Picture yourself scrambling into your panga, a 22-foot fishing skiff. The small motor cranks, and you’re off, chugging into the waters of the San Ignacio Lagoon in Baja California Sur, Mexico. You have come here because here is the only place in the world where one may experience the phenomenon. And the past 70 years is the only time.

The water is a bit choppy, and the wooden seat in the little boat is not soft or comfortable. But you soon forget about these minor annoyances. You hear a soft huff, and plumes of water rise in every direction. Here, as ancient maritime maps declare, there be whales.

Within feet of your boat, crescents of grey and white emerge, sink, then rise again. A giant lifts a huge head out of the water vertically, one eye examining you and your fellow passengers. Spyhop! Here the water is thirty feet deep, so the creature is likely standing on his flukes to see the puny visitors to the surface of his lagoon.

But the real purpose of your visit is now approaching. Two enormous shapes split the water, moving slowly toward the boat. A mother and calf, you are told. For this is the Gray Whale’s nursery. They migrate from the Bering Sea to mate and birth here in this lagoon. The giants move toward you—straight toward you. Then the mother dives, stops beneath her baby, and lifts the calf toward the surface. The baby’s face rises from the water, within inches of your own. Trembling, you stretch out your hand. Gently, scarcely breathing, you are allowed to place that hand on the head of the baby whale, to feel its excited quivering as the amazing softness and spongy smoothness fills you with awe. The baby expels air from his blowhole, misting you with droplets. Amazingly, the mother rises beside him, allowing you to stroke her great head as well. Then the two dive beneath the boat and disappear.

You have been given an astonishing privilege—you have been approached by a Friendly, a whale wishing to make contact with a human being, trusting you with her baby as well. Doubly astonishing when you remember that you are in a 20-foot boat that a 40-ton whale could turn into splinters with the flick of her fluke. And when you remember her ancestors were hunted to near-extinction by people in boats.

Trust.

And this trust was initiated by the creatures of the deep, not earned by or even sought by man. The first encounter took place in the 1940’s. Senor Mayoral was fishing from his little panga when a gigantic face rose beside his boat. Through his terror, he realized the creatures wasn’t there to harm him, but to examine him curiously. And it was willing to be examined and touched in return. Since then the Friendlies of San Ignacio have become Legend.

I was blessed beyond belief when I was allowed to gaze into the eyes of both a mother and baby whale – and trusted to lay my hands upon those immense heads. I became a part of an almost sacred interaction. That trust must change my life…..forever.

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Winning Essay - Backyard Gardener by Melissa Starbuck

3rd Place - Moe the Toad by Annie Johns of Ohio