Surprised by Joy
I heard this week about the elimination of the “leap second” by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM). Since 1972, when the group introduced the leap second to keep Coordinated Universal Time in sync with the earth’s slowing rotation, computers, financial institutions, communications networks and other systems have had to reset their clocks by a single second 37 times. But in the past decade the earth’s rotation is speeding up, not slowing down, posing the threat of needing to take away, not add, a second. The concern is that systems are not prepared for a negative second reset. On October 16, after decades of debate, the BIPM voted to eliminate the leap second in favor of a leap hour. An hour time adjustment is a unit already tested in our systems by time zones and daylight savings time, and it will likely take centuries to accumulate an hour so as to force the recalibration.
While not actually true according to such strict standards as the BIPM, some months seem to me to fly by more quickly than others. May is a fast month, as is December. But increasingly October takes the prize. It feels like being atop a tall, steep slide at the close of day on September 30, and before you know it you are at the end of a busy month on Halloween.
October in our community includes a number of festivals and galas to support agencies that help us take care of each other. October promotes various health concerns, including breast cancer awareness and heart, mental, bone, and dental health. October is host to important religious holidays from Sukkot for our Jewish friends as October begins, to Hinduism’s Navaratri midmonth, to the pagan Samhain on October 31, the same day Christians celebrate All Hallow’s Eve. When you add high school and college football, school events, social gatherings, and ongoing responsibilities, it is certainly a busy month!
Which is why my husband’s recent kindness to sweep me away to St. George Island for a two-day getaway was such a gift. I find St. George Island both beautiful and renewing. Crossing the bridge onto the island, I can feel the weight of my soul lift. While our stay was less than 48 hours because, well, October is busy, it was a remarkable time. The accommodations, though dated and modest, were perfect, and being one street away from the beach, it was an easy walk to watch the sun rise and set. It was also close enough to carry our trusty ocean kayak across the street and dip into the ocean at a moment’s notice.
In my experience, St. George is always a wonderful and reliable place to see dolphins, making appearances far from the shore most mornings and late in the afternoon. But on this visit the post-Hurricane Isasis waters were filled with dolphins, displaying what we have learned since is typical post storm activity for them, fishing from daybreak to dusk. They leapt about with breath-taking finesse, seemingly unbothered by our presence on our kayak among them. It was delightful.
According to a 2019 article in the Orlando Sentinel, “hurricanes have great impact on land, but they can be equally as destructive and disruptive to aquatic environments per the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).” We know the impact of storm surge on land. Under the sea, storm surge energy is so powerful that currents have been detected up to 300 feet below the surface, uprooting coral colonies, causing fish populations to relocate, and altering the oxygen and salinity levels of an area with an upheaval of cold water from below.
A study of the effects of intense storm events on dolphin occurrence and foraging from the National Institute of Health website in 2020, reports dolphins spent a significantly higher percentage of their encounters feeding after the storm than they did before or during. The scientist surmised that this change in foraging may have resulted from altered distribution and behavior of their prey species in response to sea surface temperatures caused by storms.
Whatever the reason, it was serendipitous to be among the miraculous display of dolphins and at such close range. We had crossed the road to the beach to watch the sunrise, coffee in hand. It was gorgeous on a cloudless, calm day. Taking a picture of the magical moment when the sun literally popped up above the horizon and I inadvertently leapt for joy, I noticed there were dolphins already out to greet the sun.
It did not take long to get the kayak to the shore and paddle out for our first encounter of the day. I reluctantly consented to going in for a breakfast break, before returning to the ocean and the magical dance of the dolphin a total of four different times throughout the day. We loaned our kayak to others on the beach so that they could enjoy the magic and convinced a family from Indiana who had their own kayaks to paddle further out than they were at first comfortable, to get closer to the foraging dolphins. I squealed with delight from the shore for the mother and daughter who had a duo of dolphins leap in front of their kayak only yards away.
On our last trip of the day, as we were headed back to shore, we heard a loud slap on the water, and both apparently started counting the tail slaps of the dolphin that was sending a signal to his peers. Nine tail slaps total before the sound ceased.
As we crossed the bridge from the island back to life as we routinely know it, I thought about those nine remarkable tail slaps, along with eight seeming near-misses as various dolphins glided effortlessly toward and then under our kayak. I recalled the seven mother/baby pairs that we spotted throughout the day and the six-dolphin wall headed straight for us before diving deep. I thought about the five different dolphin circles that we were at the center of as they rounded up the fish below in tightening concentric circles, and the four snorts of a dolphin that apparently had a cold and seemed to sneeze when he surfaced to breathe. I thought about the moment we saw three different pods of dolphins – one closer to shore, one further from shore, and one in our midst – all at once. I will always remember the two dolphins who jumped right in front of our kayak as if they were performing at Sea World, wondering if they were the same duo that dazzled our new friends from Indiana. I am ever grateful for the one sea turtle, my favorite of all animals, that my husband observed diving down and out of sight before I could see it. I wondered if perhaps she was one of the last maternal turtles of the season, awaiting to come to shore to lay her eggs by moonlight.
As we enter the season of Thanksgiving, my heart is full of gratitude for the beauty of the earth and our corner of it. We are blessed to have oceans, rivers, springs, woodlands, critters, flora, fauna, rocks and more. It is my prayer that we all will be intentional about spending precious time, which sometimes feels so fleeting, in places that nourish our souls.
The Rev. Candace McKibben is an ordained minister and pastor of Tallahassee Fellowship. Email McKibben at cturtle55@comcast.net.
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