Paul Watson: What it all means at 55

Paul Watson

On December 2, I turned 55. The day before, my sister Rosemarie turned 35 and the day after my sister Sharyn turned 53. Our parents were very good at grouping.

In truth I feel much younger. My spirit still yearns for adventure and my intense burning anger at the state we have driven our world into is as hot as when I was half this age.

This last year was a sobering experience. I have never feared death, nor do I fear it now but when fellow warriors are struck down it provides cause for reflection.

The loss of Robert Hunter, friend, mentor, and the man with whom I stood in front of an ice crunching sealing ship in 1976 and who blocked the first harpoon with me way back in 1975, died in May.

My former crewmate and neighbour Benjamin White, with whom I landed in Siberia to document illegal whaling in 1981 and who shared with me a frozen odyssey across heaving ice floes back in 1983 died in July.

And Cliff Ward who tracked elephant poachers with me in 1978, died of cancer two years ago in Colorado.

I faced death with all three of these men and now they exist no more, struck down by cancer, all of them while still relatively young.

And Timothy Treadwell who fell to a grizzly in 2003 as a consequence of going where no person had dared go before.

All four were so courageous in battling evil, fearlessly standing up for the Earth and her citizens all.

Three died with quiet courage, accepting their fate with stoic calm. Timothy died fighting for his life in a Paleolithic dance with natural death, felled by tooth and claw yet respecting his killer to the end.

We all must die but these four men died after a life of adventure, having done their duty to the Earth which bore them. All four were an inspiration to so many.

And as the year ends, I find the loss of another friend. Tim Carr died in a car accident in Georgia last month. Tim created Cane and Able in Maui (Citizens Against Noxious Emissions and Agricultural Bio-Mass is Logical Energy) and he led the effort to defeat the building of a coal fired generator proposed by the Maui Electric Company.

I am no stranger to death. My mother died when I was 13 and she was only 33. She died due to complications of childbirth along with her seventh baby. My father died when I was 49 at 71 from lung cancer. He chose that death years before when he began smoking.

Over the years I have seen the loss of former crewmembers, friends, family members and also the loss of animal friends whose passing was no less traumatic than my human friends.

Many crewmates from the first Greenpeace voyage to Amchitka are no more. Bob Cummings hanged himself. Captain John Cormack and Ben Metcalf lived full lives and died of old age. Irving Stowe fell to cancer and Dave Price died from reasons I never discovered. Will Jones died of a heart attack. Photographer Greg McIntyre hanged himself.

There was Bre Drummond who served with me on the Greenpeace ship James Bay who fell to cancer as did her young daughter Megan, a victim of leukemia.

I have seen crewmembers die on merchant ships I served on. I have seen people killed in wars in Vietnam, Mozambique, Iran, Panama and at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

I have also been witness to the death of whales, seals, sea turtles, elephants, birds, fishes, reptiles, amphibians and insects.

I have mourned the loss of personal mentors and friends like Margaret Mead, Aida Fleming, Buckminster Fuller, Cleveland Amory, Edward Abbey and David Brower.

Such passings are a reminder that we have much to do and little time to accomplish what we need to do.

We survive because we have the audacity to believe that we matter. We throw ourselves against the endless walls of infinity and dare to believe that in all of this chaos and confusion, contradiction and corruption that we can make a difference.

But why do we do anything in the face of certain obliteration? Why do we participate in the dance of life when we know that when the music dies, there is nothing and no more? Why do we persist in seeking answers including the ultimate answer when deep inside we intuitively know that the answer is that there is, and never will be an answer.

The finite mind is not capable of comprehending infinity. From nothing we came and in nothing we end. But it is from this nothingness that the universe feeds, thrives and survives, grows, evolves and moves forward.

Yes, I know that there are some who persist in beliefs in fantasy. But I cannot stomach the idea of reality masked in fabricated deceit just for the sake of feeling good. I don't look for answers and find myself content with pseudo-answers.

I have met the Dalai Lama and he is a fine and gentle man, but I did not see an answer in his kind eyes. I have spoken at length with Father Thomas Berry whose insight I appreciated. He also sees the truth in nature.

I have been to the Vatican, to St Paul's and Notre Dame, to Mont St.Michel, to the Mormon Tabernacle, the Parthenon and the place of the oracle at Delphi, to the Papa Sapa, and the grave of Lani Kahuna on Molokai, to the pyramids, and dozens of other designated sacred sites but none of them filled me with as much awe or wonder as the rainforests of Amazonia, the living plains of the Serengeti, or that great mysterious blue shrouded ocean.

I have never met a priest, a preacher, a shaman, a monk or a philosopher who could reach me as much as I have been touched and taught by elephants, whales, dolphins, trees and the Sun.

My life changed in 1975 from the penetrating eye of a whale that drove a message deep into my mind that my path was to listen to the laws of nature. To cherish diversity, interdependence, and most of all to cherish life.

The Dalai Lama once sent to me a little carving of a flying horse headed dragon called Hayagriva - the compassionate aspect of Buddha's wrath in Tibetan mythology.

It was Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman who told me that Hayagriva means that you must never hurt anyone but sometimes you may have to scare them until they see enlightenment.

It appears my path has been guided by Hayagriva.

But it is not sufficient to simply change others. I seek to change myself.

I strive towards making my ecological footprint as shallow as possible. By not eating meat and fish, by using organic products, by lowering consumption whenever possible.

Today I am about to depart from Australia on yet another quest, another crusade, another campaign, another adventure. We leave to hunt Japanese whalers in the Antarctic, to track them, catch them and intervene against their illegal and evil trade. To kill a whale, to extinguish such a beautiful mind, to destroy such a magnificent creature is to me one of the greatest abominations our species is engaged in.

Maybe we will find them. Perhaps we can stop them. Perhaps we will fail. Perhaps I or others may die – it is a dangerous campaign.

My hair is silver now although I am fortunate in having lost none of it. I've lost some of my abilities from my younger years, most notably the incredible images that once filled my sleeping dreams. I've lost some sense of wonder from seeing too much perhaps, but the sight of an iceberg, a breaching whale or a righteous raging sea still strikes me with awe and appreciation.

So with birthday wishes to my two sisters of the day before and the day after, I greet this day as a reminder of the renewal of my life for yet another year.

* Paul Watson is founder and president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.