We turn out early today to prepare breakfast and meet the ferry that will take us to Catalina Island. It is a cold and blustery crossing under thick grey clouds, but to our delight, the sun welcomes us to Catalina. We trek up the hill from the harbor to find our quarters and get ready for our first snorkel.
Our CIMI scientist, Roxy assures us we will love it. She does not warn us about the difficulty of squeezing into our full body wet suits, but we help each other and are soon ready to launch. First we feel only the freezing waters, mind-numbing cold, but as our bodies warm cold sea water trapped by our wet suits we become comfortable. Searching endlessly for fish we feel liberated, lost in life undersea, leaving terrestrial above behind. Sattva loves watching her hands moving effortlessly past her goggles and tasting the salt on her lips. We are relaxed, buoyed by our wet suits as we bob up and down with the waves. Finally, after emerging onto the sandy beach, we collect on the dive deck to rinse, rinse, rinse our wet suits, stow our masks, snorkels, hoods, and flippers before fully transforming into land creatures again.
As dusk falls, we begin a climb to leave the lights of the camp far behind. Carrying only water bottles and flashlights we follow Roxy along a ravine, and trudge up the mountain for a spectacular view of the night sky. However, tonight the weather gods are being tricky. Cloud cover allows only a few stars to make themselves known at first, but soon mother nature concedes the sky to us. Roxy helps us identify the winter sky, Orion, Pleiadies, and Taurus, then tells us a story from her grandmother, an Inupiat native, about how Raven brought light to the world. That inspires us each to search the sky and choose a grouping of stars that we feel has a personal meaning. After we hike down, we put our tales to paper and share them; eight original bedtime stories that might, in time, become stories for our loved ones.