I met the girls and we made our way 4 hours north to the pickup point where we loaded ourselves onto the boat. It was an ex-racing yacht, and the Glory Wall spoke of many adventures past, around my birthplace in the Pacific and neighboring seas.We sailed leisurely to the island and anchored, ferrying items to the campsite, however it was to be my privilege that day to spend the night on the ocean, being rocked to sleep by those expansive, endless arms.
After a barbeque on the beach, much talking and other tomfoolery, we navigated the moonless night, jumped in the dinghy and headed back, discovering to our amazement that a phosphorescent algae bloom was lighting up the bottom of the vessel as we drove on through the waves, like a neon dreamscape, leaving bubbles of light in our wake.
Tired, but far too awed to sleep, we boarded and cast lines. Still struck in amazement of the luminosity that lay dormant beneath us, until our sinkers dropped in like endlessly-stretched glow-sticks at an undersea rave, brimming with the mating dances of mermaids, inducing their mermen to love.
And then the schools came.
The beauty of several hundred brightly-lit fish in the darkness of the night-time ocean, swarming around and beneath us, in swirls of light usually only seen in the cosmos - and then only at great distance and over a 14 billion year time-lapse of activity, condensed into mere seconds - could not be understated.
Our cameras couldn't capture what our eyes naturally achieved, but in the process of trying, the flash from one snap lit up the sea, stunning then scattering the bright shoals in all directions, like a piscine supernova. The fireworks came early this year, and could only eclipse those to follow.
As I absorbed, I counted myself as one of the Fortunates: to have experienced and to have shared in. We stayed up until we were filled - in fact brimming - then reluctantly set down to sleep, yet as satisfied and inspired as one can ever be.
An absolute highlight of my lifetime, and such a beautiful note to sing, as the end of the year closed in.
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Placebo - Infra-red
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