Eva Saulitis > Quotes

“There, two ecotypes of orca roam the same waters but never interact: residents—fish eaters, and transients—mammal eaters. (Later research would identify a third ecotype, offshores—shark eaters.)”
― Eva Saulitis, Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss among Vanishing Orcas

“Alone I wandered between worlds, the objective world of species, natural history and names, and the subjective world of symbols and signs.”
― Eva Saulitis, Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss among Vanishing Orcas

“Eric Hoyt called orcas “sonic creatures.” Their universe is acoustic, while that of humans (unless blind), is primarily visual. Hoyt quoted the controversial researcher of captive dolphins, John Lilly. Lilly pondered the intelligence of whales and dolphins, whose brain morphology resembles that of humans. Lacking hands to construct or write with, whales, Lilly theorized, “may have taken the path of legends and verbal traditions.”
― Eva Saulitis, Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss among Vanishing Orcas

“learned that resident orcas are “chatty”: each pod (a collection of related maternal groups traveling together a majority of the time) identifies itself and stays in contact via a unique dialect of calls. These dialects reflect cultural traditions.”
― Eva Saulitis, Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss among Vanishing Orcas

“The only way to be changed is to let another being (or place) completely in, to love with a wild, dangerous abandon, knowing the outline of the hole it will make is already being formed.”
― Eva Saulitis, Becoming Earth

“Chugach transients, which are no more, no less killers than any other carnivore, is better reflected by “orca,” derived from the name of a Roman god of the underworld.”
― Eva Saulitis, Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss among Vanishing Orcas

“I came to believe that the place and the whales played a part in rescuing me. Not in some mystical sense, but simply by existing, with or without me. They saved me, though I can’t save them.”
― Eva Saulitis, Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss among Vanishing Orcas

“Maybe this is the beginning of healing, the repeated lick of the tide, like an animal worrying a wound clean and raw.”
― Eva Saulitis, Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss among Vanishing Orcas

“The Haida name for orca, keet, means “supernatural being.” Some people call them killer, some orca, but in essence both names lead to the same place.”
― Eva Saulitis, Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss among Vanishing Orcas

“Death is nature. Nature is far from over. In the end, the gore at the creek comforts more than it appalls. In the end – I must believe it – just like a salmon, I will know how to die, and though I die, though I lose my life, nature wins. Nature endures. It is strange, and it is hard, but it is comfort, and I’ll take it.”
― Eva Saulitis, Becoming Earth

“I died. The words pop out on the page. I died and the mountain remained. I died and the baby leaves on the birch trees broke through their waxy casks in what was once my yard. I died and the nettles pushed up through layers of fallen birch leaves. I died and one day a wind came and the leaves blizzarded down. And the snow came, and the snow went. I died and you died and the ever-moving earth continued on and on. We died and the earth continued and changed. And so – living, dying, dead, reborn in other forms – did we. There is a future. It is beyond us, like that oval of blue behind layers of mountains, beyond weather. It is not ours to have or to hold. There is a future, and it is not us. It is the mountain. It is the earth.”
― Eva Saulitis, Becoming Earth

“Chugachmiut and the Eyak—”
― Eva Saulitis, Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss among Vanishing Orcas

“Transients, according to Hoyt, are mostly silent. When vocal, they are terse, their dialect consisting of fewer calls, most of them brief and quiet.”
― Eva Saulitis, Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss among Vanishing Orcas

“One blustery winter day, out for a skiff ride, I spotted a black fin amid gray waves. A few minutes later, a whoosh near the skiff startled me. I turned to see a wind-flattened blow, the fin rising, the arch of a flank emerging and sliding back under the water. Then she disappeared, as if the rough sea had swallowed her. I looked everywhere, but she was gone.”
― Eva Saulitis, Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss among Vanishing Orcas