I am a “one more minute” kind of person, particularly when it comes to the ocean. As a child I always wanted one more minute in the water (pool or ocean) or one more minute playing outside or one more minute reading an exciting book before I had to go to bed. I’ve always wanted to hold onto the good stuff as long as possible.
When I’m scuba diving I’m particularly bad at this, but my experiences have shown me that those ‘one more minute’ moments are sometimes the best. I can’t tell you how many times the dive was about to end and then the sharks or dolphins showed up or we found the craziest critter. I recall being in Lembeh once and the main thing I really, really wanted to see was a bumble bee shrimp. The poor dive guides had been looking for them for me the whole week. On my last dive of the trip I had passed up my camera and one of my fins when someone pulled on my other fin. The dive guide had found my shrimp (three of them, actually) and with my fin and camera returned to me, I descended back to a mere ten feet where they were living under a small coral head. I got my shots.
On my last night in the Galapagos I went to a place I had been seeing sea lions in the water in previous days. The golden hour is a real thing underwater too, so I hiked in around 4, arriving around 4:30. The three previous days I had seen the sea lions playing in the water; fins in the air, playing with each other, and their little noses and whiskers coming up to breath before I even got in the water. But this day I sat at the edge and looked around and saw nothing. I couldn’t even make out any sleeping on the rocks. It would figure, my last night would be a bust.
I got in anyway and swam in a big circle covering the outer edge of the area and almost returning to where I started without having seen anything. The light had gotten to that perfect point where sun beams could be seen flashing underwater and there was a warm yellow tinge to the shallowest part of the water. It would have been perfect if a sea lion would show up.
I started filming the sun beams (b-roll, right?) and as if it were waiting for me to push the record button a juvenile sea lion appeared right in front of my dome port. It circled me and even paused a few seconds in the perfect place in the perfect light. But I must have been boring and it didn’t stay for long. Happy I at least saw one, I headed for the exit, content with my experience.
The exit point was cement and rock stairs, slippery with algae and the low tide exposed all the stairs and lava rock below. Getting out with my heavy camera, fins and mask was a challenge and I was planning on sort of scooting up the rock backwards inching my backside up each step. I almost got seated on the first rock when a huge wave came in and swept me back out. Happy I didn’t get smashed into the rocks (no blood or scratches on my delicate camera port) I looked out at the incoming waves (which I should have done the first time) and decided to wait until the set has passed to try again. I swam away from the port-scratching rocks and waited.
The sun had fallen behind the cliffs and all the pretty light beams gone and I heard a snort behind me. Another sea lion had shown up (thank you to the wave that tried to pulverize me that kept me in the water.) As it twisted and turned around me I couldn’t help but think that I was about to get out of the water and I would have missed this. One more minute.
The one more minute turned into probably an hour and the sea lion found a stick floating in the water and played with it, (I always knew they were the puppies of the ocean), then it played with some seaweed, and then two other juveniles showed up and the three spun around me so much I got a little dizzy (and I’m sure the video of that will make people sea sick.) What amazing animals. What an amazing experience. The sun was setting as I was getting out, still having a bit of a hike to get back to my room and I was thinking about how sad I was to leave the Galapagos on the walk home.
I seem to have come to a place in my mind where everything feels very terminal. What if I never return to the Galapagos? How sad. Lately I have been having these feeling with people too, every time I part ways I have this immense sadness that I will never see them again. I’m sure these feelings are partly due to covid, part my father passing away unexpectedly, and part just getting older. But giving them an explanation for occurring still does not make them go away or feel any better.
When I was 20, I remember being in Argentina at the Perito Moreno Glacier and absorbing the incredible sight with others. We were watching ice break off the glacier and making huge splashes in the water, which would echo seconds after the event, like thunder after lightening. An older man said to me, “I will probably never see this again.” My much younger self couldn’t even fathom this. What do you mean you’ll never see this again? It’s amazing! Why wouldn’t you come back here? I hadn’t quite grasped the concept of time yet and how it keeps passing. How it becomes filled with so many things and how many places there are to see on this incredible planet of ours. I haven’t returned there either. Makes me wish I would have spent one more minute.
I understand the man better now and this concept weighs heavy on me. It makes me melancholy to leave an amazing place thinking I may never see it again, and it’s distressing when I part ways with people. I suppose this isn’t such a strange idea, the older we get the more people we encounter and the more people we lose, be it in death or just in life’s path taking us further away from some. This year has solidified this. It makes me want to have one more minute with everyone I meet, everyone I know, and everyone I have met before. Did I make the most of those minutes? I hope I did and I hope in the future I value those minutes more.
My life has been filled with amazing people; some I only crossed paths with for a short time and I think in the past I always said goodbye expecting to see them again. I’m grateful to have seen some of them again; particularly the friends that have become repeat occurrences around the world in this crazy life. I’m not good with letting go or loss, I want all the good times and good people and good places to go on forever. I want them all, all at once. While that is impossible, I hope these deep rooted emotions go away soon; of everything feeling so final and every parting being the last. Maybe after whatever way covid disappears or becomes integrated into our lives, these feelings will pass. That I won’t feel like every parting is the last parting. And for those that are, I hope we had enough minutes.
Sometimes returning to a place can be sad, seeing how it has changed and to be somewhere again but without the same people or in a different context. I find myself contradictory in that I crave new places and exciting experiences, but yet change is so hard. Returning to the Galapagos after 15 years, (I cannot believe it’s possible I’ve been a solo traveling adult for that long…or longer….) proved to be a place just as incredible as my first trip here. I had started to wonder if it was really as good as I remembered, and it is. I hope I am lucky enough to return here again and I hope it remains as good as it is; it has the odds stacked against it. The better something was, the harder the goodbye is. I want just one more minute before I go.