Spirit of Manatee

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Spirit of the Manatee

Trust, Gentleness, Surrender & Non Violence

The baby Manatee brushed up against the side of my sisters leg. She started laughing. Joy and I and my Mother all got in the water to join her. My mother had 'adopted' Manatees over the years and wanted to experience them for real in the wild now. We had been watching four adults and two baby Manatees from our pontoon boat in Crystal River Florida for awhile when , my sister, bravely got in the water to swim with them. We were pointing them out to her as she would slowly approach them and let them choose if they wanted to interact. Here in their feeding area the water was murky so we couldn't see them easily underwater with our masks. We would see a manatee only 3 ft from and point it out to her from our vantage point up on the boat, but when she would look underwater and not be able to see it. So we had to get in the water and trust that these large gentle mammals also known as 'sea cows' would be gentle with us.

The Mother Manatee was trusting her baby to come over and interact with us. I got in the water with and walked slowly over in her direction. I stood still for a minute and I felt something brush up against me...I shivered and let out a 'Wow!' and started laughing. There was something amazing about trusting a wild free animal that I couldn't see come up and brush against me. This is what I had felt that I wanted to learn more about...how to let 'the world', something free, strong & wild come to me and that I would be able to allow it, and trust it, be able to let it in. I felt shivers up and down my body, and I couldn't help feeling happy and enlivened. I had felt that there was something that the Manatees had to share with me that would be helpful for me. I had an idea that it was something about acceptance, allowing life, not 'fighting back', something about 'turning the other cheek' but in a real practical powerful way that would help me

in the 'real world'.

Joy and I had gone the week before to swim with the Manatees. We had anchored our pontoon boat, gotten in the waist high water and swum over to the entrance to 'The Three Maidens', the crystal clear springs that gives the name to Crystal River, and as we swum up the narrow channel into the springs a mother and her baby were swimming out! We had to share the stream and passed within a foot of each other. We reached out and felt the mother. How sweet, how trusting she was.

It was like a fairy landscape in the springs. Amazing clear water, sunlight filtering through the trees and playing in the water. Fish, cormorants, the resting manatees, the quiet, the deep springs. The quiet was still palpably present even though people were swimming in and out to see the manatees. It was like the hush in a great cathedral. We later sat on a fallen tree log by the far spring lagoon and just 'felt' the magic there.

When You Trust - Everyone gets what they want

A week later when we brought my mother and sister to see the Manatees both Joy and I thought that the ultimate experience would be in the magic springs again and that we should head straight there. But when we arrived there were no manatees at the springs! Not a single one. This made no sense. The guides and dive shop owners didn't understand it either when asked later. But my intuition said to just accept it and go with it and we lifted our anchor and headed out into the bay. I felt to pull into a little spot on a little island. From there we saw some other boats back in a off the main route cove....followed that hint...and we turned the engine off and drifted as we saw several manatees cavorting, playing with their babies...and we got to spend an hour in the 'wild' with the two mothers their babies and a large male manatee.

My mother later said - " That's what I really wanted, I wanted to see them in their natural feeding places out in the wild. " She got exactly what she wanted! And we all know that mothers are very powerful!

Along the western coast of Florida the West Indian Manatee gathers in large numbers to 'winter'. Crystal River and Homosassa Springs are two of the main areas the Manatees congregate. Manatee's are a gentle sea grass eating mammal that the Indians honored. The Three Maidens are three springs where the Manatees come and rest. The pictures above are taken in those three springs.

If you're interested in joining a SpiriTravel group on a trip to see the Manatees next year Click Here.

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