Summer Interlude

On a hot, hot day last weekend, we spent an afternoon floating in Totten Inlet. We were out for hours, baking in the sun. The top six inches of water, in the slack low tide of a 90 degree midday, was a comfortable 70 degrees. Below that it was cold enough to leave hot skin tingling.

As we floated we watched harbor seals. A colony of them resides on large floating logs delineating the Steamboat Island Marina, where my husband’s parents moor their boat. As we left the marina we carefully arced around them, though it’s impossible to maintain any kind of meaningful distance in the tight curve of the exit created by Steamboat Island. They were active that day, their round heads popping up intermittently in the glint of sun on the water. We moved slowly and stopped frequently.  

At the end of our lazy float through the inlet, when we turned the boat against the incoming tide and headed to the marina at its mouth, we were slowed by a commotion near the eastern shore. Gulls and cormorants circled frantically. The water boiled. I began trying to count the shining dark domes of harbor seal heads, but I quickly lost track in the commotion.  

We made a wide pass and then turned the boat off to watch through binoculars. Smelt jumped across the surface of the water. The harbor seals swam in formation, presumably eating their fill. The birds careened and cried out their greed. The whole scene was wildly delightful. 

And then it began moving our way. The school of bait fish at the heart of this feeding frenzy was swimming for their lives against the incoming tide, and the rest of the food chain was following. Suddenly, seals were breaching twenty feet off our starboard, their accompanying avian entourage directly overhead. 

Thousands of tiny, silver fish, dozens of birds, easily fifty harbor seals. And two humans, laughing at their dumb luck under a hot, July sun. 

+

And now I’m in Opal Creek. Finally. And it feels so good.