The Old Seal

I had a dog leashed to my left hand and a dog leashed to my right hand and they were mushing me through the dunes on the trail above the South Jetty. The tide rolled in high and white and sun lit up the green waves. Driftwood was everywhere, catapulted in by the King Tide.

A strange sound caught my ears. It was a moan and groan. The dogs somehow didn’t hear it and kept moving straight ahead. I glanced to my left around a detour in the trail and beheld a harbor seal resting on the sand, 10 feet away. He looked right at me, cocked his head, and roared. (Not the one pictured here.)

Somehow the seal had crawled up and and over the jetty, some 30 feet, and landed here. Perhaps the King Tide had floated him ashore. Perhaps he surfed in. I’ve seen lots of seals and sea lions resting on Oregon Coast jetties, but this was something different. It unnerved me.

I stopped and held the leashes tight. The dogs came to me and saw the seal. They began to advance toward it, cautiously. I reined them in and looked at the seal’s face.

He was old, mottled, gray around the eyes and muzzle. His whiskers were bent in multiple directions. He had nicks everywhere on his body. It occurred to me that the seal had come ashore to die and he was nearing the end. It occurred to me that he should be left alone.

I got the dogs moving away from the seal and we headed north down the trail. A few seconds later, I heard a kind of growl behind me. The last rattle?

Metaphors raced through my mind. Was I that seal now or was that seal my future self?

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