On an 8 ft Inflatable Boat Surrounded by Orcas
I’d been travelling with Jessie in New Zealand for several months living out of the back of a van, chasing waves and exploring the ocean. This was true discovery, of places, of cultures, of ourselves and we were certain we could make a life doing what we loved and exploring with our cameras. When the opportunity came of joining the crew on a small sailing research boat heading out around Great Barrier Islands and the Mokohinau’s we jumped straight onboard.
There was one anchorage that I won’t forget in a hurry. It was our turn to make food so as per customary of any time spent on a boat, you go fishing, which is exactly what we did this evening. We carefully climbed into the tiny tender and travelled no further than 100m when the exhale of the most beautiful Orca surfaced just inches from our boat and seconds later the pod was surfacing too, a family of Orca’s curious about what little 8ft inflatable creature lay at the surface.
I can’t tell you in words how magic that was, it was a feeling I can’t repeat, being in a tiny tender practically touching this large female closely followed by her calf. There’s no amount of planning that could’ve made this happen, and it’s in these moments, the unplanned moments, moments when we’re perilously unprepared, that I seem to find most of life’s gifts.
After this pod of Orca’s had gracefully swum by, we trailed our line and caught a Snapper. That night was truly special, and the gifts kept on giving. We sat on the deck eating the fresh and delicious fish with garlic and rosemary potatoes, chatting until the sun went down and then we noticed a strange glow, only to realise that we were surrounded by luminescence. Phosphorescent plankton lit up the water around the bow, the wake of fishes sparking like fireworks. We sat mesmerised until we could sit no longer and eventually took ourselves down into the cabin for a restful sleep.
On this day I truly experienced the fruits of the earth but there was something that happened internally in that experience, there was a realisation that this magic is everywhere, in the oceans and in the air we breathe, it’s there in nature, when we open our eyes or listen for the sounds of the birds, the magic is there for those who are open to receive it.
Whilst we’ll never have control over these moments of magic (I couldn’t have predicted the orcas), we can create the conditions that enable these situations to happen in our lives. What that requires from us is something profoundly difficult in a life full of distraction, it requires being present.
Our brains quickly interpret what’s going on around us, always scanning our environment, but it’s our story that reflects how we choose to see, sometimes we’re blocked from noticing, veiled through noise dressed as priorities. The magic is always there, as it was there when you were a child, the bugs, the droplets of water reflecting our faces, the puddles and how the soil feels on our feet. Sometimes we just need to remember it, to remember what it’s like to experience it, in all of its intricacies.
This is about not allowing those other priorities to become the mask that prevents the magic from entering your day. Not allowing the beliefs we hold about ourselves and our world to stifle our opportunity to experience. If there’s one thing that getting on a boat with a marine scientist and seasoned sailor taught me that day is that there’s opportunities out there to experience an absolute sense of awe, opportunities that bring us to nature, to the magic, to the phosphorescence, to the orcas, we just have to be aware enough of our own story to recognise when it’s ourselves that’s holding us back from receiving it. To recognise that the narrative we tell ourselves, become the conditions in which we live.
