I’ve seen dolphins nearly every day this week.
Monday I went to the beach with my book, reveling in the
sunshine. I dressed in a bathing suit, layered up on sunscreen, grabbed my beach towel, and headed out the door. As I walked, the clouds arrived and loomed low and threatening, with
little spits of rain.
Rats.
It wasn’t actually raining
yet, so with determination I plodded on and arrived at the surf and settled in. A chapter or so later I looked up, and there, in the surf in
front of me on Clark’s beach, were dolphins.
Indo-Pacific bottlenose, their
long dark bodies clearly visible in the belly of the clear aquamarine of the
wave as it rose to break.
I gasped and was on my feet before a moment had passed,
leaving all my things behind, racing down the beach, chasing the pod as they
swam, chasing fish.
I chased the dolphins clear across Clarks Beach, down the Main Beach, and
to the Wreck. As soon as they passed the point between the Main Beach and the
Wreck I was scaling the wall of boulders, uncovered at low tide, and walked out
on the rocks, watching fins and flukes break the water’s surface and dolphins
swimming through the waves. I was in heaven.
I was also freezing. The clouds and wind had rolled in in
force, and slightly soggy from an accidental half-swim around the rocks, I was
chilled. The dolphins eventually started back down toward Clark’s beach, and I
climbed back down to follow them, grateful I didn’t have to choose between
leaving my post watching the pod and rescuing my (library) book from the tide.
As
I walked back down the beach, the sun moved through a patch of clouds, and as
the wind kicked spray from the tops of the breaking waves high into the air, an
enormous rainbow appeared, arcing from behind the town clear over Byron Bay and
cascading straight down into the sea, the rainbow's end illuminating the water in front of The Pass in its many colored splendor. Honestly, all that
“rainbow’s end” stuff – I didn’t know rainbows could actually have and end, a place where they seemed
to physically touch the land or sea.
As I stood and watched the place where moments before
dolphins had been, and where just now a rainbow splashed down into the bay, the
clouds shifted again overhead, and a second arc appeared in the sky, half a
double rainbow rising over the first, complete cascade of many colors. Oh, come on now, I thought. Now you’re just being ridiculous.
(*Note: My god, this town knows what to do with a latte.
This is my zillionth ‘go somewhere and order a drink so I can use the free
wi-fi,’ and everywhere you go, lattes arrive with thick cream tops over
perfectly steamed soy and roasted decaf, fancy art of some kind adorning the
surface. Granted, they’re all four dollar lattes because that’s how Byron
rolls, but I’m still impressed.)
So that was Monday. On Wednesday, sitting on the rocks by
the Wreck after work lunching on a shift slice of gourmet eggplant and
gorgonzola pizza, the dolphins appeared again, fishing in concert with the
diving birds.
Thursday I hiked to the lighthouse, fulfilling an old plan;
hike to the top, buy a gelato, proceeds from which support the national park,
have a gelato feeling good about iced cream and the funding and watch the sea.
I was not two licks in to vanilla and forest berry when I saw two dolphins traveling down the shoreline
around the lighthouse’s cape, their long dark dorsal lines breaking the water and reflecting beautiful light. Delighted, I watched them swim. A local
older man introduced himself, chatting to me about the mountain goats who used
to live on the side of the bluff and the one wily old one they simply can’t
catch, and the flora and fauna and history of the region. While he talked, we
spotted two sea turtles, and a second group of dolphins, this time about thirty
of them feeding near Tallows Beach. I ran off to get a closer look, spotting another two turtles, the pair of
dolphins I’d seen earlier, and the whole pod. I sat on the rail and nearly died
of joy.
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