The Galápagos: Perfection’s Paradox

I spent a week in the Galápagos and brushed against the infinite — or, since you can’t exactly brush against something that has no boundaries, you might say I sort of wafted into it. 

How do you describe the exhilaration that rises over you as the sea and sky blend into a single blue that looks like it just might be the edge of the world? It enveloped me like the sand between my toes and the clear, cool salt water on my sunburned skin. 

All around, this blue. The color of trust. The color of faithfulness. The color of peace. 

Could I fully enter that calm? 

There were a hundred good reasons why I shouldn’t even have been there, and I didn’t want to shirk any of them. At the macro level, I formed part of an annual crowd of tourists more than four times the size of the archipelago’s carrying capacity. I belonged to a legacy of human invaders who trekked in a trail of invasive species that have jeopardized the ecological balance of the islands over the past century and a half and pushed endemic species to extinction. 

And as a tourist, I was supposed to stretch out happily on the beach with the sea lions and sip a glass of cold juice. 

Delight and destruction. All this wonder. All this paradox. All this pondering at the edge of the ocean. 

I swam with sharks and sea turtles in the Galápagos — put my snorkel and mask right over my face and dived down to swim next to them for as long as my breath would hold. I dropped my head below the surface and entered a different world. This system in motion, thriving, threatened, was part of my world and yet invisible to me from above the surface. The sphere I breathe in couldn’t exist without it, yet I could go through life so removed from it that I might easily remain oblivious to its existence. Even within this rare opportunity to come in contact with it, I had to enter it purposefully to witness what all it meant to say that life was at risk in the Galápagos and see for myself why all this biodiversity was worth protecting – from the very dangers threatened by what made it possible for me to be present. All of this hidden just under the waves. 

How often do I go about my day oblivious to the worlds in action all around me? And how often do I stop to remember of how much I am unaware?

There’s a host of problems I want to confront because ignoring them is never a solution, but there’s also a host of beauty. I can look away from from the problems and the beauty that exist, or I can enter into both. Entering fully means recognizing splendor and fragility in the same frame. 

Truth is, I probably wouldn’t go back to the Galápagos again if I got the chance. I don’t want to shrug off the knowledge that my presence contributes to the islands’ jeopardy. I don’t want to recklessly trample for my own leisure. 

But the other truth is this: tomorrow, ten years from now, I might do well to make a different choice and not go again. That week, though, I was there. The most contemptuous thing I could have done while visiting would have been moping and failing to marvel at the splendors of the island right in front of me – splendors that might just be, God forbid, soon disappearing forever. 

That doesn’t preclude responsibility; it does mean recognizing a time to make decisions and a time when the immediate decisions have been made. It means that there’s a time to consider and a time to engage with what’s directly before me, understanding that sometimes the two are intertwined. It means interacting responsibly but also receptively while there. Somewhere in all that, there’s this faith that there’s a plan far beyond my own that’s playing out for good. In the current, I only get to see the moment right around me. That is the moment for which I seek wisdom. Beyond that moment, I get to practice trust — and remember that there is another world operating just out of my sight that I rarely get to glimpse. 

Can I delight in the gifts of this moment, even though they might slip irretrievably beyond the horizon the next? I want to do that. I want to engage the wonder of the instant. I want to revel in the phenomena placed before my eyes to witness in the here and now: the reaching necks of the tortoises, the rich black sharpness of the volcanic rock, the little finches that made history, the scorching sun shining here near the equator of the earth. 

The waves are frolicking high, and there’s this infinite blue before me telling me to trust and let go. 

Sickness, my computer, and internet access haven’t been lining up well with my schedule this past month. As a result, I’m more than a bit behind on blogging (as you might be able to tell from this post about my Spring Break-ish Galápagos trip back in March!). I’ll try to keep uploading posts retroactively in the weeks ahead.