If there's an underlying theme in the books I've written
about marine creatures, it's that man has a responsibility to
co-exist with his environment, not to try to dominate it.

~ Peter Benchley

~*~

January for me, like many people, can sometimes be tough. It's so bitterly cold, it's hard to see the end of the dark. I must drive three plus hours in the snow every single day, and we go to bed when we get home because we're so, so tired. That's mostly the part I don't like...I'm an energetic, effervescent person, but sometimes January gets the better of me.

But I know my cycles, and I know how to help myself. So I get up, brush myself off, and surround myself with soothing, comforting things. I'm an ocean girl through and through, and many comforting moments have been spent with my nose stuck in a mermaid book, or just playing with my seashells and hag stones that I've gathered over my trips to the far distant shore. I hold in my heart the happiest of tidings--we have a wonderful trip to Florida to visit an incredible friend and her beautiful family at the end of January planned...so out come the ocean movies, the sea books to get into that frame of mind...all of those happy, self indulgent moments where I can imagine I'm the scuba diving woman off the coast of California or the people who survived on Jaws...

Oh...wait. No. I don't want to be those people. Next fantasy, please! XD

I had the sheer delight of introducing Jaws to a few friends (and my own wife!) who'd never seen it before last Saturday...it was a hit! There's something about that movie, a perennial favorite, that never gets old. (It's one of the reasons I love Sharks!) There's an interesting dichotomy in the movie and in Peter Benchley's own life. Jaws relies heavily upon our human ideas behind the shark...that he truly does have a vendetta against those he devours...that he seeks out innocent people and eats them whole with malice. But as is often repeated throughout the movie, the shark is territorial, has simply found a place he likes to feed, and will remain for an unknown duration. There's nothing evil about the creature...only natural.

Of course, although this is mentioned, when Jaws was first released, it was an international hit...and far fewer people went into the water that summer. Sharks, already demonized by oceanic mythology and human kind's own fear (in some places of course, not without cause...though shark attacks are, for the most part, rare) turned a natural creature even further into a monster.

Peter Benchley, a passionate advocate for ocean conservation, could only sit back and begin to realize, as time went on, what sort of damage he had done to a creature he appreciated and--some might argue--loved.

Perhaps as an apology, later in his life, Peter Benchley strayed far from the sensationalistic thrillers he had built his career upon by writing a little book: The Girl of the Sea of Cortez. Having always loved Peter Benchley's work, I picked up an old hardcover copy of the book at a library sale a few years ago for pennies, and there it sat on my shelf. This past Saturday, very late and after the party, my wife was looking for a book to take to bed. Her hand passed over the binding, and she took it out and handed it to me. "He wrote Jaws, didn't he?" she asked. I had had this book for years, but suppose it had never been the right time, because I nodded, opened it and began to read... and read... and read... the perfect time and place for such a beautiful story.

In Jaws, everything is hard edged and darkened. In The Girl of the Sea of Cortez, everything is blue and wild and free...I could hardly believe that the same person who had painted such a terrifying portrayal of the deep had taken a different brush, a different canvas...and here was this new thing...a veritable treasure.

There are many points in the book that I cherish, and would share...but a few of the most thoughtful have consumed me these past few days. The difference between "old" creatures (those who supposedly--according to native myth--can not feel pain or joy or any other emotion, who are basically living machines. Examples would be sharks and manta rays), and those who are "new," (whales, dolphins). The story follows a young girl named Poloma who helps an injured manta ray off the coast of California...and all of her adventures because of this single act of kindness. There is so much injustice in the book...it is a very thinly veiled call of distress on the state of the world's oceans, and was written over twenty-five years ago...I wonder what Benchley might have said or written if he could see them now? The other major point that has been circling my brain (much like the schools of fish that follow Poloma) is the idea of malevolence. Peter Benchley, reiterating his ideas from Jaws that no one quite heard, states again and again that animals are incapable of malevolence: that the only creature upon this planet that would create pain just for pain's pleasure is man.

But to dwell too much on the more metaphysical and metaphorical aspects of the book would be to deeply devalue its baseness: that the ocean is teaming with beauty and life, and that it must be treasured for what it is...priceless. Following Poloma's dives, watching her interact and respect the creatures below...I can not think of a more beautiful book to while away these cold December evenings.

So, there you go...I can not recommend it enough. Thus closes a highly "Reading Rainbow" reminiscent post. ;)

What are your favorite escape books?


by swee.t.c