One day Great Aunt Nature Walker called up Lucy and Hannah on the banana phone. No one answered. Hmmm, thought Great Aunt Nature Walker, where could they be? And then the magic-message powers of the banana phone told them: Lucy and Hannah were on vacation at Nana and Pap-Pap's house.
Ah, thought Great Aunt Nature Walker, what a wonderful time they must be having on vacation. I think I will also take a little vacation from Nature Walking. With that, Great Aunt Nature Walker got in her silver car and drove off to the opera. An opera is a play where the actors and actresses wear colorful costumes and sing the whole story.
As Great Aunt Nature Walker drove, she listened to a CD with lively tune from one of her favorite operas. It is a song about dancing and having fun. And as Great Aunt Nature Walker drove and sang along with the music, she imagined herself dancing with Lucy and Hannah.
Great Aunt Nature Walker arrived at the opera theater early and bought her ticket. With time to spare, she set out on a way to see what she could discover. Within a few minutes, she saw a fascinating woman made of metal and glass. The woman was taller than a house.
It was a work of art called a sculpture. A sculpture is like painting, except instead of paint, you use objects to make something special—like when a person carves a face into a pumpkin for Halloween, they are making a sculpture.
Within a few minutes, Great Aunt Nature Walker had arrived at the edge of the land. Here along the top of a hill were beautiful tall ocean grasses. Below, was the Pacific Ocean with its sandy beach and and dark rugged rugged mountains.
The people walking on the beach looked like tiny twigs. This was indeed a wild and wonderful ocean beach.
Then in the distance, Great Aunt Nature Walker saw some fascinating white objects. At first, the tall narrow white objects looked like a fence that had been blown apart by an ocean storm. But as she walked closer, Great Aunt Nature Walker realized these objects were the bones of a whale. A sign on a rock told her a man had used the bones to make a sculpture.
When the man put the whale bones in the ground he wanted people to feel how astonishingly big a whale is. The bones sticking up from the ground were the whale's ribs. The ribs were so tall that Great Aunt Nature Walker could walk inside
them!
When Great Aunt Nature Walker was inside the whale ribs, she thought of two experiences. The first was when she saw the skeleton of a whale in the window of a museum. The man standing beside the whale skeleton could have walked around inside that whale.
Then, Great Aunt Nature Walker remembered when she was only five and her father took her to see the movie about Pinocchio. Great Aunt Nature Walker had not yet become Great Aunt Nature Walker and was therefore very scared by the movie because it showed how Pinocchio and his father Geppetto got swallowed by Monstro the whale.
Pinocchio and his father made Monstro sneeze them up into the water and were safe in the end. Even though it was a pretend story, the thought of being swallowed by the whale was very scary. But then they stopped for ice cream and having a chocolate-chip ice cream cone made the fear go away.
Now Great Aunt Nature Walker lives by the Pacific Ocean, and the whales swim past her town twice every year. They swim many miles to warm water in the winter and many miles back to cooler water in the summer. Every years around Christmas time, Great Aunt Nature Walker walks up to a high hill to watch the whales go by. Once she even went out on a boat and saw the whales up close. The whale tails are called flukes and were about ten feet wide, almost as long as her bedroom at home!!!!!
But now, it was almost time for the opera to start. As Great Aunt Nature Walker walked back to the theater, she thought about how whales also make music. Whale songs, of course, very different from music that people make, but beautiful nevertheless. Whale songs are very mysterious, and Great Aunt Nature Walker thought Lucy and Hannah would find them very interesting.
Once on the Internet, Great Aunt Nature Walker saw how people went out onto the water with musical instruments. They put microphones down into the water. Then they played music that sounded like whale music. And suddenly, whales came up to the surface of the water and showed they'd heard this music. Instead of dancing, they leapt out of the water.
Great Aunt Nature Walker arrived at the opera theater and took her seat. When it was over, she drove home along the ocean thinking it was a wonderful day of music.
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Notes to the reader:
On whales responding to the orchestra, scroll down the page for the video.
For a longer (8 minutes) video that shows a humpback whale thanking people who rescued it from gill netting, click here.
Ah, thought Great Aunt Nature Walker, what a wonderful time they must be having on vacation. I think I will also take a little vacation from Nature Walking. With that, Great Aunt Nature Walker got in her silver car and drove off to the opera. An opera is a play where the actors and actresses wear colorful costumes and sing the whole story.
 |
| An Opera |
Great Aunt Nature Walker arrived at the opera theater early and bought her ticket. With time to spare, she set out on a way to see what she could discover. Within a few minutes, she saw a fascinating woman made of metal and glass. The woman was taller than a house.
Within a few minutes, Great Aunt Nature Walker had arrived at the edge of the land. Here along the top of a hill were beautiful tall ocean grasses. Below, was the Pacific Ocean with its sandy beach and and dark rugged rugged mountains.
 |
| Pacific Ocean |
Then in the distance, Great Aunt Nature Walker saw some fascinating white objects. At first, the tall narrow white objects looked like a fence that had been blown apart by an ocean storm. But as she walked closer, Great Aunt Nature Walker realized these objects were the bones of a whale. A sign on a rock told her a man had used the bones to make a sculpture.
When the man put the whale bones in the ground he wanted people to feel how astonishingly big a whale is. The bones sticking up from the ground were the whale's ribs. The ribs were so tall that Great Aunt Nature Walker could walk insidethem!
When Great Aunt Nature Walker was inside the whale ribs, she thought of two experiences. The first was when she saw the skeleton of a whale in the window of a museum. The man standing beside the whale skeleton could have walked around inside that whale.
 |
| The size of a man compared to a whale |
Then, Great Aunt Nature Walker remembered when she was only five and her father took her to see the movie about Pinocchio. Great Aunt Nature Walker had not yet become Great Aunt Nature Walker and was therefore very scared by the movie because it showed how Pinocchio and his father Geppetto got swallowed by Monstro the whale.
Pinocchio and his father made Monstro sneeze them up into the water and were safe in the end. Even though it was a pretend story, the thought of being swallowed by the whale was very scary. But then they stopped for ice cream and having a chocolate-chip ice cream cone made the fear go away.
Now Great Aunt Nature Walker lives by the Pacific Ocean, and the whales swim past her town twice every year. They swim many miles to warm water in the winter and many miles back to cooler water in the summer. Every years around Christmas time, Great Aunt Nature Walker walks up to a high hill to watch the whales go by. Once she even went out on a boat and saw the whales up close. The whale tails are called flukes and were about ten feet wide, almost as long as her bedroom at home!!!!!But now, it was almost time for the opera to start. As Great Aunt Nature Walker walked back to the theater, she thought about how whales also make music. Whale songs, of course, very different from music that people make, but beautiful nevertheless. Whale songs are very mysterious, and Great Aunt Nature Walker thought Lucy and Hannah would find them very interesting.
Once on the Internet, Great Aunt Nature Walker saw how people went out onto the water with musical instruments. They put microphones down into the water. Then they played music that sounded like whale music. And suddenly, whales came up to the surface of the water and showed they'd heard this music. Instead of dancing, they leapt out of the water.
Great Aunt Nature Walker arrived at the opera theater and took her seat. When it was over, she drove home along the ocean thinking it was a wonderful day of music.
----
Notes to the reader:
On whales responding to the orchestra, scroll down the page for the video.
For a longer (8 minutes) video that shows a humpback whale thanking people who rescued it from gill netting, click here.
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