A Walk with Moses in the National Aquarium, Baltimore
What was it like?
It is dark. Deep echoes like whale songs and tinkering space rain sounds submerge me, making me feel like a mermaid in a shipwreck. On either side of me, wrapping all the way around the spiraling, descending stairwell, tall panes of glass show me the quiet secrets of the ocean. I am like Moses with the Red Sea parted in a wall of water to his right and to his left.
A stingray flies beside me, waving his white wings in flashes of hello. I walk with him. He disappears from one window then reappears in the next under glitter caught in vibrating light. It casts long shadows beneath slowly gliding sharks with cinnamon-sugar skin. Their gills flutter like flags in a gentle breeze.
I stifle a shudder. Fear and calm battle for precedence in me as I follow the blue floor lights guiding my path, under the strange ambiance music that comes from nowhere visible. It is a slower existence in this panoramic hallway of aquatic creatures, swimming endlessly around, and around, and around.
I reach the bottom and bid farewell to the pulsating jellies with angel hair, the clumsy bobbling pufferfish, and the tranquility of walking on the ocean floor.
Visited During
The Appalachian Way Home
About
the National Aquarium
The National Aquarium is a non-profit public aquarium located at 501 East Pratt Street on Pier 3 in the Inner Harbor area of downtown Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States. Wikipedia
