You're running down the street, shoes clapping against the empty pavement. Down the road to your left, a row of stylish Langley shops lay open, waiting for the explorer, the artist, the wanderer. Stretched out before you, beyond the bank, churns the open sound, barred only by the coast of Camano. Your pace slows to a trot. The sun breaks through the April clouds, across the water and into the streets as you round the corner. Cheers, laughter, and the bustle of an excited crowd fill the air and explain the vacancy of the street before: it's the annual Welcome the Whales Festival!
When you finally manage to press your way through the electrified audience, you can't help but smile at the scene before you. A colorful parade of people of all ages and costumes celebrate their way down the road towards the beach. Streamers ripple in the breeze and banners adorn the march. A few poles suspend a homemade whale that swims his way through the adoring crowd. You drift with the group down to the waiting water. As the waves lick the sand, you participate in the ceremony that officially welcomes the whales to the seas that adorn our shores, and hope that you may be lucky enough to see one.
While this annual event is a whimsical welcome to our visitors, their exhausting journey has been anything but. The grey whales that seem to be a classic feature of Whidbey Island actually begin their story far from here. Off the Mexican coast near the Baja Peninsula, they breed in the warm and shallow water. They spend their winters here, and, beginning in about February, they migrate north. Over the course of the next few months, these whales make a 20,000 km (12,400 mile) journey to the Bering Sea where they feed until they head back south and begin their voyage again. As we celebrate each year in the downtown Langley streets, we don't just welcome aquatic tourists, we applaud conquerors of the deep.
"Sea meeting sea, one ocean ever flows
WIth one tumultuous chorus-song for aye--
The same although it chants the eternal snows
That shroud the grim death of each Polar day,
"Or lifts a joyous voice, a tumult strong
Where o'er blue waves the wind of summer flees:
Ominous, terrible, glorious is our song,
The blended chants and dirges of our seas."
-William Sharp
Join us in not only commemorating the miracle of the grey whales' journey, but in honoring the traveler in each of us. Here's to the long road ahead and the long road we've left behind. Here's to someday finding what we've been looking for, or perhaps discovering that the road is what we were searching for all along.
For more information on the Welcome the Whales Festival in Langley, Washington, visit: http://visitlangley.com/lp/whale-parade/
Cited sources:
http://visitlangley.com/lp/whale-parade/
http://www.whaleroute.com/migrate/
