never the same as the day before

Yesterday, I jogged 15 minutes with the dog, then 15 more minutes with the dog and my husband.  The sand was too soft; longer runs would have been too tiring.

The sand was firmer and better today, but I ran less than yesterday.  I slept in today until nine and then prepared my exterior for a run more convincingly than my interior.  The temptation to just walk the dog was great, but once I felt the firmness of the sand, I started jogging.

Further ahead, I saw a small pod of dolphins.  I watched them for 5-6 minutes; the pod split into two, one group going out, and four dolphins coming closer to shore.  After 5-6 minutes, I caught up to them, and I am a poor judge of distance but I think they were just a bus length away (probably that of an articulated bus).   They were closer to me than any wild dolphins had ever been before.  I could see their blowholes and even their eyes, and after a minute, one of them paused, holding his/her head above water and we exchanged a glance.

I'd read somewhere an account of someone locking eyes with a whale underwater, and since it was described as a pretty monumental experience, I've wondered what would make it so.  I look into the eyes of animals pretty regularly, often meeting with simple blank wariness, if not fear, sometimes with what looks like curiosity, and regularly with a predictable palette of concern and hope and pleading (from my dog).  Occasionally rather human-like, but nothing monumental so far.

When I exchanged a glance with the dolphin, it wasn't monumental--I think I had led myself to expect to see the wisdom of the ages or something absurd like that--but it was shocking in that it was not.  It wasn't friendly.  It was merely acknowledgement.   Perhaps of relatively equivalent intelligence, but that's probably too much of a stretch of such a brief glance.   It reminded me of being at work, not in one place in particular but in various places with halls that were a mix of people who worked there and people who did not, resulting in two veins of reception: A, ranging from bland pleasantness sometimes veering into helpfulness when someone looked lost, and B---well, actually, there was B1, ranging from joviality to awkwardness (if not contrived obliviousness), for familiar coworkers, and B2, acknowledgment, for unknown coworkers.  A quick scan for ID badges, uniforms, purposed stride, whatever, and then an exchanged glance of acknowledgment.  So, you're in this building too.  Ok.  Maybe a smile, maybe not until next time, not a whole lot of time to react because there are other things to get to.

The thing is, I was standing on the beach exchanging this glance not with someone in a suit in an office building, or in scrubs in a hospital, but with a naked glistening finned creature that then plunged back into the ocean.  So, you're on this coast too.  Ok.

A few of the other dolphins then quickly lifted their heads above water to look at me (before then, they were exposing just their blowholes), and then they started slapping the water with their tails, and a few of them started to roll, exposing pale underbelly.  I watched them for several minutes, and I tried to get the dog to notice them, and he did, but there was no mutual recognition there.  I have no idea what he thought of them, or vice versus.  After a while, they stopped the tail slapping and moved away from the coast, stripping the fanfare from their feeding.  I jogged alongside for a bit, back towards the house, but they were moving more slowly than I, and eventually I went into the house and fed the dog, and then we went up to the bedroom to see my husband.  I told him about the dolphins and we talked a bit, then the dog suddenly sat up and looked outside.  The bedroom has a patio window/door and a nice view.

There was a lady walking two dogs on the beach--I looked past her and saw the dolphins again.

My husband pulled on his running clothes and we ran out to watch them.  They weren't as close as to the shore before, but the pod had acquired a fifth member.   As we approached them, one of them rose out of the water vertically, half a body length out of the water.  I'd never seen a dolphin in the wild do this before.  We jogged closer to them and they were slapping the water and rolling again, and then one of them jumped clear out of the water.   We got as close as possible and stopped running to watch them.  I told my husband that maybe they could hear our voices and that might interest them; I felt obliged to reciprocate exhibitionism.  How boring it must be to watch people who are silently standing motionless.  Another one jumped out of the water, I yelled reflexively (something terribly erudite such as "whoa!") and a split second later, another one was in full air, a sleek question mark, muscles momentarily contracted into illusionary stockiness.  I cheered and clapped this time, but that was perhaps gauche but I'd lost most of my wits by this point.  With a few more slaps and rolls and partial breaches, they gradually settled back into feeding.  We resumed our jog and when we passed the dolphins on the way back, they were further out still, and further increased in number (7 or so) and building a circular bubble net/fish trap.  Another new sight for my bare eyes.  I have seen countless dolphins during umpteen trips to the coast, but always at more of a distance, and always partially submersed, plenty of obscuring water between us.

Total jogged today: 10 + 15 minutes.