The Culture of Nature

I’m holding my camera on one hand and try to keep it steady, while gripping with my other hand to the side barrier of the boat. We glide through large waves that make the deck feel like some sort of amusement ride. I’m trying to focus while my mind tells me to throw up. This is the moment that we all have been waiting for hours.

This story takes place in Autumn around a small village called Andenes, at the coast of Northern Norway, isolated by vast mountains on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. It used to be one of the main fishing spots in Norway, but my girlfriend and I are not here for fishing. We hope to see a whale first time in our lives, and while the whale spotting season is almost over, we have found out that few observation trips are still scheduled to run here.

After a night in the car we head straight to the whale research center on the harbor, just to get struck down by bad news. The trip is cancelled. The captain has notified that the waves are simply too high and we are getting truly bummed out. We take a fast powwow to make a decision, we cannot let the opportunity past. People at the research center are very nice, and sensing our disappointment and weariness, they offer to open up a hostel next to the center just for us.

Next morning we wake up nervous. The ocean seems vicious, but around mid-day we finally get the good news. We and around twenty other people load up to a boat that looks like straight out of the Fisherman’s Friend package. Our captain also looks like your stereotypical fisherman with a fluffy white beard and wrinkly skin, only thing missing is a wooden pipe.

After getting out of the harbor we realize that the waves are still not exactly a non-issue, and the crew tells us to keep our eyes on the horizon in order to avoid sea-sickness. But as we keep going for hours without a sight of a whale, the constant rocking starts to take its toll and the sides off the boat begin to be covered by people leaning over the edges. That’s when the captain finally shouts “whale!” and all of us who are still able to move head to the front of the boat. I focus my camera as it appears to the surface. The giant creature’s calmness is the complete opposite of us on the boat. It breaths in deep for a short moment until plunging back underwater. My nausea is momentarily gone, soothed by the restful aura of an adult sperm whale. I realize that the camera will not be able to capture what is special about this moment.