“There!” I pointed in the distance where spouts of mist shot up from the ocean. Squinting, I focused my untrained eyes on the top of the water where the telltale blows blended with the snow of the mountains beyond. Two more puffs— tall and wispy. I looked to our guides to confirm.
Humpbacks.
I watched their exhales punctuate the scene— nothing but the sound of the engine in my ears and the occasional slap of the boat against the waves. We were silent as we took in the fjords.
I tucked my thumb away with the rest of my fingers, balling them around the handwarmer in my mittened glove (yes, I had mittens on over my gloves).
I wore two thermal layers, three pairs of socks, the absorbent underlayers they’d given us for the drysuit, and the drysuit itself (think bulky, thick, wetsuit onesie that keeps you dry in the water), plus the hood, a buff, and a balaclava. Goggles sat atop my head, but I left my eyes and bridge of my nose exposed. I didn’t want anything hazing my vision.
The pinks and purples of the November sky above the arctic circle— where day was always sunrise melting into sunset— were enough to make you want to see clearly, but they were simply the colors of the canvas. The scene painted on that canvas? A beauty words can’t fathom.
“I feel like we’re in a Visit Norway catalog!” Laura yelled. Even shouted, her words dazzled me. Wrapped in her elegant British accent, it felt as if they somehow had more right to be spoken than my own.
“Right? Like. How is this real life?” I called back.
We were less than a foot from each other on the small RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat), and the engine wasn’t at full throttle, but the drysuit hoods covering our ears muffled the world.
I liked it that way.
I liked the space for my thoughts.
Something broke the surface in the foreground and I gasped, a sound which amplified strangely in my own ears but reached no one else’s.
Tall, black fins slicing through the water. Regal and dignified. Gracefully curved fins appearing moments before the adorable miniatures of their young— the mothers moving effortlessly, the young joyously.
“Yippeeeeee!” the babies seemed to be thinking each time they burst forth.
Fun Fact: Orca are actually dolphins. But dolphins are technically part of the “toothed whale” family. Sooo… an orca is a whale.
An especially small one, with yellow still tinting its belly and eye patch, leapt from the water, eliciting a predictable reaction.
“Ooh!” The eight of us passengers exclaimed in high-pitched unison. No language barriers with that response.
As an English speaker, I’m spoiled when it comes to international travel; people often seem to speak at least some English. But communication between everyone on this excursion was sometimes dependent on Manon, another solo traveler, translating. I envied her ability to switch between English, French, and German. She’s the only one of us who always knew what was going on.
With one hand, our guide Andy held onto the glass protecting the wheelhouse where Lars captained. Andy lazily leaned out over the side of the small boat. “Ooh! It’s a baby!” he yelled, playfully mocking us.
Everyone laughed.
This was how it went. We spent each day alternately in awe and in laughter.
We fell silent again as we observed the orca surface over and over, listening to the chuffs of their breath, watching the way the little ones stuck right to their mothers’ sides, snapping picture after picture of dorsal fins, and delighting at the glimpse of a tail. My eyes periodically teared up, as they’d done instantly at our very first sighting, for even though there were thousands of orca in the fjords and we’d seen them each day, their appearances never touched quotidian.
The sightings got closer. Our excitement rose.
And then the words we were waiting for.
From Andy: “Get ready!”
There were cheers as we started stuffing on our flippers, spitting in our goggles (it’s a thing), and replacing our dry gloves with the ones we’d wear in the water. It took about five minutes for everyone to get set. Then we awkwardly maneuvered ourselves into a seated position on the side Lars indicated, dangling our legs over the inflatable edge of the RIB while it sped ahead of the pod.
We waited again. Waited until Lars and our two guides determined the moment was right.
I was wedged between Laura and Jon, the other guide.
Jon leaned toward me. In his thick French accent he said, “I am thinking about the carrot cake.”
I chuckled. Each afternoon or early evening, after lunch and Hot Tub Time, a group of us walked into the little fishing village we docked at and made our way to the one cafe Skjervoy offered. And with cakes like that? It was the only cafe Skjervoy needed.
Laura felt me laugh and called out, “Is Jon thinking about the cake again?”
“Always,” he answered.
Manon yelled from Laura’s other side, “I liked the coffee cake best, I think.”
“I kinda wanna get ice cream today,” I said.
“Of course. Ice cream makes sense when it’s this fucking cold,” Jon tried to deadpan, but he smiled.
“I’m not cold,” I said. I was cold.
“And I don’t need to pee,” Laura chimed in. She had to pee.
“Me neither.” Manon also had to pee. “And your goggles are not fogged up?”
“Nope, I can see clearly out of both sides.”
I heard Jon laugh. I couldn’t see him, though. Only the left side of my goggles were clear.
But we didn’t care that we were cold or had to pee or couldn’t get our goggles to sit on our face correctly (okay, this last one was just a me problem).
Because the orcas resurfaced.
Our conversation stopped.
We popped our snorkel mouthpieces back in.
I fixed my goggles again.
I took a slow breath through the tube, calming myself. Readying myself.
And then—
“Go!” Lars shouted.
Lars. The Silent Stud.
That’s what we’d nicknamed him, anyway. Eyes always surveying the scene, giving the command that sent us all plunging into the water. A reserved man in his fifties, Lars is good looking in what I consider a classically Norwegian way. Rugged and strong. Hardened to the elements. (I am basing my understanding of “classically Norwegian” on this one week I spent there.) He was quiet most of the time, but he had strong thoughts about the way a game of Uno Flip should be conducted, and I saw a playful sense of humor in the sparkle of his eyes.
It was easy to sense his pride in his ship and his company. I loved the care with which he readied the RIB, captained the search, approached the pods… Even the dinners were cooked with care— fresh fish dishes with pollock Lars had caught himself and vegan options for those who preferred them.
Aqua Lofoten Coast Adventures is the definition of a small business. Throughout the year, Lars plans different uses for his weather-worn but treasured old fishing vessel (classified as historic by Norway’s National Heritage Board), but when the herring come in November— and with them the spekkhogger— he hires a few people to act as guides and deckhands and takes groups of eight whale-enthusiasts out on orca expeditions.
And I? I am a whale-enthusiast.
I’ve always loved orca, but I hail from Central New York, where there are far more lakes and mountains than oceans (to be clear: there are exactly no oceans in Central New York). I’d seen orca in captivity when I was younger, but that was equal parts amazing and heartbreaking. When my parents asked me what I wanted for my eighth birthday, I told them I wanted to adopt Keiko, the star of Free Willy. It wasn’t some silly request for an outlandish pet— I wanted to be a part of the campaign that was working to return him to the wild. On my birthday, I opened a large packet filled with information and pictures and stickers, and I officially became— in my mind, at least— Keiko’s family, sending him love and support from my hometown.
As an adult, seeing orca in the wild was always a goal. I went on whale watches and dolphin tours and saw humpbacks, porpoises, and bottlenose dolphins, but never orca.
Then, a few years ago, I experienced what I later learned was a major episode of the degenerative disease I was eventually diagnosed with. A disease that might limit my mobility in the future. It made that itch inside me stronger— the kind of itch that needs to be scratched off on a map or a list.
I wanted to travel. I wanted to explore. I wanted to experience. I wanted to see some friggin’ orca.
Unfortunately, 2020 had different plans for me. For all of us.
And so it was that when I could open my door back up to the world, I ran out it. Clear across the country. I took my dad and road-tripped from New York to the Salish Sea off the coast of Washington for the chance to kayak with the resident pods there. We spent three days with a group paddling through channels from island to island. Unfortunately, the fishing industry had dammed up the rivers. There were no salmon for the orca to eat, so, emaciated, they’d gone down the coast in search of sustenance.
When life hands you zero orcas on a trip like that, you donate to organizations trying to rectify the situation, sign petitions, call congresspeople… Then you find a way to connect with them elsewhere. Somewhere you can really get in their world.
I began researching orca expeditions, believing this to mean some type of close encounter whale watching. I didn’t know you could actually swim with them, but even after I discovered it was a thing, I never fully believed it would ever— could ever— happen for me. In what life do you actually get to fly to Neverland?
But once I learned there was a real place you could do this, the itch got stronger. I researched again and again, reading up on different organizations, but the results were always beyond my bank account’s capacity, or the prices were doable, but the duration was too short. I didn’t want to trek 4,000 miles to spend three days searching for whales with no guarantee.
Of course, there’s never a guarantee with wildlife. I knew that. But I also knew from my kayaking trip that I needed better odds than three days could offer.
When you Google “swim with orcas” or even “swim with orcas, Norway,” Aqua Lofoten Coast Adventures is not the first hit you get. In fact, the website didn’t come up at all for me in my searches. Instead, what I stumbled upon was a blog post. The blog post led to a site, which led to a contact email, which led to a slew of exchanged messages.
Which led to me snagging the last remaining spot for the year.
Luckily it was for the week of Thanksgiving break. Hello— teacher here. Travel needs to line up properly with the school calendar.
The expedition was not inexpensive but was fairly priced for what it offered: Seven nights on a boat, all meals included, with eight days to get out on the RIB and into the water. That was a chance I was willing to take.
It’s always a little nerve-wracking to join a group of strangers for, well… anything. But there’s an added layer of uncertainty when you’re hopping aboard a boat with those strangers and rooming with one of them on bunk beds in a tiny ship cabin for eight days. But our pod quickly developed a routine. It went something like this:
First, breakfast together in the galley (usually yogurt and toast with brunost— Norwegian brown cheese). Not a whole lot of conversation at breakfast, at least not until after coffee.
Then, suit-up time, which was a rather involved process of layering and struggling into the drysuit hoods. Once all we could see of each other were eyes, we said goodbye to the warmth and the bathrooms and climbed down into the RIB, which was our homebase for the next four or five hours— the only bit of daylight Norway offers in November.
Upon our return to the ship, it was the frantic scramble to get out of the suits, both to get warm and go pee (this included at least seven terrifying seconds during which you were sure the hood was not going to come off and you were going to suffocate to death).
Lunch in the galley. We’d pass leftovers from the night before and warm our insides with soup.
Next, hot tub time. Lars got the fire going under the hot tub at the front of the boat as soon as we were back. We’d rehash the day’s adventures while we waited for it to heat up. By the time we climbed in, the sun was well below the horizon, and we could look to the heavens to see if the aurora borealis were coming out to play. At 3:00 pm.
Then the dreaded moment: “Ice dunk?” Laura would ask. Somehow she’d always convince at least one of us (usually me).
Cookie Time while we used the wifi to share pics and post to friends back home.
Cookie Time was followed by Cake Time.
After we walked back from the village, we’d get in a few games of Pass the Pigs and Uno Flip in the lounge below deck (Be warned: you meet a whole different Manon at the card table).
Then it was dinner time, which was always a production. Jon set the table, and Andy and Lars carried down the food. We knew who’d cooked the meal by which music had been playing in the kitchen. 90s Hip Hop? Andy. Classic rock? Lars. We took seats together around the beautiful, long, wooden table Lars had made himself and filled each other’s glasses with water while we listened to the chef give the rundown of what was served. We’d dive in. We’d eat until we were overstuffed. And then we’d eat some more. I’d expected lackluster meals— necessary sustenance for the days’ adventures. But Andy and Lars are excellent cooks.
Some downtime to digest, during which we’d pester Jon to check the KP level of the Northern Lights.
A nighttime hike to see them dance.
I loved our routine. I loved the people. I loved the cake. I loved that my bunkmate Alex, a gentle soul from Brazil, also loved to read at night— we’d settle into our beds with books, and eventually I’d hear him click off the little light in his bunk below. A kind, sing-songy whisper would float up to me. “Goodnight, Tiffany.”
But, of course, the real magic happened in the ocean.
On Lars’ Go order, Jon and Andy slid off the RIB, the eight of us flopping into the water a half second behind them with all the grace of, well, humans in clunky drysuits and large flippers launching off a moving RIB. It was always pretty much the most clumsy, haphazard dismount possible. Seriously. Zero grace involved. We were supposed to be carefully lowering ourselves, so as not to scare the orca, but we basically just fell forward. Belly flopped into the rough waters and on top of each other.
We got better the more we did this, but never great.
It was complete chaos at first— a mad frenzy to get away from the boat and into our own space.
But then it was quiet.
I was alone.
The world stilled.
Time ceased.
And the orca were there.
The first time I looked down and saw them swimming below me, I literally whispered, “Oh” into my snorkel tube. Five of them together. They’d appeared suddenly as if by magic, or rather, I’d appeared suddenly— dropped into their ethereal world. It was such a strange sensation— one moment my head was above the surface where it was choppy and messy and loud. Then I simply tilted my head down and the topside world was gone. I was floating in space.
I could see the slight motion of their tales in the deep blue, and the way their saddle patches swept down their backs like stardust. I had the funny thought that the markings looked like upside down white tails tattooed to their backs. Or maybe earbuds? Or bleeding hearts? I watched them continue on their way with little concern for us, a large male majestically shitting a jet stream.
Amazing.
The whale encounters that followed over the next few days were even better, including a surprise chance to swim with a pod of fifty or so humpbacks. They were everywhere— gentle giants calling to each other in bellows and clicks one could have mistaken for the distant dinosaur noises in a Jurassic Park film.
I thought I’d be nervous in the darkness of the ocean surrounded by beings that could easily kill me. But I found I had no fear of the orca. When they passed beneath me, I swam as hard as I could after them, as though I stood the slightest chance of keeping up.
But this day? This day I had THE moment— the one you hope for.
The eight-year-old inside me beamed.
I’d been the only of the week’s guests who’d never snorkeled before. I’d also never worn a drysuit. Or flippers. So the first few times in the water, I must have given Lars a good laugh as he watched from the RIB. My flippers weren’t pulled on properly, and I floundered around, overusing my arms, swimming in the wrong direction, and forgetting to keep my mouth closed around the tube.
A complete noob.
But four days in, I had more confidence. My flippers were tight, my mouthpiece was in, and I knew to keep an eye on Andy and Jon and to swim in the same direction. They instinctively knew exactly where to be.
After I plopped into the water, I swam away from the RIB, looked down, and saw that I was right in the middle of the pod.
I let out a little laugh. I’m in an orcastra!
An orca swam by a little ways to my left. There were three up ahead. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw white in the depths to my right. Then two appeared directly under me, maybe five yards below, gliding swiftly forward. I swam in the same direction, but they quickly disappeared into the darkness. I picked my head up to look above the water and orient myself— see where the dorsal fins were appearing and where the others from my group were.
And I collided with Andy. We untangled and looked back into the ocean. I saw his underwater camera held out in front of him, capturing a group of four orca at about eleven o’clock surfacing for air, and I thought: Oh good. There will be footage of this. I didn’t have an underwater camera (looking back, I was woefully unprepared), so I was happy someone was getting images of what I was seeing.
There was a young one among the group— maybe three or four years old. Though, to be honest, I didn’t really register its youth as it broke away from the others and swam in our direction. Somewhere in my mind I noticed it was on the smaller side, but it was still bigger than me, and in the context of the expansive ocean, it was hard to understand its size. The thought that I could actually latch onto was: It’s coming to us!
This is what I’d been longing for. A chance to meet an orca.
I learned then that humans can actually feel time— that the nanoseconds adding up to a second can each be noticed. Be lived. It’s not that time slows, exactly, it’s that you become acutely aware, acutely present. Each molecule of your being tuned in, allowing you to feel each fraction of the moment.
The young orca kept coming.
It swam right to us.
It angled its swim in such a way that it cut right in front of us. Afterall, their eyes are on the sides of their bodies, and it wanted a good look.
It got one. From less than a foot away.
At first, I was distracted by the eyepatch. The brightness is a stark contrast to the skin around it and drew my gaze as it always did. But as it came closer, I found its eye hidden in the black skin, nestled in a circular pocket about an inch above where the black met the white underbelly.
I wanted to reach out and touch the whale, but I didn’t want to scare it. And I was wearing the thick drysuit gloves anyway. So we just looked each other in the eye.
It’s amazing what can be intuited the moment eyes lock— what can be conveyed through a look.
Understanding seemed to pass between us. Curiosity.
“Who are you?” the orca’s eye asked.
My thoughts exactly.
Its skin seemed so smooth. Sleek. Except for at the front of its head, under its rostrum where the white chin met its mouth. The white was slightly discolored there; it looked like it needed a napkin— like it had eaten the ocean’s equivalent to Cheetos.
I knew instantly we should be friends.
Its right pectoral fin was so small it reminded me a little of a T-Rex arm. It looked as if the only thing the orca could do with it was awkwardly wave. Of course, the orca used that fin much more effectively than I used my flippers. I was the awkward one who’d been blundering about inefficiently. I was certainly no threat, and I think it sensed this, but I remained still just the same.
I realized later when I watched Andy’s footage that it had been too quick a moment to reach out anyway— that had I chosen to try, by the time my heavy arm was outstretched, it would have been too late. But inside the moment, it felt like a choice to just observe each other.
To just smile at each other.
I’m sure I’m romanticizing it, but it felt special. And the eyes are the windows to the soul, right? I think we all learned during the heart of the pandemic that without the context of the rest of the face, it can feel as though the curtains are drawn. Yet somehow, covered from head to toe in our glamorous Arctic Explorer™ suits and snorkeling fixtures, Laura and I could exchange knowing looks, Manon and I could sense camaraderie. Wrapped in our buffs and balaclavas, Alex and I could still smile at each other, a smirk could still pass between Jon and me. And these were people I’d never met before. Maybe the pandemic had trained us all well in reading eyes. Or maybe it’s impossible not to understand each other when you’re all tuned into the same wonder.
Because I know that orca and I said hello to each other.
And when Andy and I simultaneously popped up after this encounter, I looked through his thick, tempered-glass goggles into his eyes and I knew his joy.
“Holy fuck!” Andy exclaimed as we pulled out our mouthpieces. “I thought it was going to bump us!”
“That was everything!” I answered. And I felt the smile so deep in my core that my breath came out in laughter.
I’m a bucket-lister, I think. Is that bad? I love the thrill of stepping outside my comfort zone, the fulfillment of knowing something new, the satisfaction of checking something off a list… I have a hard time returning to a place I’ve been. What’s the quote? Life is short and the world is wide? There are so many places to see, desserts to taste, spices to smell, breezes to feel, cities to hear. Fifty states, sixty-three national parks, seven continents, seven oceans, almost two hundred countries, and so many, many adventures to have. And there’s only so much time. It’s more time than some get… more chances than others have… Still. The clock ticks.
But that afternoon, as I sat in the galley looking at pictures and videos from the day and munching on cookies from a tin Lars had put out, I thought about how this had been the one true bucket list item all long. And I didn’t want to scratch it off the list.
When I’d been contemplating the cost and stressing over missing a few days of school, people kept reassuring me with words like, “It’s a once in a lifetime thing. You gotta go.”
They were right about the second part, but I’m not so sure about the first. Maybe a twice in a lifetime thing? Maybe three times? After all, who wouldn’t want to walk back through the wardrobe and re-enter Narnia or sprinkle some pixie dust and fly again to Neverland? I need to build a bridge back to Terabithia.
In my fervor to see and do as much as possible before my disease catches up to me, I sometimes forget that life isn’t about crossing items off some list so you can look back at it and say, “I did that.” It’s about experiencing moments so you can look back at your memories and say, “I lived that.”
I lived in the water with those whales and felt a tranquility I’ve never felt before— a contentment with the moment in time.
I want more of that experience.
“That’s it. No more,” Lars chided that afternoon in the galley, swooping in with a sly grin and whisking away the tin of speculoos cookies, his tone and demeanor that of a father reminding his children not to spoil dinner.
I pouted, my hand still outstretched. Laura and Manon laughed, each popping a last cookie in their mouths.
“You’re right, Lars,” I said. “I need room for cake.”
Jon appeared in the doorway. “Est-ce l’heure du gâteau?” he asked Manon.
I knew that word.
Jon looked at Laura and me. “Did someone say cake?”