Nature Fast and Nature Slow by Nicholas P. Money

Author:Nicholas P. Money
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Reaktion Books

SEVEN

BOWHEADS

Centuries (109 Seconds)

The day began gloriously as she cruised north through the Bering Strait towards the Chukchi Sea. The sparkling water felt cooler and she could smell swarms of krill with every breath of air. She was a gorgeous animal, thirteen years old and already more than 11 m (36 ft) from blunt snout to streamlined tail. Other bowheads were calling with excitement about the richness of the food. Taking a deep breath through her blowholes, she clapped her nostrils shut, raised her flukes from the water and sounded. There was no immediate need for the dive; she was drawn on a whim to take a look around. Ten minutes later, in her eagerness for the surface, she had become distracted and thought the boat was further away. Then the metal spike sliced through the skin behind her left eye, slid into the blubber and split the muscle before striking the back of her skull. She heard the men shouting. She had never felt pain like this before. Ice-breaking could be hazardous in winter and left white scars behind her blowholes, but this was an agony beyond comprehension. Heart pounding, snout down and spine arched, she dropped into the vault below.1 Swinging her massive head from side to side to throw off the nausea made for a disorderly descent. The year was 1888.

Some 8,000 km (5,000 mi.) away in Arles, another teenager, Jeanne Calment, was watching her uncle count the coins offered by a young man in his fabric shop. Neither man seemed happy with the transaction. Uncle Jacques asked for more money and the artist snapped two francs on the counter, ‘C’est assez?’ Tipping the brim of his straw hat to Jeanne and picking up the canvases, he said, ‘Bonne journée, ma petite fille étrange.’ What did he find strange about her, she wondered? He had a sickening smell, she thought, ‘comme un cheval mort un jour d’été’ – like a dead horse on a summer’s day. The artist painted two canvases of sunflowers that afternoon and drank himself senseless in the evening. His friend Paul Gauguin helped him into bed.2

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