Swordwhale Walking: illustration, webcomic, stories, photojourneys, videos
  • launch here
  • art & stories
    • black horses
    • Sea Ponies of Chincoteague
    • Just Animals
    • playing with water
    • Tradigital illustration
    • environmental education >
      • Christmas Magic Mural 2020
      • animal alphabet and counting murals
      • Assateague ponies
      • the salamander room
      • more touch room ocean
      • more: touch room forest
      • wetland
      • wetland art
      • greenleaf
      • reptile week murals: Nixon Park
    • just animals: photography
    • Tales of the E.L.F. >
      • That Darn Elf, a musing or two
      • cast and crew
      • I dreamed of black horses
      • fanfiction: If Wishes Were Elves...
      • Skyfire
      • Leyover and Bardic Circle
      • Following Raven
      • The Merrow's Cap >
        • Merrows Cap credits
      • Manannan's Horses
      • Fins
      • fandom >
        • Radagast's Rabbit Ride
        • the Lone Ranger >
          • LOLs and Trolls
          • but wait, there's Moore, and Silverheels
          • Hi Yo Silver
        • black panthers and night furies
        • tales of Middle Earth >
          • Mirthwood
          • Loth-LOL-ien >
            • Im-LOL-dris
            • Smirkwood
            • well, that coulda' been worse
        • Sherlocked
        • catz and doges on fandom
        • Faithful Sidekicks
    • murals
    • scribblings
    • coloring pages
  • mermaid tales
    • Gramma Swordwhale's Mermaid Blog >
      • how to mermaid
      • merfolk on the Chesapeake
      • my life as a mermaid
    • privateers and pumpkins and ponies oh my!
    • stupid gravity (the adventures of a mermaid on Eastern Neck Is.) >
      • stupid gravity credits
    • stupid gravity: the search for sea glass >
      • stupid gravity: the search for sea glass: credits
    • Stupid Gravity: Misty Cloudy Windy Stormy Augh! >
      • Misty Stormy credits
    • Stupid Gravity: the search for mermaids
    • mermaids, Moana and Maui, beached on Christmas Eve
    • horseshoe crabs forever
    • stupid gravity: hot hot hot >
      • hot hot hot credits
  • Chincoteague
    • back to the islands 2021 >
      • Ponies 2021
    • identify that pony
    • chincoteague pony art
    • Fall Roundup Oct 2019
    • Chincoteague 2019
    • pookas pumpkins and swamp ponies
    • Chincoteague Carousel
    • Chincoteague November 2018
    • the 3rd Sea Voyage of Makenuk's Fin
    • wild horses and kayaks 2017
    • wild ponies in camp
    • North Beach
    • on island time
    • saltwater cowboys
    • Chincoteague
    • Christmas by the Sea
    • island ponies
    • Ace and Unci revolt
    • beached
    • running water in between
    • Assateague Light
    • the Haunted Lagoon
  • crafty stuff
    • photo your toys >
      • how to photograph Breyers in the wild
      • Lokigator and Throg's Epic Adventure
      • Sam and Bucky's Excellent Adventure
      • Mando and Grogu
      • paint and wet snow pants
      • Legolas and Hwin, snow
      • derps (or how not to photograph Breyers and others)
      • Wonder Horse repaint
      • wild Breyers >
        • printable prints and downloads
        • water horses
        • beach Breyers
        • Lotus Legolas and Arod
        • teeny tiny Breyers
        • backyard Breyers and Schleichs
        • vintage breyers
        • Hartland Horses
        • Black Horses
      • educational display
      • Schleich and Safari Faeries
      • North beached
      • more model horses
      • beach party
      • advenatureData
      • Finding Hank
      • Otterlock and Hedgejawn >
        • Hounded in Baskerville
      • how to photograph your dragon
    • Rich Toy hobby horse rehab
    • ModPodge rules
    • paint pours
    • flour salt clay
    • chalk paint
    • rock it: paint rocks and use or lose them
    • faerie gardens >
      • more faerie gardens
      • faerie festival at Spoutwood Farm
    • sea this tutu (and make)
    • I found Dory
    • knit me a mermaid, or chicken, or Hei Hei
    • sea treasures
    • sea glass
    • sea horses
    • rehabbing horse epic fail >
      • do you wanna build a snow pony?
      • do you wanna build a sand pony?
      • Barbie horse gets a makeover
    • mermaid saddles
    • Yule Laugh, Yule Cry... >
      • a Brandywine Christmas
    • Uncle Bob's Toys >
      • Uncle Bob's Toys 2016
      • more: Uncle Bob's Crafts
      • the Adventures of Mortimer
  • adventures
    • Go Play Outside
    • Nature Deficit Disorder
    • I heart Nature
    • autumn light
    • cats
    • mushing 101 >
      • dogs on wheels >
        • Autumn Run on Wheels
      • dogsled
      • dogsledding: running on snow! >
        • Groundhog Day
      • kids and dawgs: first sled run
      • Klondike Derby
      • Sled Dogs and Pirate Ships
      • Christmas Day Run: Rail Trail
      • Horses and Huskies: when predator and prey share the trail
      • Schipperke doo dah >
        • Runnin' with the Big Dogs
        • Hobbit Husky
      • women who run with the wolves
      • Play Time
      • wubba wubba
      • New Year's Dog Day
      • Team Swordwhale
    • trains, sleddogs, and horses oh my!
    • butterscotch and sprinkles
    • horses >
      • horse reference for art
      • ponies small but mighty
      • First Horse: Saraf
      • the Wild Black Mare
      • between thunder and lightning
      • Goliath, Nevada Mustang
      • Yataalii
    • Planet Water >
      • Planet fish tank
      • planet toadpool
      • Planet Pond
      • Planet Stream
      • Planet River
      • Planet Marsh
      • Planet Ocean
      • Planet Water Bird >
        • Planet Water Bird: gulls
      • Planet turtle
      • Planet water snake
      • planet amphibian
    • kayak! >
      • blue boat home
      • kayaking 101
      • kayaking Assateague and Chincoteague
      • how to train your dragonfly
      • Chasing Raven
      • the Susquehanna River >
        • the Rock Garden >
          • return to the Rock Garden
        • Conewago Dreamin'
        • the Conejehola Flats
        • Thunderbird Island (petroglyphs on the Susquehanna)
        • to the White Lady and Beyond
      • Calvert Cliffs fossils
      • Sassafras River Lotus Paddle >
        • Return to the Sassafras
        • sassafras river 2015
        • sassafras paddle 20160814
        • Sassafras River 2017
        • Sassafras river 2018
      • Eastern Neck Island >
        • winter marsh, winter beach
        • Eastern Neck Island: under the supermoon
        • more Eastern Neck Island
      • Pinchot Park
      • Lake Marburg >
        • where are the manatees?
        • ...and the dolphins???
        • macros and SAVs
        • Lake Marburg 2018
        • how to be a kayaking Gramma
    • beached
    • dive in! (SCUBA) >
      • Gourd of the Rings
    • mid Atlantic seashells
    • longship company >
      • December sail
      • Sae Hrafn at Oakley
    • pirates and privateers >
      • Sailing 101
      • Schooner Sultana 1768
      • Capt John Smith Shallop
      • Pride of Baltimore II
      • Kalmar Nyckel
      • downrigging 2010 >
        • Chestertown autumn
        • Downrigging Weekend 2014
        • Downrigging 2015
        • Downrigging 2016
        • Downrigging 2017
        • downrigging 2018: pink tardis
        • Downrigging 2019
      • privateer weekend
    • horseshoe crabs and red knots >
      • horseshoe crab spawn 2021
      • slaughter beach
      • horseshoe crabs and semipalmated sandpipers 2019
    • surfboards and watchtowers: Cape Henlopen >
      • beached
      • Watching Whales >
        • Watching Whales...again
    • Seadogs: Newfoundland water trials
    • wind hounds
    • wild things! >
      • baltimore aquarium
      • there's a hummer in the garage...ceiling ...
      • critter cam
      • sky walking
      • leaf-fall
    • The Adventures of the Good Ship Fearaf
    • the incredibly dead blog page
  • art class
    • framing 101
    • watercolor: how to
    • sip n paints
    • acrylic painting 101
    • wildlife art class
    • Santa, You're Doomed
    • (drawing) horses 101 >
      • horse color 101
      • gaits
      • ponies in motion
      • tack
      • Draw: a horse
    • dogs and wolves
    • go ahead, draw a pirate ship
    • anthropomorphism (cartoon animals and stuff)
    • the Little Kids Page of Big Ideas
    • mural: how to >
      • Gabriel's Whale
      • stuff you need
      • drawing (mural)
      • drawing mural 2
      • painting
      • mural jungle
      • mural bat cave
      • mural cats
      • mural ocean
      • mural arctic
      • mural leaf smacking
      • watershed mural
    • crayons and colored pencils
    • palettes
  • wait wait! let me get the camera!
  • who perpetrated all this???
    • swordbroad

my life as a mermaid

in which we discover the author/artist has always had a fin...

​oh, and you can too!

Back in the Dark Ages of the 60s, there were TV shows I adored...

TV, you know, before Netflix and streaming whatever...

Sea Hunt and Flipper.

And the odd Jacques Cousteau special.

Cousteau pretty much invented underwater exploration because he invented a thing called the "aqualung". It was still a brand of scuba regulator when I learned to dive. The regulator is the magical thing that lets you breathe underwater, which I thought was awesome, because I wanted to do that since I'd seen Sea Hunt and Flipper. I own an Aqualung. And I've jumped off perfectly good floatin' boats to look at the sunken one, decorated Christmas trees underwater, celebrated New Year's Eve by spending 40 minutes in a freezing quarry (the bluegills were hanging out in the Christmas tree), and carved pumpkins underwater. Oh yeah, and the tricycle race... but that was in a pool. I have the weirdest trophy ever....

Sea Hunt was about a diver who had adventures and sometimes solved mysteries and crimes. My eventual dive instructor had adventures and helped solve mysteries and crimes because he was also a state cop. He looked a great deal like Lloyd Bridges who was the Sea Hunt guy. He also said stuff like (when we were practicing in the pool): "this stuff's dead, (holding up a handful of water), but when you get out in the ocean, that, that's alive..." The planet's water system is a living breathing system supporting all other life.

Flipper was about a boy and a dolphin. Made everyone want a pet dolphin. But hey, they're happier in the wild with their buddies, even if they do come hang out with you sometimes. My closest encounter with dolphins was at the Baltimore Aquarium, where I watched the educational show and saw them do their stunts. And... one evening paddling up the channel on the west side of Chincoteague Island VA, I saw the choppy wave shapes make something like a fin... I shouted to my buddy I'd seen a fin.The next thing he saw was me paddling up the channel at about warp eleven. What he had not seen was one tursiops truncatus (bottlenose dolphin) arc across the stern of his kayak. I flew up the channel, chasing fins, aware of marine mammal harassment laws (how many yards are you supposed to stay away???) and aware that nobody in a kayak could bother a dolphin... they can outmaneuver, outswim and knock me into the water if they like. I kept a steady course and a steady stroke so they knew my course and where I was (so I was just a part of the scenery), I kept a polite distance but they swam around me anyway. They strolled up the deeper part of the channel, surfaced with a shout of breath like someone blowing over the top of a soda bottle, little explosions of air as they let out the stale and filled with new air. They wheeled up from the green water... wheel...whale...wheel...whale... they are just tiny toothed whales. One pair included a large one and a smaller one, probably a mom and child. They utterly ignored me. And of course I had no camera...

The largest of the dolphins is orcinus orca, orca, killer whale, swordwhale (in parts of Europe, like where my ancestors came from). I tripped over legends about orca shapeshifters in Northwest Coastal America and was intrigued. They are the same kinds of stories told about selkies, seal shapeshifters, those legends appear in every culture that has seals. Swordwhale became my "trademark".

I never saw the sea until I was about twelve, and I went to the beach with an aunt. My parents were Pennsylvania Deutsch farmers who did not venture near water, especially water that big... except for the ancestors who braved the sea to come to America, and my Dad who got stuck on a troop ship in World War II and found himself surrounded by nothing but water and other boats. Scariest part of the whole war for him, I think. I was surprised when he offered to take me and two friends to Chincoteague for Pony Penning in 1972 (the last year Misty of Chincoteague was still alive), and later the entire 4-H horse club. He did not go near the ocean though, he clumped up and down the beach in his boots, chambray shirt rolled up to his elbows, and wondered at the fishgirls who were dancing in the waves.

I came up over the sand dune on that first trip and stopped in utter awe. It breathed, it roared, it rolled. It was far more than the images I'd seen on TV and in books.

I returned over and over, never to "civilized" beaches like Ocean City, always to Assateague, to wild places with pelicans and ponies. I backpacked for days and saw no one else. I paddled and used a lighthouse for navigation. I waded into marshes, scuba dived and snorkeled in the shallows of eelgrass beds.

Unless I was wearing a scuba tank, I always swam like a mermaid. Among people who swim competitively that is called a "dolphin kick". I learned to swim mostly on my own, though I did take a few lessons at my local school after I was an adult. I hate crawling about on the surface. I'd rather don a mask and fins and mermaid.

Then I discovered "mermaiding" is a thing.
It ranges from buying a monofin and a spandex tailskin and playing in your local pool (and shooting videos, and offering advice) to being a professional "edutainer" in a realistic silcone tailfin that costs $$$$$ and holding your breath for five minutes. I have to admit my favorite is The Chesapeake Mermaid who is a local Chesapeake Bay phenomenon, writes and illustrates books, and does programs that teach about the bay and how you can help save it. http://chesapeakemermaid.com/

As for me, I got a monofin and tail from FinFun ... discovered it was EPIC trying to get my huge feet into the tiny footpockets of the Advanced Monofin Pro... wrote to the company about it, got a nice response and advice, got a different style fin: the Monofin Pro (the older model which is stretchier and has one big foot pocket), saw a neat video by the Mermaid Seamstress...    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6MhXcpiUFGas2nVfTQY6wg  

...decided I wasn't going to ship the first one back after all (she also has big feet, and not only got it to work but found several advantages to it). 

Then I considered writing to FinFun and suggesting they make an orca tailfin...

and discovered they have one.

So now I appear to have two tailfins...

Two...

and mermaid leggings (which can be worn with a regular pair of dive fins in places that don't allow monofins or in places where a monofin might be a problem, like Assateague's surf).

Wait wait, there's more...

Of course with a limited edition orca tailskin, you need two, so one never gets chlorinated in a pool or muddied by the Bay...

And then all the mermaids you're following online tell you about these other awesome fins...

and you end up with a Luna...

and a Mahina (which is also a moon, a Hawaiian moon goddess). You get the black because you already have a nice blue/green Luna, and you're not sure about Mahina's "teal" and anyway, black is an orca fin...

Then you contemplate what to wear with it because there is no tailskin you can afford to put over it so... leggings.. do I have black ones? No? Who makes them... maybe buy one here... no... don't have that budget...

So you contemplate finding some at the thrift shop and painting them partly with that mermaid scale stencil you have... (acrylic paint should work). Except they work just fine black...

and wonder if you'll ever be able to afford one of Courtney Mermaid's excellent fabric tailskins... or whether you should buy a sewing machine... 
http://www.vancouvermermaid.ca/

... then someone recommends the Linden monofin and you go something like..." but ... but..." click. And discover it's the Best Fin Yet and actually fits and drives you through the water at warp eleven, and fits in the Fin FUn skins and...

now you need the Fin Fun Atlantis skin because, extra fins and things and stuffs...

and hey, wait, those leggings are nice...

​...and you KNOW your thrift shop rescued 18" dolls need official Fin Fun mermaid outfits, but you get free shipping if you throw in some leggings...

because you can never have too many fins.

​

Merrows, Mermaids, Mermen, Merfolk and Sirens...

Like most faerie tales, mermaids have become cute, pretty safe toys we sell to little kids. That's not what they are. They are old as storytelling. People didn't care about "facts" or "science" in those stories, what mattered was how those stories dived deep below the surface and showed us truths that could not be revealed except by story. Merfolk are our connection with the living waters of our world. They are the voice of the sea and its tributaries. When you slip on a fin, and enter that world, whether with scuba gear or a mertail, you are in a world of no fire, no color, no gravity, where there are six directions not four and UP is critical to air breathing divers. You fly in slow motion, you are part of the space where life began.

An old Irish word for the merfolk is merrow. Sirens are from Greek myth, and are composite creatures (bird, woman) who lured sailors to shipwreck with their haunting songs. In later myths, they were often mixed with the myths of mermaids. In earlier myths, they were daughters of a river god, and of complex nature (oh just look it up), forces of nature to be respected. The series "Siren" takes mermaids out of the cute and into the real, natural creatures, forces of nature caught up in the havoc wreaked on the seas by humans (with a few friendly humans as allies). 

There's an idea that lonely sailors saw manatees and interpreted them as mermaids. I doubt it. Mermaids need no actual physical creature to inspire them. They are part of our storytelling history and our deepest connections to the world around us.




just keep swimming, swimming, swimming...

(Dory is my spirit animal)
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.