wildlife Archives - Page 18 of 39 -

Begin at the Beginning–Humpback Whale Journey Part I

By Simone Lipscomb | February 29, 2016

Humpback mothers and babies, dreaming whale couples, a mama and baby and male, a singer, rowdy groups of humpbacks, meditating in the water with humpbacks, yoga under a full moon on deck….nice people, good food….a wrecked sailboat. So many stories to share, so many experiences to treasure. The best place to begin to share my journey with humpback whales is at the beginning.

Saturday, February 20th–After arriving early and having an afternoon and all day the next day to explore around the marina, I boarded our vessel. The 124 foot boat was designed as a live-aboard dive boat so its not roughing it but it’s not fancy either. So bare feet, shorts and tee shirts when not in wetsuits is the norm. The weather had been producing very high winds and I was dreading the 92 mile crossing to the offshore reef, the Silver Bank. Between the reef and the north shore of the Dominican Republic is open ocean and with 20 knot winds that’s no joke, even in a stable craft like the Turks & Caicos Explorer II.

Thankfully the captain and trip leader decided not to leave port and put us through a rough night of ten foot seas. At almost 10pm, our usual departure time, I felt only relief that we would wait until morning to leave the marina. Being a light sleeper doesn’t help when it’s rough enough to throw me off the bunk. Nobody complained about the decision to wait.

Sunday, February 21st–Last ties to land cast off and steadily we moved through choppy waters toward the Silver Bank. As we pulled out of the harbor early in the morning, the silver sunrise glistened on the white surf that was breaking onto a lush, green shore. The beauty of the mist-covered shoreline aglow with soft, quicksilver star fire wrapped me in a loving embrace.

Slowly moving through green water toward the indigo blue–that purple blue that calls to my depths–we made our way onward. Out, out to sea. To freedom. To humpback whales.

I sat perched on the flying bridge gazing into clouds and sea, surrounded by elements of water and wind. Occasionally beams of light would pierce the heavy clouds and illuminate distant water…golden fingers of heaven reaching down to connect with the sea. Such divinity in that moment. Sea touched by sky. Sacred touch. Sacred connection.

While all around is cloudy with a gray blue sea, the moment light touches the surface it glows indigo and silver and gold. Our hearts are like that…when we allow the light of our own being to shine through, it changes everything.

As we were traversing the crossing, I connected deeply with the Ocean and wrote the following:

Love Song for the Ocean

Gazing into your deep, blue depths I feel my heart open with wild abandon.

Beloved, your beauty fills my life with joy and light like no other.

Your Mysteries invite me deeper into my own depths until I find myself at the quiet stillness of perfect center.

Your salty tears move through my being and we weep together at needless loss and destruction.

Your varying shades of blues–turquoise, indigo, light blue, green-blue–fill my veins and my blood runs hot and salty in rhythm to you.

Your power fills me with courage as I journey through this life to love you more, to surrender more to your immense, all-enfolding, raw, elemental power.

I can scarcely contain my emotions and find this body challenged to hold the love as it courses through my being. Divine Madness.

You whisper, Don’t hold it in, child. Express your love for me daughter. Let yourself be free. Open to love….open…be free.

But what will they say, Dear Mother? When I dance in wild spirals screaming your name, singing your name, whispering your name. What will they say?

Will they shun me or lock me up or call me crazy? But in truth, I am crazy with Divine Madness for you, Ocean Mother.

I want to dive into your salty waters and never rinse the dried, healing minerals from my body.

In gazing at the horizon where your Body meets Sky, it appears to be a line of separation but no matter how far I journey, it is a never-ending relationship, a dance that continues and continues…forever….endless.

My Child, you whisper through the wind. My Child! you shout on the spray carried by the wind. My Child of love, never apologize for loving me and for opening your heart. Rejoice in your ability to feel! Rejoice!

Rejoice! Rejoice! In your own salty, juiciness.

We began seeing whales long before we reached our mooring. Breaching, tail lobbing, fin-slapping humpback whales. Their white-hot breath led us forward in our journey, our crossing from one reality to the magical realm of the Silver Bank.

I fell asleep knowing that humpback whales swam beneath the boat dreaming strange whale dreams. I surrendered to their call and joined them in the dreamtime.

——-

Part II….In the water with whales….stay tuned.

Sanctuary

By Simone Lipscomb | January 29, 2016

The clock proclaimed sunrise but heavy clouds hung close so dawn’s light was slow to brighten the day. Silently I slipped into the water, wrapped in my dry suit and holding my heavy, underwater camera equipment. With a slow and quiet frog kick I moved toward the narrow opening of the spring.

A manatee exiting the clear water paused in passing, watched me for a few moments and then moved forward in her glacial, flowing pace. Low light and particulate matter in the open water made a shot impossible but communion was exchanged and was sweet.

As I approached the spring, a manatee laid sleeping on the white, sandy bottom. I carefully avoided splashing and went around him and into the clear water of the freshwater spring.

Ten manatees of various sizes lay asleep on the bottom, huddled together in a common area. I glided away from them toward the back of the small spring and turned to face them from a distance. I took a few photographs as the light increased and then felt drawn into their meditation, into their group mind of stillness and dreaming warm, saltwater dreams.

In the quiet, peaceful water temple I closed my eyes and floated effortlessly with heart and mind open. The beauty of their being touched my core. No thoughts, just sensations enveloped me. Cool water on my face and neck; gravity-free except for the heavy camera rig in my hands; muscles relaxed; gentle floating….total surrender and release of all stress, tension…of everything except that moment of manatee mind.

One woman, ten sirens of the sea communing in perfect harmony caused time to disappear. We joined in that glorious, timeless dimension of stillness and quiet.

The moments of harmony with my sisters and brothers were some of the sweetest I have ever experienced.

After several minutes I opened my eyes and noticed my open heart and calm mind. I said a silent prayer of gratitude for the gift of this encounter then took several photographs, hoping to be able to translate, through art, the experience that so powerfully touched my core.

Slowly, quietly I moved around the side of the rock wall toward the exit. I turned before leaving to offer my thanks to the manatees and witnessed several slowly rise from their resting place on the bottom to the surface to take a deep, full breath. So in-tune in their sleep, their meditation they breathed in unison. Humans have much to learn from these gentle beings.

Throughout King’s Bay and Crystal River there are official sanctuaries or areas set aside where manatees can rest without human interference. Heavy fines and penalties are imposed on anyone entering these designated safe-zones. Today in the small, clear spring, I found my own place of peace, my own sanctuary.

Image of a juvenile taken yesterday in Three Sister's Springs — *Image of a juvenile taken the day before in Three Sister’s Springs*

This is Why I Cried

By Simone Lipscomb | January 19, 2016

Driving to the state park to walk with Buddy, I was listening to the Eagles Long Road Home. Glenn Frey is gone? He wasn’t a personal friend but the music of the Eagles was the soundtrack of my youth. Peaceful, Easy Feeling is probably my favorite of their earlier songs and brings back the innocence of younger days. The song that spoke to me this morning was one from their more recent work and tears flowed as it played….”I’m not gonna say a word. I know I can’t change your mind. You know where you need to go. I know I’ll be left behind. I won’t hold you back, I won’t stand in your way. If you need to make a new start…But I still wanna know when my arms let you go…what do I do with my heart.” I was sitting in my husband’s blue truck when I first heard this song and realized our relationship was slipping away. Nearly four years have passed since I last saw him and when this song plays that memory rushes in.

But it wasn’t just a love song and music from my young adult years that touched me the past few days. David Bowie died of cancer. Then Alan Rickman (Snape…Harry Potter). But Eva Saulitis died, too. She was a marine biologist that documented the decline of an transient orca population in Alaska that has never produced a surviving calf since the 1989 Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. As Krista Langlois said, “Her own life and those of the orcas were spiraling into the sea together.” Eva died of cancer. Bowie died of cancer. Rickman….and countless others whose name we will never know died of cancer….are dying of cancer. Epidemic?

Photograph Summer 2010...Shell Oil — *Photograph Summer 2010…Shell Oil…Courtesy BP*

Recently President Obama said he was forming a new initiative to cure cancer. I appreciate your work Mr. President but it’s not a cure we need…it’s prevention. It’s cleaning our polluted waters and sky. We are poisoning the planet and therefore we are poisoning ourselves. Orcas are at the very top of the food chain and therefore consume the highest level of toxins. It’s the same with humans.

Photograph I took Summer 2010. It reminds me of a woman's body and so I call it the Rape of Mother Earth — *Photograph I took Summer 2010. It reminds me of a woman’s body and so I call it the Rape of Mother Earth*

Times like this morning, when death and planetary challenges seem so evident, are a knock on my inner door. When I was a teenager we knew fossil fuels were problematic yet nothing changed. We were told to turn off lights back in the 1970’s to conserve energy but solar and wind development took a back seat for decades. There have been improvements…remember Erie Canal being so polluted it caught on fire? Thankfully the EPA tightened restrictions on much of the industrial processes.

Given all this…how can anyone suggest lessening EPA standards and regulations? We know that corporate industry will do anything to save money, to make more profit. Deregulation would increase already polluted waters and land and air. Why is this even a political battle? Anyone with an active, healthy brain can easily see the link between cancer and human-created environmental pollution and toxins. How could anyone who cares about their health or the health of children vote for candidates who lobby against the environment?

My heart breaks over pollution and toxins that are killing our wildlife….killing us. Take that Eagles song and sing it to our Earth Mother and all life on this sacred planet…”Tell me you’re not leavin’ now, Tell me you’re not leavin’…..Tell me that you’re gonna stay, Please say you’ll stay with me, baby….For this and this alone I pray, Fall down on my knees and pray…I’ll do anything. Yes, I would to save what we have, To keep you by my side…I’ll love you ’til death do us part….But what do I do, what do I do when I’m still missing you? What do I do…what do I do with my heart?”

Innocent no longer….the carefree days of youth have passed. The loss we face is much greater than a lover or music icon or actor or even a diligent marine biologist. We are at the brink of losing much more than we can even imagine. This is why my heart breaks. This is why I cried today.

Reflecting on Bigness

By Simone Lipscomb | December 27, 2015

“Dance with their bigness,” my friend reminded me. He was referring to a humpback whale trip that is coming up for me in February. I told him how committing to the trip was difficult due to the cost involved but that in meditation, when making the final decision to go or not go, I got a very clear message: look around this meditation space…the entire room is built around humpback energy. Remember the positive change they created in your life and trust your journey.

Allowing my mind to drift back to the first of this year, I thought of the rainbow that filled the sky as I pulled up to Follow That Dream Blvd last year on my way to photograph manatees as I was actually speaking into my voice recorder about following my heart’s calling and the dreams of my life. That one moment defined my entire year. What are the odds of all that coming together at one intersection?

But isn’t life a series of intersections filled with opportunities and ‘chance’ meetings that change our lives?

Last September I met a friend that helped me find my joy, my laughter. Not long ago he sent a quote that was very helpful to revisit –Marianne Williamson’s writing about our deepest fear is that we are powerful and it is our light that most frightens us…we are children of God and playing small doesn’t serve the world…as we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others. He reminded me again recently that I am on the right path with my creative work…something I have been questioning.

It feels like a time of major change coming in my life and I haven’t really known how to proceed. I’ve been evaluating the work I do and wondering if I’m heading in the ‘right’ direction. This questioning of direction has been ‘up’ for months.

With friends sending me messages of encouragement and reminding me to step into my bigness, to dance the big dance with humpbacks, I decided to read my journal from the humpback trip this past March. The answers I’ve been searching for are written in it, by my hand.

“Rainbow Thursday…

I awakened at 5-ish and went upstairs by 5.30. I sat high on the boat awaiting the dawn. A dark rain cloud was due east so the sun had a difficult time illuminating the sky. A wall of rain began to move toward the boat so I was driven down to the 1st level which is covered but still open.

The rain came…its loud shuuuuuuu sound was beautiful music on the ocean’s surface. I looked out, past the small boats tied behind the mother ship and saw a tail lob…and another…and another and then a baby fluke appeared beside the mother and joined the tail slapping but only occasionally as the baby’s tail was weaker than mamas.

I just said to another passenger…’There has to be a rainbow with the rain and sunrise’ and suddenly a brilliant rainbow appeared in the sky, arched over the whales and the calf breached. And more tail lobbing….

Brilliant rainbow, mother and baby whale, ocean…breaching into the rainbow. Really? Was it really happening?

After the other early-risers–who had witnessed this mind-blowing moment–wandered away, I stepped down on the dive platform so I could see the full arch of the rainbow. The mother and baby were still there but calmer now, coming up to breathe and then resting.

As I stood level with the Ocean, saltwater washing over my feet, I felt the immensity of this vision. Not just the vision of this incredible experience but the vision that guided me here…to this place….to this life.

I felt support of my spiritual family so powerfully…guides, teachers, friends, family…my higher self. The words I heard in my mind were, “Your work is supported, your life is guided. This is the promise–you will always have our support.”

As I sit here writing this, remnants of the rainbow still touch the Ocean and the whale is exhaling with her baby. Their breath-mist carries soft, pastel colors into the sky…the rainbow of their breath…symbol of promise.

I reflect back to the trip to Crystal River and talking into my voice recorder about following my dreams, the intense rainbow over my shoulder and Follow That Dream Blvd, meeting Rich and Deb from Australia and him encouraging me to be with humpbacks…and to come to Tonga to visit his whale research center….and the overwhelming push to get on a waiting list for a humpback trip to the Dominican Republic and within a month having a spot on a trip…this trip.

Mom and baby are still there….at the end of the rainbow. With certainty I know that I am guided, supported and loved beyond anything I can imagine….and I am grateful.”

In this evening’s meditation the recent messages of supportive friends echoed in my mind. I envisioned myself dancing the big dance with humpback whales and realized they called me home to my Self. They have been calling me for many years and at the beginning of this year, I listened. And my life was changed.

Another friend and I were chatting a couple weeks ago and he clarified a struggle I’ve been having. He said, “Simone, you’ve been trying to figure out the next step in your path using your mind, your intellect. You are more fully committing to the work of your heart so the intellect cannot make sense of it or give you answers. This is a time when to answer the question, what’s next, you must use your heart…allow it to speak and guide you.”

As I reflect on this year and prepare for the next trip around the sun, it is clear I am doing the work of my heart. There isn’t another direction I need to go. The change needed is to simply respect and value the work I do and put all of myself into the vision that has led me thus far. It’s time to step into my bigness.

Let us hold our dreams and the dreams of others as sacred. Let us step together into our bigness and dance with wild abandon into being fully alive.

A Tuesday

By Simone Lipscomb | November 10, 2015

There’s a children’s book called, Tuesday. It’s my favorite. There are only two sentences in the book. First one is: “Tuesday evening, around eight.” The pages of illustrations that follow are of frogs that are magically transported on flying lily pads. The second sentence is at the end, ” Next Tuesday, around 7:58pm.” The next-to-last illustration is the shadow of a pig high on a barn wall.

Some times there are no words that adequately describe an event or a place of beauty so today, on a Tuesday, I wish to simply share some of my favorite images. The words are for you to form but I hope there are more emotions than words.

Sometimes there are no words, but for a photographer who is also a writer that will be when pigs fly.