Call Me Ishmael...

Life's been heavy lately.  A lot of things going on, many changes, lots of settling in.  The weather has been that of early Spring, high 30's to low 50's, unheard of in January.  So when it all gets to be too much, we've been walking.

Sunday we started the searching for a whale.

Literally.

One washed up on the beach months ago. Now more or less completely decomposed, it lays on the beach, a massive reminder of how small we really are on the food chain.  The trick would be finding it. Ironic that something so huge could be hard to find.

And no matter the outcome, the day was perfect for it.

Vaguely remembering where it had been sighted last, we ventured about 15 minutes away down the path through the woods to this beach first.  We headed right, because New England girls don't go north or south, we just take lefts at McDonald's and rights at Dunkin Donuts.  The old girl is doing great off leash, and being a quiet Sunday morning, she had full run of the coastline.

She searched the beach, but the only interesting things to sniff were piles of swampy seaweed washed up from the prior night's storm.  The trail was cold here, clearly, so I resorted to social media before venturing to the next location.

The next beach is part of a state park.  There are clearly cut nature trails leading toward it, still easily navigated despite being overgrown from winter neglect.  This beach was also devoid of people and dogs alike which made for more running and some great sniffing.

And then we saw something way off in the distance...

A giant circle of oddly placed seaweed.  Closer inspection found a giant pile of whale guts, nearly being washed out by the incoming tide, which the old girl deemed too smelly to investigate, but sadly no bones.  The search would continue to another day when I was told of another sighting, even closer to the house.  It seems the bones had been moved weeks earlier, taken to be cleaned so they could be displayed at some point in yet another location.

And as luck would have it, another gorgeous day of 40 degree temps coincided with a ridiculously early day at work, so the girl and I headed back out.  This time to an old overgrown cranberry bog.  With the industry failing, many of them have been turned into walking paths, allowing them to grow back into their natural state.  Had we stayed on the paths we'd likely have missed it. But my girl is too adventurous for that...

From across the bog we could see an oddly shaped large pile of something.  Whatever it was, it was big.  That storage building is a massive a 2 story outbuilding for farm equiptemnet.  The pile to the right clearly would need further investogation.

 

And we found them!  We found our white whale (bones).  Randomly stacked off to the side of the barn, they still had some of the carcass hanging from them, which when the wind caught it, made them exessively smelly.  Too smelly for the princess who was more interested in running through the tall grass again.  The head was massive, easily 15 feet long.  The other bones are likely backbone or rib, I'm really not sure.  

I hope to get back to writing soon, with fair warning that it could be heavy and vague, it needs to flow from my fingertips if I'm ever going to work through it.  But for now, I'll take my breaks when I can get them, even if it means I have to hunt down my own whale.

Until then,

Ishmael