The beach at Santa Monica is large, flat, and long. Palm trees, playgrounds, and restaurants are interspersed in the landscape, but the Santa Monica Pier rises above the water as a monolith among the sand. It draws people in with its lights, sound, and size. With it being the epicentre of excitement on the beach, it would be counter-intuitive to expect much of anything to happen in its looming shadow.
But there I was, swimming near the base of its gigantic, stilt-like legs, where something beautiful happened.
I am naturally drawn to water, I am often at my happiest when I am swimming, diving, and floating in it. But the ocean has a unique power to it, there is nothing like running across a sandy beach to throw yourself recklessly into the surf.
So I was doing that, running until I was knee-deep in the water and then jumping into the waves. Again and again, I would rise up and then dive back in. It was after one of these dives, while rubbing the water out of my eyes, that I noticed something very different in the water before me. Not more than ten feet away, a set of huge eyes, set into a hairy, whiskered face, were looking back at me. As soon as I saw it, it was gone again, back beneath the surface. I was filled with excitement, curiousity, and confusion. What did I just see? Did I really see it?
Before I had the time to process this rush of thoughts and emotions, a familiar face rose once again out of the water, this time half the distance away. The dark, curious eyes of a harbor seal stared back at me. Its head and neck rising out of the water to sit near even with mine as I crouched in the shallows.
We both paused there for a bit, it, watching me cautiously, me, struggling between happiness and uncertainty. It is a wild animal, which I love, but I am also aware of the dangers. The seal could easily swim back to the open ocean, but I decided to proceed with caution anyway. I moved slowly towards the pier on my right, giving the seal as many escape options as possible and making sure I didn’t corner it.
So it was with a bit of surprise when the seal glided slowly to my left, turning our movements into a subtle circling of one another. But, it had no menace to it, this was not an opponent sizing you up, but a curious interaction, almost an invitation to play.
I lightly pushed off sand underneath me with my feet and glided further to my right, keeping my head above water so I could keep track of our movements. My movement was matched by the curious animal in front of me, still not much more than a human length from me. Taking a bit more of a risk, I dove quietly under the water quickly to continue circling. When I came up, it then plunged once again into the water and disappeared from sight. Thinking that was the end of this beautiful moment, a faint smile of gratitude that I got to experience this came across my face.
I took in the surrounding beach, pier, and sky to remember this moment, only to see the seal once again emerge beside me. We started a playful rhythm, I would dive into the water and appear a few feet away, and it would follow, sometimes changing direction or distance, but always staying close by.
This was a personal experience, but also something I wanted to share, so I made my way back to shore quickly to grab my friend who had been resting on the beach. He chuckled at me, a knowing laugh from someone who knows what this kind of thing means to me and encouraged me to go back in myself.
It was with great excitement that I went back into the water, and found the seal once again swim back to my side. My trepidation around the animal quickly turned to elation as this interaction continued, and time melted away, a dance, unlike anything I had experienced before. A constant sense of movement, of cool water over my limbs and a childlike feeling of freedom as we swam together. My joy and liberation that I had always experienced in the water were represented in front of me by this playful seal.
I am not a spiritual or religious person, but it was at this moment that I felt a profound connection to something much bigger than me. I didn’t feel a higher power, or a benevolent hand guiding me, it was instead a sense of wonder and beauty washing over me. An interconnectedness with nature that has been an underlying theme of my life came to the forefront. A sense of unfiltered happiness as my anxieties and fears washed away in the ocean, a full awareness of the present moment as something worth remembering.
My surroundings and senses had faded into the background as my focus was entirely on this moment. But I was jilted back into the present by voices coming from the shore. I looked back to see a crowd of people on the beach, around fifty people lining the shoreline, all looking out towards me. My awareness returned as I came to the realization that I was the only one in the water within eyesight. The lifeguard was yelling at me to get out of the water. My first thought was there is a shark in the shallows and me and this seal are its only options. But I realized the focus wasn’t elsewhere, it was on me, and this animal I was beside. They were yelling at me to get out of the water and get away from the seal, as, at a glance, it looked like a very stupid tourist trying to get himself bitten. And to be honest, that was a possibility the whole time. The seal was not my friend, it is a wild animal, and I could have scared it or cornered it and paid the price for that.
But, that is not how I will remember it. I will remember it as the time I found my joy in the shadow of the Santa Monica Pier.
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