by Lynne Cox
The lifeguards offered me a ride ashore and I happily accepted. I was freezing cold, tired, and so hungry. Before I jumped back into the water to swim the last few yards into shore, they radioed their friends on the Long Beach Lifeguard boat patrolling near the Queen Mary.
They had spotted the whales. Mother and son were swimming right on course. Cruising at three or four miles per hour with the waves and sunshine on their backs.
The lifeguards near the Queen Mary escorted the whales to the outer edge of Los Angeles Harbor and they made sure the cargo ships sailing in and out of the harbor knew where the whales were swimming.
Grayson and his mother joined a pod of three other whales that were swimming north, bound for Alaska.
My feet were numb when I climbed onto the beach, but the sand was soft and warm between my toes. As I walked up the beach, bent over and shivering, I wiped the brownish green plankton off my face, then crossed the parking lot and asked the lifeguards who were now on duty in the Seal Beach lifeguard station if I could call home quickly to let my parents know that my workout had taken me a few hours longer than I expected and that I was on my way home.
Later, when I sat down at the breakfast table and ate, I told my mother and father what had happened that morning. I told them I had swum with a baby whale and that friends had helped him find his mother. I didn’t make a big deal about it.
Many years have passed now.
When I work out along the California coast I often look for gray whales swimming by. I always wonder what became of Grayson. Did he swim across rough Arctic seas? Had he basked in the warm lagoons off Baja? Had he grown into an adult?
By now, he would be more than thirty years old, and he would still be growing and gaining strength. If he is lucky he will live to be fifty years old. Had he found a mate? Did he have babies of his own?
In winter, spring, and fall, when I’m swimming in the ocean, and I see whales migrating up or down the California coast, I imagine Grayson is swimming with them. He’s out in front, full of power, strength, and song. He’s using his sonar, guiding the other whales, telling them about the places he’s been, the distant seas and far-off shores. These are waters where I’ve never been, oceans where only gray whales can swim. What would it be like to travel with them?
As the gray whales pass me, I watch them move together across the water and I feel the same awe and wonder as the day I met Grayson.
Sometimes for a moment or two I feel something in the water, a sudden stirring, a high energy force, like the morning Grayson swam with me, and I watch the whales swimming effortlessly across the water, beauty in motion, heading for the distant horizon.