Continental Drift
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Whales are mammals and were once land creatures that returned to the sea evolving ears adapted to the water. Underwater sound to human ears is garbled, but whales hear clearly and use their ears to navigate the sea, find food, and communicate with each other. human ears are external while whale ears are internal, with no external opening!
In the long-ago forgotten, the shores of two continents were once united, their edges puzzled together into one piece, seamless and seemingly inseparable. Their trees leaned toward each other at the unseen border and they branched to touch the sky, where the wind chimed in tree tops and, together with the dancing leaves, they sang a duet even the moon loved to hear. Moon loved the song so much that it shined brightly every night.
The heavenly hosts were jealous of such perfect bliss and tore them apart placing an ocean between them where the wind could no longer find leaves to sing to them. A sadness fell upon the world and even the moon cried until it lost it shine and retreated into the night sky. The ocean, hearing the separate shores lament for each other, pitied them, becoming a heartbeat between them, and carrying messages everyday in tides and waves so that they would know each other's fate. But the land and the sea speak different languages and the shores could only sense an urgency in the sea until one day...
The ocean, deep in reflection, was pondering how to help the shores find each other again, while fearing such a feat would also end its own life, when it heard whales singing. Whale lungs are mighty and whale songs have the power to carry in the water across vast distances to each other. It took a while to notice that a pair of whales were singing a duet and it was the same as the song the wind and the leaves once sang to the shore. The words were whale words, not wind words, whale words and not the words of dancing leaves, but the melody and the message were indeed the same. How could this be?
Whales are the storytellers of the sea and true storytellers can hear the stories in all things, in the wind and the sea, in rocks and trees, in birds and beavers, geese and goats, clouds and cars and mountain peaks and even the ocean floors. The song these whales sang came from wind on waves and from the deep sea bottom where the lost hearts of separate shores still beat as one.
And when they sang the forgotten love song, it traveled through the water into the ears of other whales, who joined in and soon the song filled the seas from shore to shore. The lovers felt the melody first, then heard the first faint hint, like a distant whisper, of the song that serenaded them when they were one with each other. Even the moon came out, showing first a tiny sliver of itself, listening to the faint sound, and peeking out to see if the wind danced with the trees. There was something in the whale song that the continents never noticed before, and it was how the song vibrated in the ground, how it actually traveled through earth as well as water.
No one knows whether one continent or the other felt it first, or whether it was at the same moment. But they soon came to feel the deep connection, the place under the water where their two bodies met, and the ocean truly was the heartbeat they shared together. The moon now dances to this heartbeat, stepping into the light and back out again, giving us the cycles of months, and the trees and plants dance together and apart, coming and going with the seasons as a reminder that all things live in the cycles of approach and retreat, apart and together. These are the cycles that allow old lovers to be shy together again, to find the ground that binds them even after being split apart or drifting away from each other, and to feel, once again, the heartbeat they shall always share with each other when the long ago forgotten is remembered.
Photo, Story, and Recital © Nick LeForce
All Rights Reserved
