Taki

In a place that hadn’t been seen by many people, she hadn’t been seen by many people either. The Iñuit people knew from the beginning that every snowflake that falls from the sky is unique. No two snowflakes have ever been alike, are ever alike, or ever will be alike. The crystals that form and make the snowflake are so sensitive to the conditions around them that a breeze blowing over the ice, a cloud passing between the sun and the earth, or the vibrations from the heartbeat of a whale surfacing on the waters of the Chukchi Sea can change them into something new.

Taki’s mother and father knew that she was unique.

On the first day of her life, she was swaddled in a warm blanket in her crib.

Her Grandmother had sewed the three Arctic whales into that red blanket with yellow thread the color of the morning sunrise over the waters.

"With the beluga whale, I hope curiosity and song into the life of the baby," she had whispered, "For the beluga look quizzical in the way they hold their heads and can sing songs that cause us to call them the canaries of the sea.

With the narwhal whale, I hope compassion and empathy into the life of the baby, for the narwhal will place the tip of it's own hornlike tooth into the broken tooth of another narwhal to ease it’s suffering and pain.

And with the bowhead whale, I hope mystery and endurance into the life of the baby, for the bowhead's name is Balaena mysticetus and that best describes it's wonderful ways. Because of the cold, cold Arctic water it lives longer than any other creature in the world.

As she looked up into the weathered faces of her parents with her deep brown eyes, she whistled a beautiful song her Father had heard only once before in his life.

He had been a boy roaming across the ice near the edge of the sea, hunting bowhead whales with his father. There, standing silently beside the water, a bowhead rose to breathe in the air.

The bowhead whale, the Baleena mysticetus, was a source of life and pride for the Iñuit. They subsisted on it’s body and bones, eating it’s meat to keep them warm in deep winter, using it’s skin and baleen to make their boats and fishing nets, and using it’s skeleton to frame their small huts. They whispered it’s name with reverence and awe.

As he raised the harpoon to strike the great whale, he whispered an old Iñuit prayer his grandmother had taught him.

I think over again

My small adventures

My fears,

Those small ones

That seemed so big

For all the vital things

I had to get and reach

And yet there is only one

Great thing,

The only thing

To live to see

The great day

That dawns

And the light that fills

The world

He plunged the harpoon into the whale.

He would remember that moment for the rest of his life.

Normally, when a bowhead whale is struck with the sharpened iron barbs of a harpoon, it dives into the deepest parts of the icy waters and flees across the sea, trying with all it’s might to get away and stay alive.

This whale, though, was not a normal whale. 

As he looked into the eyes of the great whale, as he watched the light go out of it’s wise eyes, he realized it was willingly giving up it’s life for the lives of his people.

The last sound it made was the beautiful whistling song that Taki made on that day of her birth.

As her mother and father looked down at her, they wondered if her song would reach the tiny, powerful ears and the giant, kind hearts of all of the whales in all of the waters of the world, and they wondered if the ancient wisdom of sacrificial love was working in the world again.