The little naturalist who cried “Whale!”

  • I’m aboard the Car­ni­val Spirit head­ing for Alaska. Another cruise for us, this one car­ry­ing a cer­tain hope of spir­i­tual enrich­ment because I’m trav­el­ing with an Ortho­dox group and hop­ing to see some glimpse of the Russ­ian Ortho­dox his­tory of Alaska. I may be dream­ing that I could do any­thing like that on an Alaskan cruise, but if it turns out I can’t, I guess all I did was take an Alaskan cruise and fill up on good food, good com­pany and great scenery — oh well.

    And I’ve been avail­ing myself of the good food, so I decided to try a lit­tle power-walking around the deck to restore my self-esteem. Though the tem­per­a­tures are in the 60′s, it’s tem­per­ate enough if you keep mov­ing. So I’m begin­ning to feel good enough to find out what­ever is the silly drink of the day, when the loud­speaker emits its two-tone sig­nal — bing BONG — and then …

    “Hello, this is Michelle, your nat­u­ral­ist, again.”

    Oh no, not Michelle, my nat­u­ral­ist.


    “We have some lovely weather for spot­ting marine life today, and we have seen some hump­back whales on the star­board or right side of the boat.”

    I keep walk­ing, eyes fixedly ahead. No, Michelle, you’re not going to do this to me again.
    “Remem­ber that you’re look­ing for some splash­ing, just any tur­bu­lence of the swells as they stir up the water and feed on the crill.”

    As Michelle sings her siren song, peo­ple start migrat­ing to the star­board rails, look­ing out, ahead, back, scan­ning the brack­ish swells.

    “We spot­ted two whales ear­lier. You might see a fin come out of the water.”

    Fam­i­lies and cou­ples con­gre­gate, crane their necks, try to encour­age each other.

    “You might also see a flume of water, which looks like a puff of smoke.”

    Michelle has been doing this to us all day. She started in at break­fast. I have yet to have heard of any­one except Michelle who has seen any­thing. I’m try­ing to hold to my course, but she’s start­ing to get to me.

    “And again, these are on the star­board side. We’re just start­ing to draw even to them in the mid­dle of the ship.”

    Shoot, that’s right where I am. Maybe if I just took one peek, I’d see tur­bu­lence and feel like my life had meaning.

    So I look for a spot at the rail­ing and join the hun­gry throng. We want to see flumes, we want to see fins. If some­one could point out any­thing that looked like it might pos­si­bly be white water, we can all leave and tell our friends of the won­ders of nature we beheld. And we really tried. Peo­ple with binoc­u­lars and zoom lenses scoured the land­scape and called back any­thing at all, but it always turned out to be nothing.

    I feel used. Michelle did it again. She’s prob­a­bly up there watch­ing all this on a video cam­era and cack­ling away mer­rily with the crew as we sim­ple­tons look for sea crea­tures that aren’t there.

    Or maybe this is just what they do when the ship starts list­ing to port. “Quick, Michelle, help us bal­ance out the boat. Tell those morons a school of mer­maids is doing back flips off the star­board bow!”

    I finally tear myself away from the view of noth­ing and go back to my walk. I’m hear­ing a cam­era or two click as peo­ple take pic­tures of the noth­ing — maybe they can con­vince their friends that it’s a pic­ture of a whale.
    As I start truck­ing along again, Michelle starts in again.

    “And towards the back of the boat, we’ve seen a school of Dall’s Por­poises, known for their dis­tinc­tive black-and-white coloring.”

    No, Michelle. No. Not again. If the ship tilts that badly, you guys should get your­self some sta­bi­liz­ers instead of just play­ing mind games with the dupes on board.

    That woman was enough to drive me back to the buffet.


    Related posts:

    1. BTW, my boat’s not on fire
    2. Do you want to cruise or not?
    3. Santa Catalina and back again

    May 31st, 2007 | Grace | 9 Comments |

9 Responses and Counting...

  • Mimi 05.31.2007

    I want to take one of those cruises myself. Krill, whales, nat­u­ral­ists named Michelle and all.

    If you are able to visit St. Micahel’s in Sitka, would you be so kind as to light a can­dle for me?

  • Grace

    I rec­om­mend them — they’re a great way to travel. Or so they seem to me. I know some peo­ple that really don’t care for cruis­ing (my mom absolutely hates it), so I have to add the stan­dard ‘your mileage may vary’ disclaimer.

    Sitka: I believe our group is going to Ves­pers there, so I’d be happy to light a can­dle for you.

  • Mimi

    My par­ents have taken sev­eral, and speak highly of them. I’ve talked Dh into doing an Alaskan cruise for our 20th anniver­sary, in 4 years.

    And, thank you so very much.

  • Scot

    Hi Diane–

    Yeah, Michelle was a bit annoy­ing. I finally took the bait on one occa­sion when she men­tioned “Killer Whales” on the star­board bow (only thing more inter­est­ing to a geeky guy would be “Klin­gons off the star­board bow”). I mean, how was I sup­pose to resist killer whales? I have always pic­tured killer whales in their nat­ural habit wear­ing ban­doliers and large machetes. So, I HAD to check that out.

    Sure enough, the so-called “killer whales” had con­ve­niently sub­merged… Michelle was kind enough to offer her apolo­gies (“sorry! I guess the killer whales sub­merged because of the noise from the ship…” yeah, sure). I did notice the shipped seemed to not be lean­ing to left as it was before she announced the sight­ing. :-)

    Any­way, I learned my les­son after that.

    Scot

  • Grace

    I think I tried to keep from look­ing when she would start in with all that, but then I’d meet up with some­one that swore they actu­ally saw some­thing that she had pointed out, and so after that I’d try for a while.

    I’m still not sure the whole thing wasn’t just some psy­cho­log­i­cal test about trust and gulli­bil­ity or something.

    Killer whales with machetes: Now THAT I’d have left the buf­fet for! :-D

  • Adam

    I just got off an Alaskan cruise on the Spirit…

    Michelle, the Nat­u­ral­ist, has been one of the best things dur­ing the whole cruise…very informative.

    Cruis­ing in Alaska is not about the food, the shows or the casino.

    Greet­ings

    Adam

  • Grace

    Don’t get me wrong — I actu­ally agree with you, and so did my fel­low cruis­ers. I’m just hav­ing some fun with the fact that we had such a hard time see­ing any­thing that Michelle pointed out, but I didn’t actu­ally mean that she was just doing it to be mean or bizarre, just that nature is capri­cious and that we were appar­ently not des­tined to see Dall’s Porpoises.

    As for Alaskan cruis­ing not being about the food, shows or casino: ditto again. For my take on this, visit this entry.

  • Jeff Leigh

    Per­haps if Michelle fig­ured out that the STARBOARD side of the ship is the RIGHT side of the ship, not the LEFT side of the ship, it would be eas­ier for peo­ple to find the wildlife she announces.

  • Grace

    (grin) Well, it was over a year ago now, but I’m bet­ting that Michelle the nat­u­ral­ist got that right. I cor­rected it in the post.

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