Story Time - Part 1 - The Dogfish 🦈

This story, like all first-person accounts worth their salt, is that sweet spot mix of truth and embellishment.

The kind of embellishment which is not boastful, but that which is inevitable when life’s riches embed themselves into the jewels of your deepest core memories.

Dear reader, please know, this actually happened, and although it felt (and still feels) like a dream, it had a profound effect on me.

It might not seem very miraculous at all, turns of fate rarely do, but it wasn’t until the memory of it hit me again in my post-lunch brain fog hump (too much bread!) this week, that I realised just how very peculiar it all was.

So I’m going to take you back to 2009, fresh-faced OJ, camping with my brother and friends on the Looe peninsula.

Looe Island, which you can see in the picture above, loomed over this wild camping adventure with its steadfast immovability like a smiling companion to the unfolding of this young man's consciousness.

Now…the event in question actually happened during the trek back along the coast to our cars after packing down our tents, undoubtedly a little windburnt, hungry and even more likely, for back then at least, suffering a bit of a weed-over.

Although it has been easy to recollect what happened on the walk back that day, what I hadn’t pieced together in my memory until this week was that indeed, something even more organic, more natural and magical happened the night before.

Let me set the scene…

Fishing, or attempting to do so, has been a great source of adventure in my life and indeed is one I now share with my kids. I ain’t no pro though, baby, that would be left to my dear friend Matt.

So…under one of the largest moons I have ever seen, we were there, in one of the bays between Looe & Polperro, we were fishing.

My friend Matthew was leading us in spirit, my friends, my brother, and myself and for some reason I have yet to put my finger on - my Dad also…we were all there casting lines with abandon into the mirror-like sea, bathing in the pearly white glow of Lady Luna.

Matt had a bite. It felt like a big one, lol, it always does! So began a five-minute or so reel in, each of us feeding off the excitement of this mega sea beast's upheaval onto the shore and hopefully into our bellies. The giddiness, the energy when this happens is infectious, and the mystery of what we were about to see was captivating all of our young adult/late adolescent attention spans far more than any theoretical lesson in a classroom would - this was real life lived adventure!

However…the big catch, the landing of Neptune himself…was not meant to be.

Instead, what had been upheaved from the deep dark blue was a Lesser Spotted Dogfish.

As soon as it came out of the water, a feeling like a popped balloon was felt, and very much shared by all of us younglings looking upon Matt and his rod. My Dad, however, very much did not appear to be sharing this feeling.

He seemed to have about him the calm, groundedness of someone who has risen and fallen with more waves of excitement and disappointment than we had at that young age.

Also in the care of a living thing that was now within his field and awareness, something breathed deeper in my Father - the quiet, unspoken reverence of life that one accrues through age and experience. A sense of the sacred that comes with riding life's spiral cycles, the ups and downs, the understanding of the balance of life and death, and wisdom earned from having been around the block more than a couple of times.

I can’t recall exactly what was said, but I remember my Dad stepping forward. I remember Matt, and us all, giving ourselves unto his authority, the way in which boys give over to their elders - not through force or obligation but by the solidness and soundness of the elder's vision and energetic presence.

The air did indeed quieten. I remember my Father’s thick-skinned, heavy and safe hands taking the dogfish firmly within their grip. We all watched on, a little awe-stricken, my Dad’s silhouette reflected perfectly off the sea’s still surface, as he unhooked the dogfish from the line.

He knelt, held the fish steady in the shallowest of water where the ocean licked gently and met the shore. Still kneeling, he straightened his back, ready to return to his feet. Before he did, he softly loosened his firm grip around the fish's wet body, and the small shark was slowly rousing its awareness into the realisation that it was no longer captive, but escapee.

Before setting off, and still only partially submerged, we all witnessed the dogfish expand its core, sink its bodyweight into the wet sand below and feel what I can only assume is the sensation, or return of feeling, that your body and your direction are your own once more.

We all stood back…captivated.

It is difficult to put into words the movement, the perfect glide, the waves, the saunter of the dogfish's undulating curves it made from the tip of its nose, through its spine, right down to its tail to propel itself forward towards and into the deep…it was, in a word, mesmeric.

The whole scene was such that it was one of the moments in life that permeates your memory and dreams to the point where you sometimes question the reality of it. The thickness that was in the air, the realness of it all, the communion of such a moment, of feeling like your senses are at complete speed and syncopation with your awareness. Truly breathtaking.

What I remember so clearly is the feeling that the dogfish, subdued and frantic as it was, was calmed by my Dad’s presence and steadfastness in exactly the same way we young men all were. In fact, I think there was some zesty adolescent spirit in that fish also.

No words were spoken between us that night about the sight we all saw. My Dad left for home pleasantly, without fuss or stressing any points of morality, but he definitely left something behind, an imprint and an example of beingness that has stayed with me to this day.

I remember such a deep sleep that night. I remember the embers of the fire we gathered around dancing with a new life. I remember the sense of silence amongst us younglings…that knew we had witnessed something beautiful and quietly miraculous.

It was these thought sensations and experience which made what happened the next day so strange. It made what the person said to me as we walked back to our cars in the morning so absurd.

It was these pearls of life, and my Father’s example in that moment, in his care for the dogfish and his tenderness in relation to all our adolescent spirits, that made me assured what the priest in the velvet-hooded cape had to say was not pointing at all to God but rather the idea of such a thing.

And perhaps even the control of it.

It was this chance encounter in the morning, among the ruins of a mythical church, that cemented a trajectory that began the remembrance of the sensations in my own body. That I was no longer captive and that my direction would forever remain my own. That I, too, was that dogfish and that I, like my Father, would treat fellow seekers with care.

I’m going to tell you about this chance encounter.

I’m going to tell you about the conversation we had.

I’m going to remind you of the dogfish in you.

I’m going to remind you…

Your direction can be your own.

To be Continued…