The Leaping Rabbit

Jeremy and I took the Whidbey Island ferry out to Fort Casey on Saturday. In the late afternoon, after we had explored the woods and the fort’s echoey passageways, we found a lookout spot with a sweeping view of the ocean. The edge of the island curved out to the north, where the banks steepened into pale bluffs. The sun was directly ahead of us in the western sky, and we had to shield our eyes from its glare and the brilliant reflection it cast on the water. We sat and watched the waves scrape the pebbles on the shore twenty feet below us.

“It would be amazing to see a whale,” I thought. I started praying silently that we would see one … something I don’t think I’ve ever prayed for before.

A cruise ship sailed by. We saw water birds diving amidst a forest of kelp, but no whales.

Half an hour passed, and we decided to return to the field behind the fort, where we could throw the Frisbee around a bit before heading home. The trail we chose to take us back led us through the woods briefly, then opened on a clearing where we could see the ocean again.

I paused to look one more time. Right in the center of my panoramic view, there was a splash as a whale crashed back into the water, spraying water from its blowhole.

“Honey, did you see that?” I shouted, even though Jeremy was right next to me.

He had not seen it. The whale surfaced a couple more times before he found it. When he did, he was just as excited as I was.

“Get the camera out!” Jeremy said. It turned out neither of us had the camera. It had slipped from my coat pocket while we were sitting, watching the waves. Looking down, I could see where we had been sitting and could just make out the camera case lying on the ground. We ran down the path, keeping our eyes on the ocean.

Back in our original lookout spot, we spent the next twenty minutes watching for whales. Every few minutes, a whale would surface in a different place. The camera turned out to be useless … the whales were too far away and too unpredictable to capture.

When at last we headed back, the sun had sunk closer to the horizon, turning the sky a deeper shade of blue, the grass and trees a richer shade of gold. With Jeremy, I walked across the field toward the fort, savoring the ripeness of September, knowing I had received a rare and beautiful gift and been blessed to share it with someone I loved.