An otherwise peaceful Sunday morning is disturbed by the guy using a leaf blower across the street outside of Mussel Beach Gym. Okay, the name of the gym is clever, but the completely unnecessary use of a power tool in the 8 o'clock hour on a Sunday morning has me feeling a little crabby. Add to that, that the ground is wet because of early morning rain and I'm wondering if the use of powertools in the morning is simply habit.
I've written about them before. They're a scourge on too many quiet mornings. I don't object to them per se, just the inconsiderate use of them.
The swoosh of the pushbroom the Mussel Beach guy is using now feels so much more consistent with the vibe here. Especially as I enjoy a quiet cup of tea on the covered deck.
The sound has me thinking about yesterday's whale watch trip and the blow of an association of humpback whales near enough to the boat I could almost touch them.
It was a surprise. Most of my trip companions were on the other side of the boat waiting for the humbacks to surface after the last dive. I was tired of vying for space at the rail, so I meandered over to the other side of the boat and was looking down into the water. Suddenly, the tell tale green sheen on the water and shiny surface of the whales' backs appeared sumultaneously with a mighty puff of air and water vapor. First one, and then the other. Sometimes whales get together in pairs and swim that way for awhile - it's called an association. Their graceful water ballet culminates with the rise of their split tail as they dive.
Just off Cape Cod is one of the known feeding areas of three species of whales - humpback, fin, and minke. Humbacks spend the summer feeding, before their migration to the waters surrounding the Dominican Republic where they mate and calve. Their gestation period is 11 months, so pregnant females will make the journey this year and return with their calves next summer. Other females will return to the feeding waters pregnant with calves that will be born after the next year's journey south.
Our whale watch took us into these feeding areas. We saw all three of the species. The fin whale is the second longest cetacean after the blue whale. They're likened to greyhounds because they are slender and fast. I thought they also were playful and a little mischevious. All three whale types seem joyful to me. The minke is smaller and has an underbelly that is black on one side and white on the other, camouflage believed to confuse predators while feeding. All three are baleen whales that filter plankton with the whalebone that lines their mouths.
We sail away from Provincetown today, back across the cape and down the coast to Newport and Mystic, on the watch for other feeding areas. The human kind.
Fall-ing in Love is a 40 day writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.
Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.
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