One morning in Maine, when I was a kid, a few seals poking their heads above the water looked like a trick of the light.
In Morocco, seeing a camel up close, the first thought I had was melancholy.
The Giant Pacific octopus, which can weigh more than 100 pounds, with an arm-span of 20 feet, can fit itself through an opening one-inch wide.
Sharks can smell a drop of blood in a hundred liters of water, though human blood reportedly doesn’t interest them much. Contrary to urban legend, this applies to period blood, too.
In South Africa, I once shared a beach with a thousand penguins. Boulders Beach, white sand, about an hour’s drive south of Cape Town, home to a colony of two thousand African penguins, each bird about two feet tall, toddling around like little businesspeople in black suits, blasé about any sunbathing humans, with demure pink marks above their eyes for a touch of eyeshadow.
Two weeks ago, I saw a white crane lift off from a creek in Ojai, California, like a puff of smoke after some type of explosion.
Here’s Victor Hugo, writing about an octopus in Toilers of the Sea:
Underneath each of [its] feelers range two rows of pustules, decreasing in size ... They are cartilaginous substances, cylindrical, horny and livid ... A glutinous mass, endowed with a malignant will, what can be more horrible?
Also in South Africa, when I studied there, I spent several weeks exploring the country with other students by train and car. We went to Johannesberg and Durban. We made stop-offs to see animals at places like Addo National Elephant Park. One night, in eastern South Africa, not far from Lesotho, we stayed in a tiny countryside hostel. The local pub was about a ten-minute walk. Late at night, venturing to bed, we heard thunder in the distance, which was strange because there weren’t any signs of rain. Everything was dark, there were no street lights. The closer we got, the louder came the noise, and then we saw it: in a field between the road and the hostel, a herd of gazelles charging around in circles. I was thrilled and scared – how were we going to get home without getting trampled? – but also mesmerized. Somehow this was just a normal thing.
Backpacking in New Mexico, we stumbled onto a black bear on the trail. We crouched down and waited. Two cubs rolled through the scrub a moment later. We waited another hours until they were gone.
Backpacking in Alaska, a bear sniffed around a friend’s tent in the middle of the night and shredded the fly. Super frightening.
I once rode an ostrich. If I fell off, the guy said who owned the ostrich, the important thing was to slide off its back and land on my feet, otherwise the ostrich might try to stomp me, and that would be bad.
I remember reading Amiri Srinivason a couple years ago, writing about octopus books with none of Victor Hugo’s fear, in the article that persuaded me never to eat octopus again:
Octopuses can recognize individual humans, and will respond differently to different people, greeting some with a caress of the arms, spraying others with their siphons. This is striking behavior in an animal whose natural life cycle is deeply antisocial. Octopuses live solitary lives in single dens and die soon after their young hatch. Many male octopuses, to avoid being eaten during mating, will keep their bodies as far removed from the female as possible, extending a single arm with a sperm packet towards her siphon, a maneuver known as “the reach.”
O, the reach!
Two weeks ago, here in California, I saw three snakes on an afternoon hike. One was a large king snake slithering up a hill, gorgeously black with orange rings, rippling like a medley as it persisted into the brush. How it seemed to glide up the dusty incline, like something sliding over ice, was breathtaking.
In tomorrow’s Sunday supplement for supporters:
Three new quiet albums that are great for working, or for weightlifting
A smartphone/tablet hack for reading more books
A new recipe for a light summer lasagne with crispy edges, and an audio engineer's favorite Pakistani singing for making dinner
What the what
Meditations in an Emergency is a weekly dispatch from writer Rosecrans Baldwin about something beautiful. Paying subscribers receive a Sunday supplement with 3+ things to love, along with a monthly longer piece sent from the road, for some inbox wanderlust. ⛰️
Rosecrans is the bestselling author of Everything Now. His latest novel is The Last Kid Left. Books mentioned in Meditations in an Emergency are stored in a Bookshop list.