Dolphin Watch
Under the gator’s grin
By ANN WEAVER
Article published on Thursday, March 15, 2007
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| Photo by ANN WEAVER |
| A ski vacation in Utah sheds light on what it must be like to swim like dolphins. |
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It would’ve been cold for Florida: 34 degrees F. But in the spectacular Utah mountains, conditions were perfect for spring skiing. We were there and ready.
I pushed off the chairlift and shushed to the edge of the first ski run. At the top of the world, or rather of a mountain 9600 feet above sea level, a majestic mountain mosaic of blue, white and silver glinted back at me across the range where I stood.
How unreachable those distant peaks seemed. They certainly seemed beyond the reach of my sea green Florida dolphin study area. No work this week; just mountains, slopes and skis. Not even dolphins this week.
At least, that’s what I thought.
I burrowed my chin into the warmth of the wool gator that kept the cold off my neck, pushed off and zoomed down the slope. Under the gator, a giant grin lit my face.
The lifts were fast and the runs were long. Some took a luxurious 20 minutes to reach the bottom of the mountain before re-boarding the chairlift to go up again. Twenty minutes is plenty of time to test your muscles. It’s plenty of time to bank and turn and cut, especially around other skiers.
Sometimes I went straight down fast. Mostly, I cut back and forth across glistening runs, slicing left on the inside edge of the right ski, shifting weight and carving to the right.
Like riding a bike, I soon reclaimed the rhythm of skiing. But on a bike, you rarely swing from curb to curb across the street as you do on skis. Skiing is more like dancing. You find the rhythm, go slow and fast, daring yourself or soothing yourself as you and the mountain work it out.
A skier zoomed by on my right. He gave me plenty of personal distance. I didn’t have to change course. A few others would later oblige me to make sudden changes of direction or speed to avoid them. Skiers ahead of me had the right of way. It was up to me to zing around them. We’d sometimes glance or nod while passing, a mute and momentary acknowledgement.
I danced around skiers and ‘bumps’ (moguls) all morning, watching the glistening snow ahead, the snow-dolloped fir trees lining the runs and the cobalt sky above. Nowhere is the sky as ultramarine blue as in Utah.
You have to watch for other skiers though. Like driving a boat, you negotiate around people ahead while monitoring for those to your sides and zooming up from behind.
Whirling around slopes and skiers, I imagined the ballroom scene in "Gone with the Wind" when Rhett Butler ushered Scarlett onto the dance floor and out of mourning. As he swung her around the crowded dance floor, her swirling black skirt slid past brightly colored skirts. Like crowded dancers, skiers negotiate mobile personal space without interfering with other dancers … at speed.
That’s when I realized that skiing is probably as close as a person can get to what it must be like to swim like a dolphin.
You can’t swim as fast as dolphins. But you can ski as fast. On skis, you move by flowing, your movements only occasionally punctuated with abruptness. Dolphins are obligatorily aquatic; they too only move abruptly on occasion. They flow as a lifestyle. On skis, you share their flow.
Since we usually share the mountain with other skiers, and dolphins usually share space with other dolphins, your maneuvers on skis resemble dolphins flowing around each other as they swirl and swim the seas. Low on the sides of the head, dolphin eyes are neatly designed to see dolphins ahead, to the sides and below. Dolphins can even see other dolphins zooming up from behind without turning around.
When dolphins swim straight ahead, that’s when they go the fastest. When they bank and turn and carve, rolling to one side, veering off, stopping on a dime and zooming off again, they cut back and forth across some invisible path, slicing left and carving right like a skier.
Like mom dolphins, some skiers are steady and methodical. Like calves, some skiers are zestily unpredictable. When one rolls sideways to ‘flash its white belly’ while passing another dolphin, it’s a mute and momentary acknowledgement.
Dolphins will never stand at the top of the world and survey the mountains across the valley. But when they pop up at the water surface to survey the surrounding scene, do they too see some distant unreachable mosaic?
Maybe the sea greens of my Florida dolphin study area weren’t as far from the mountains, slopes and skis as I thought…although, I can take my skis off.
Dr. Weaver studies wild dolphins under federal permit GA1088-1815, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Send her an e-mail at acweaver@tampabay.rr.com or visit www.dazzlingdolphins.com.
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Article published on Thursday, March 15, 2007
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