At the Monterey Aquarium, there’s a freestanding round tank in the walkthrough that is filled with brilliantly silver sardines. They flow along together in a circle, with a few mavericks hemming and hawing along the edges of the school, poking curiously in other directions, lagging behind, dashing to catch up, small children at play, it always seems to me. But if something disturbs the group–if a visitor taps on the window or peers in too close–there is a splash of randomness as some turn to the left, some to the right, and then somehow they all give a leap forward close together, a flip of the tails in perfect focus and a flash of silver as they swim in their new direction. After a calm-again moment, the ones who want to look around a bit more find their ways to the edges again.
Last night I was suddenly understanding why my husband had remarked recently that my camera was inadequate: there was no way it could capture that night picture I so much wished for. A few yards from where we were pulling up to a stop for that red light, there were seven or eight magnificent elk standing in the light snow, the peak of the mountain behind framing them. I have never seen elk in the wild before. It was breathtaking.
The light turned; as our car started up again, I mentally apologized to the fellow in that other car in that bike lane next to us, who had had, it had looked to me there in the dark, a large camera in his hands. At our sound and motion, the elks did exactly what those sardines do: they turned, some to the right, some to the left, and in so turning around they all somehow came closer together, and then they leaped forward as one. Not in a great hurry, and they slowed down as we pulled away, just, this is What They Do. Part of being an elk.
I came away with a sense of awe at the interconnectedness of the patterns, earth and sea. And of what the natural world offers to teach us of the strength of pulling together for each other.