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I am left stunned, my entire body shaking in the kayak – the visual field trembling around me as I try to calm the tremor in my muscles. I feel as though the great god of the deep has just intervened between me and the sea lions, surfacing as a kind of warning as if to say, Not too close, mortal, to these kinfolk of mine! Unable to quell the shaking, I lower my head to offer a mumbled prayer of thanks to these waters – but jerk my head back up as a loud SPLASH! sounds in my ears. My eyes widen in alarm. For the sea lions, apparently agitated by this visitation from the humpback god, are starting to dive off the rocks en masse. They’re sliding down from the upper ledges and waddling over to the lowermost brink, where they’re now plunging into the water in bunches, clusters of them tumbling into the brine and swiftly surfacing, and then surging – with their torsos half out of the water and with a holy clamor of guttural bellowing – straight toward me!
There is simply no way that I can escape their rapid advance: the fluid sea, after all, is their primary element, and not the customary milieu of this oafish stranger struggling to maneuver in his plastic, prosthetic body. I do not know by what wisdom, or folly, my animal organism chooses what to do next. Of course there are not many options, and no time to think: my awareness can only look on in bewilderment as my arms fly up over my head and I begin, in the kayak, to dance. More precisely, my upraised, extended arms begin to sway conjointly from one side to the other, with my wrists and my splayed fingers arcing to the right, then to the left, then to the right, to the left, right, left, right …
As soon as I begin these contortions, the clamoring sea lions rear back in the water and fall silent, as their heads begin swiveling from one side to the other, tracking my hands with their eyes. Astonishing! Seventy or eighty earnest mammalian faces twisting this way and then that way, this way and that, over and again. And all in perfect unison, like a half – submerged chorus line. After a couple of minutes I drop my hands down to take up the paddle – but straightaway the sea lions start bellowing and surging forward. No! My hands fly back up and I resume the dance, my taut arms swaying left, then right, then left again as the whiskered crowd falls silent, their necks craning from side to side yet again, over and over.
My arms keep up their ritual, the kayak rocking this way and that. As I consider the situation, my happy relief at finding a way to save my skin gradually yields to a deepening dismay. For I can find no way out.
Whenever I even start to lower my hands the dark-eyed multitude lunges forward – so halting my dance is not an option. I examine my predicament from every possible angle, but cannot discern any exit strategy. And so I keep my arms high, inclining from one side to the other, smiling rather feebly at all these attentive, whiskered faces while the muscles in my upper arms grow more and more exhausted. After a long while the ache in my shoulders has become intolerable; I can no longer think. My right arm is giving out.
Slowly I bring that arm down while the left keeps up the rhythm. The sea lions, weaving from side to side, are now focused on the single, swaying metronome of my left arm. My right shoulder rests. An idea dawns. My gaze stayed fixed on the sea lions off in front of me as with my right fingers I begin groping around for the shaft of the paddle. On finding it I heft it slightly, balancing it as best I can in an underhand grip. Then, awkwardly, with my left arm rocking side to side above my head, I cross my right arm in front of my chest and begin rowing as best I can on the left. My right hand scrapes the unwieldy paddle against the left side of the kayak to get some traction. I do all this blindly, for my eyes are locked on the weaving faces of the sea lions, my left arm still swinging above my head. Slowly, arduously, my clumsy rowing manages to maneuver the kayak around the right flank of the floating mob. When most of the sea lions are off to the side, I bring down my left hand as well, clasping the shaft now with both sets of fingers, and begin paddling, hard, into the open water, without looking back. After seven or eight minutes I sneak a quick glance behind me: sure enough, a few sea lions are still trailing me, but at a respectful distance, and with little more than their noses above the surface…
Something in that charged encounter changed me. I notice it, sometimes, when I’m playing with my two children, or when the howling of coyotes wakes me in the middle of the night. My confrontation with the sea mammals brought home to me something crucial about language – something mightily different from what I’d learned at school and at college. I’d been taught that meaningful speech is that trait that most clearly distinguishes us humans from all the other animals. We have meaningful speech, while other creatures do not.