It was the "eleventh hour", in the longest and most arduous of all "twelve hour days". It was the last minute. It was two hours before I was to board an airplane to the mainland, at the end of my initial 6 month trial run in Kona. It was the end of my thoughts as I knew them: Longing for the dream to awaken. It was about to become the beginning of the greatest awakening in the recorded history of my soul. It was the two-hour window in which my ultimate dream, passion, and purpose culminated over chocolate mousse cake and decaf with cream. It was my dinner with Dan McSweeny, and life's pre-dream-come-true-days now shift into the-dream-is-real-hazy-daze.
It is all too unbelievable. Too perfectly strung together. Too blatantly telling of a supposedly "mysterious" Divine Order. Too much evidence for the existence of God, and of Mom's angelic reign over our lives since her ascension. It is the most obvious orchestration of the Universe's plans for me. Finally. Finally...It appears that my ship has come in.
Beginning on July 5, one week after I return to Kona from Colorado, I will move into the renovated coffee shack on Dan's Hualalai property. Although I haven't seen the place yet, it sounds incredible. Hardwood floors, kitchen, bedrooms, sleeping loft, living room, outdoor cedar wood bath and shower, cable t.v. and internet. Chickens running around outside, birds singing in the morning, view of the ocean. No other noise, really. Nestled upon two sprawling acres of tropical farmland. I will pay nothing for rent, but rather exchange my time volunteering with Dan's organization, The WILD WHALE RESEARCH FOUNDATION. When Dan's fellow cetacean biologists are in town for research projects, they will stay in the coffee shack, thus surrounding me with their wisdom, experience, and knowledge of the subject deepest in my heart. People whose books I have read, whose work I admire. And when they go out on the research boat, I will go with them, and be an apprentice to their practice. I will learn to outfit whales with radio tags, take their photos for identification, and take research notes.
For pay, I will work as the naturalist on Dan's whale watching boat. During the off-season (spring/summer), I will go out three mornings per week, adventuring with guests to find pilot whales, false killer whales, melon-headed whales, beaked whales, spinner and bottlenose dolphins...even sperm whales, who happen to have the largest, heaviest brains of any living being in the history of the planet. During humpback season, two cruises a day will be packed, and the work will overflow!
I will also learn how things work in the office. And maybe...seeing as how the heights of the sky - and the deepest fathoms of the sea - appear to be the limit within the stipulations of this situation...I will be able to get all of my SCUBA certifications up through Divemaster; and will be trained in underwater photography and videography. Maybe someday I will produce my own documentary about whales, with my own words as script; my own eyes the lens; my own experience the window through which watchers can look into the eyes of whales, and see the vast, incredible beauty that has fueled my every action since I dreamt my first tale of swimming with the gentlest of giants ten years ago.
I will be immersed in the WHALE WORLD, and learn all aspects of the "business". The politics, the issues, the science, the people involved. Most importantly, the animals themselves...whose world will be brilliantly new for me each and every day, alive and changing; transforming me with it.
Yes...It will be a WHOLE NEW WORLD in one way...though in another, the world completely familiar to the entirety of WHO I AM, and who I am destined to become.
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