The Baby Seal

Hi to all you in bloggerland, this is anne the manager.

We are now in Washington touring about the state. We've been in a small town called Sequim for the last several days playing the Lavender Festival. It was fun-- we made a little money and met some nice people. However, the rain and small-townness is starting to wear on everyone as we have been here for 5 days now. We feel ready to leave but still have three more days to go.

I did have an amazing experience with a baby seal a couple days back. We had the pleasure of visiting the Dungeness Wildlife Refuge here in Sequim. It boasts the largest spit in the world. I don't know if you know what a spit is (I didn't) but it's a long skinny bar of sand that spits out into the ocean. This one is 7 miles long, covered in driftwood, and it is in one of the most beautiful places that I have ever been in my life. It is where the Puget sound meets the Pacific Ocean.

We hiked down there as the sun was setting. Ravi and I were a bit ahead of Steve and Wes, who were exploring the driftwood and shoreline. We saw something moving and I asked, what is that? Ravi said incredulously, it's a baby seal. We walked to it and as I saw it, it looked up at us and started pushing itself toward me on it's little flippers. It was crying and crying with anguish, moving to me as if I was it's mother. We locked eyes, and strangely my motherly instinct kicked in and I went to it as if in fact I was it's mother. My arms were outstretched and I bent down to comfort it and Ravi had the presence of mind to say, don't touch it! So I stopped and looked at is as it continued to me, getting within an inch or two of my shoe. It kept crying and nuzzling the ground wanting our help. It was the most profound connection with an animal I have ever had.

I called Steve and Wes over then ran all the way back up to a maintenance house that was on the trail going through the trees down to the ocean. Lucky for me someone was home -- it was late now, after 9:00 pm. I knocked on the door and a woman answered who was likely a park ranger. I told her about the baby seal and apparently they already knew about it. She told me this was it's second day on the beach and they were hoping that last night the mother would come back for it after all the people left. She told me the wildlife refuge has a policy of not intervening, and if the seal was there in the morning, it would not make it. It's mother was probably eaten by a shark and there was nothing they could do for it.

I thanked her and went back down to the seal. I told the guys what I had learned and told them to say their goodbyes. I went up to the seal once again but by now it had figured out that we weren't going to help it and it was angry. The connection I had with it was lost, and it turned it's head away from us. It was dying.

We left, heartbroken. As we walked away, with the sun setting against the waters, I saw my first bald eagle. It was massive and beautiful, soaring overhead into the tall trees that fell into the ocean. It was perfect, a gesture of hope and life that the world gave us in that sad moment.

It was one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life.