Living
I am near and on water, in zones that will certainly disappear with sea level rise, while you are watching the drought in Alberta parch the soil. This is what we mean by anticipatory mourning, experiencing all the beauty of the world as is, knowing things will change, first slowly, then suddenly. This form of grief is a form of love that is not limited to a singular, defined event, but rather connected to what feels like a cascade of ongoing and potential future devastations.
I want to bring you it all so you can hold the water, put it in your collection of memories before it is too late. I want to bring you the water so you can taste its salt and feel its cool.
I want to give you the sea, as a surface and a mirror to the sky:
I want you to invite you to step barefoot in low tides, feel the sand soft and then hard with each step:
When you look close in the tidal zones, there are darting fish. I bring you their sudden and surprising movements, which brings them from invisibility into visibility:
And I bring you the movement of the wind on the surface of the water, which makes ripples that aren't yet waves:
I give you seaweed, separated from its roots, strewn across a silver beach that is hiding hundreds of tiny crustaceans from the eyes of birds.
And I give you the pure joy of encountering other intelligent, curious mammals that live in these waters. Grey Whales have been migrating to this lagoon to feed with their young before making the trip to the Siberian straights and the local community of fishers has been protecting them, limiting the number and size of boats that can go onto the lagoon at one time. The whales have rewarded those who work for their safety with behaviors that are not common elsewhere. They come right up to the boat and look people right in the eye. Recognizing the whales' intelligence, the Maori king has declared rights for whales in New Zealand (Groves 2024). (If you want to learn how to be a whale, listen to this.)
And so imagine the grieving one feels after the wild privilege of looking a grey whale directly in the eye and then watching their population decimated, and the scientists who try to study what is causing die-offs defunded.
I have been reading Karin Ingersoll's Waves of Knowing and find it deeply affecting. She writes:
I give you "mana" -- that is "a space and time of cultural relationship in which the body is completely affected by the sea" (Ingersol 150). I give you the wisdom that “No matter what the conditions, everything is connected. That means the heavens, the clouds, the wind, and the waves, they’re all connected, they’re all making sense" (Thompson 2008 in Ingersol 2016, 150).I have termed this epistemology “seascape epistemology.” It is an approach to knowing presumed on a knowledge of the sea, which tells one how to move through it, how to approach life and knowing through the movements of the world. It is an approach to knowing through a visual, spiritual intellectual, and embodied literacy of the ‘āina (land) and kai (sea): birds, the colors of the clouds, the flows of the currents, fish and seaweed, the timing of ocean swells, depths, tides, and celestial bodies all circulating and flowing with rhythms and pulsations, which is used both theoretically and applicably by Kānaka Maoli today for mobility, flexibility, and dignity within a Western-dominant reality. Seascape epistemology embraces an oceanic literacy that can articulate the potential for travel and discovery, for a re-creation and de-creation. (Ingersol 2016, 5-6)
I wish I could give you, and the world, and the whales, and the seaweed, and the sea more time.
I wish I could give more time.
- Monique
Sources
Ingersoll, Karin E. 2016. Waves of Knowing: A Seascape Epistemology. Durham ; London: Duke University Press.
“Gray Whale Die-off Feared as Starving Whales Migrate North - Oregonlive.Com.” n.d. Accessed May 9, 2025. https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/2025/04/gray-whale-die-off-feared-as-starving-whales-migrate-north.html.
“Grey Whale Washes Ashore near Tofino, B.C. Cause of Death Unknown - The Globe and Mail.” n.d. Accessed May 9, 2025. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-grey-whale-washes-ashore-near-tofino-bc-cause-of-death-unknown/.
Groves, Danny. 2024. “Māori King Declares Rights for Whales in New Zealand.” WDC Whale and Dolphin Conservation. April 9, 2024. https://uk.whales.org/2024/04/09/maori-king-declares-rights-for-whales-in-new-zealand/.
Rust, Suzanne. 2025. “Scientists Unsure Why Gray Whales Are Dying off Pacific Coast Again -.” Los Angeles Times, April 8, 2025. https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2025-04-08/gray-whales-are-dying-off-the-pacific-coast-again-and-scientists-arent-sure-why.
“Spike in Gray Whale Deaths Triggers Investigations (U.S. National Park Service).” n.d. Accessed May 9, 2025. https://www.nps.gov/articles/spike-in-gray-whale-deaths-triggers-investigations.htm.
“Starvation Has Decimated Gray Whales off the Pacific Coast. Can the Giants Ever Recover?” 2024. Los Angeles Times. March 27, 2024. https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-03-27/starvation-has-decimated-pacific-coast-gray-whales.
