddle over a school of fish and you’ll see their bodies light up below you. Pick a spot with ambient sea critter activity and you’ll see continuous small flashes of blue light, a visual reminder that the whole ocean is alive.
After that trip, I launched immediately into another. This time we went to Stuart Island, which is a harder paddle, and for some reason a much harder trip to run as the guide. I think it might just be that the difficult paddle saps people, and by the time you get to camp there is so much to do, and very little time.
Stuart Island involves a crossing of Spieden Channel, a crossing with tide rips and strong currents. On the previous trip, one of the paddler’s mother had done a Stuart Island trip. She described crossing Spieden Channel as “very strenuous”. I laughed out loud. Spieden Channel indeed can be very strenuous.
Last year on our 70 day Salish Sea trip, Andy, Ebba and I crossed Spieden Channel from Limestone Point to Green Point (which, by the way!! Is the worst location to cross Spieden but live and learn). We were tossed around by large rips and currents and eventually made it across but it was not pretty. Upon arrival we were promptly chased by sea lions.
With this group, we paddled across Spieden at a light flood current on the way out. In the evening, we hopped back on the water to paddle on the bioluminescence. A seal hid in the bioluminescent shadow of my boat, darting out from behind us to catch the fish we’d scared in the dark. We paddled along the north side of Stuart Island with Mount Baker views on the way back. On our last day, we woke up early and paddled along with another guide back across Spieden on the outside of Henry Island to catch the ebb current. We made it all the way past our put in to Deadman’s Bay in Lime Kiln State Park, something I’ve been wanted to try since the other guide causally mentioned that was even an option.
The Ebb current carried us down Haro Strait and around us salmon jumped, the migration to the Fraser River beginning. Any day now, the Southern Resident Killer Whales (SRKW) would return to the Salish Sea. According to the whale watch Facebook group, a large pod of unidentified orcas had been spotted headed East from Sooke, BC that morning. We were hoping to catch the formation of the superpod, when J,K, and L pods of the SRKW all come together to mate and hunt, all 70 or so members (minus the captive Tokitae, lovingly called Toki) in one place.
Eventually, I ran out of time stalling on the beach and we paddled back north to our put-in point, orca-less. Around the time I dropped my guests back in Friday Harbor, the super pod formed and was active off Lime Kiln State Park and the west side of San Juan island from roughly 2pm to 4:30pm. Earlier in the day, my group had joked that with their luck, they’d miss the supper pod by one day. We missed it by one hour.
You can find footage of the superpod of Lime Kiln State Park here! While this was happening I was cleaning boats. Can’t win them all.
Luckily, I was informed that my group saw some orcas from their ferry back to Anacortes.
The following day, August 18th, was a half day of prepping for another overnight trip. I finished early and spent the day finishing up some freelancing work in a coffee shop. The shop closed early (thus is island time). I drove down to Cattle Point instead of finishing my work. Allegedly, there were 130-some orcas in the Salish Sea this week. I figured I would visit a few of my favorite coastal spots and try my luck.
The key to spotting orcas from land is not necessarily watching for orcas. Watch instead for boats motored down and floating with a red triangle “whale warning” flag up. Here in the Salish Sea, motorized boats are very good about following and enforcing the marine mammal protection act. If every boat in an area is down-motored and pointing a similar direction, there might be a whale or two around.
Just off the Cattle Point Bluffs were a few cars pulled over with long lens cameras. Down on the water below, four or so boats were down motored and pointing in the same direction. I scanned the water for a while before I saw them, but sure enough— L-pod was hanging out off South Beach.
I flagged down the woman on her phone parked next to me to make sure she saw them, because it would be devastating to be there and miss a SRKW2 pod, and she told me she had, there was just a hornet. We watched together from the bluff for a while then decided to head up island, as L Pod was northbound.
On the cliffs over Haro Strait we trickled down and a small crowd slowly gathered as we told tourists they should wait a few minutes, L Pod was likely inbound.
The woman I had met before and I stood on the cliffs together and talked about orcas. Where she had seen them, where I had. How you really can’t explain just how special they area, just how much they rope you in, how they feel human but more vulnerable, magical but very real.
L Pod rounded the corner and she let out a little sigh.
“Did you hear the news? It all feels very full circle. Really emotional to be here right now seeing this.”
I paused. “I don’t think I heared the news”.
“Toki died today.”
“Oh. And this is L-Pod. Wow.”
L-Pod member Tokitae, renamed Lolita by the Miami Seaquarium, was captured as a juvenile orca in the notoriously brutal Penn Cove Capture in the 1970s. She sang the L-Pod song her entire life, speaking the language her mother, still living in the wild, taught her. Recently action had been taken to get Tokitae a better, larger pen and perhaps bring her back to the Salish Sea to live out her final days near home in some kind of sea pen on the ocean.
The movement to help Tokitae was in large part driven by the Lummi Nation, whom have always viewed the SRKWs as tribal members and people under the water. The stealing of Toki was a kidnapping. In recent years, white people took an interest as well. Funds were raised and plans were made, but not quickly or concretely enough.
Too little, too late. We can pat ourselves on the back for caring, or trying to care, but it doesn’t undo the wrong that was done to Toki and L-Pod, or to the Lummi Nation. No points for trying when the trying is to make us feel like good people.
I often feel like words are meaningless; we say so much more with the things we actually do.
No points for trying, but we can simply do better next time.
A good companion read to this is essay from earlier this summer The Human in the Orca, the Wild in Ourselves. Here I talk a lot about orca lore in the Salish Sea, and Toki’s story.
The air around us was hazy, and you couldn’t see the Olympic Range. I counted six members of the L-subpod, including two very small young. When they breathed it shot spray into the silvery air. I thought about how orcas mourn— very completely. A mother once carried the body of her calf for days. When she couldn’t carry it any longer, her pod carried it for her until she was ready to let go.
I almost cried with a stranger on a cliff. Maybe we did a little. We stood there for a long time, watching them.
I left, and I heard the stranger discussing with her friend that they should go after me, make sure I drove to the next possible viewpoint with them. I made a point of being gone— there is something beautiful about leaving meaningful moments as they are. There is something beautiful about parting as strangers, never learning each other’s names.
My next trip, the third consecutive, left into a haze of wildfire smoke and a stiff north wind. We made camp early, and opted for an evening sunset paddle, still in a smokey haze. In the evening, we splashed in the shallows with the bioluminescence. It was different than I had seen it before— instead of hundreds of tiny dinoflagellate plankton that flickered on and off quickly, there were little circles of blue light that glowed and stayed lit. Upon closer inspection, it looked like tiny jellyfish had eaten the dinoflagellate plankton, and now the little critters themselves were glowing. They took more energy to “turn on the lights” but stayed on longer.
After we got out of the water, the tiny lit up circles danced against the shore for a while longer.
At times on the paddle back the smoke was so thick it felt hard to breathe. We landed and had lunch a little early, and the whole trip felt a little off— both not the route I usually do and even the familiar parts looked different in the smoke.
On the beach we had fourth-of-july wraps (my nickname for blueberry, strawberry, arugula, goat cheese, red onion wraps toped with balsamic vinegar and potato chips) and just as we were getting ready to head out a pod of Transient orcas3 travelled past the beach.
And just like that, August is mostly gone. Thanks for being here.
x Maddy
A Couple of Other Links & Things
Sea Kayaker Tim Gallaway did an excellent guest series earlier this month! Check out parts one, two, and three and be sure to find him on YouTube!
At the very beginning of the month, I headed out to Sucia Island and paddled the negative tide. Read about it in Howling at the Moon.
howling at the moon
I like to think of the tide as the Earth breathing long, slow breaths, inhaling and exhaling two times a day. Inhale, and the tide rushes in filling inlets and coves, rushing around headlands and swirling out at the edges of passes and channels. Exhale, and the tide sucks out leaving the ocean floor and its creatures exposed and waiting for the next bre…
the human in the orca, the wild in ourselves
The first time I encountered J-pod, a family of 25 members of the Southern Resident orcas, was on day 15 of our 70-day paddling trip last summer. We were headed north as we rounded a public park north of Nanaimo, British Columbia, a crowd of people gathered on the shore and called out to us, “Look! Behind you! They’re here!”
for more on orcas in the salish sea, check out The Human in the Orca, the Wild in Ourselves, linked above.
I’ll be publishing a very honest account of “guide life” this summer for paying subscribers very soon! I’ll be covering things like the massive seawater-logged blister on my foot, burnout and self-care in a very physical job, how my fingers no longer work on my phone screen cause they’re so calloused, and some of the things to consider before deciding to become a guide.
If you’d like access to this upcoming essay, or would just like to support Hello Stranger, become a paying subscriber by joining below:
this essay will contain typos! For that I am sorry! I am very tired and doing my very best to both work my full time guiding job and keep writing all summer. Thank you so much for baring with me.
Southern Resident Killer Whale (SRKW) aka resident orca
for more on Transient versus Resident Orcas in the Salish Sea, read the human in the orca, the wild in ourselves
Beautiful writing!