Looking for Alaska (22 page)

“Bears. Bears. Look…”

I opened my eyes. She was talking in her sleep, loudly. She opened her eyes to say she'd heard something walking around outside our tent.

“There
are
bears,” she almost shouted. “Bears!”

Turned out it was only Mark walking around outside our tent, warming up or something. Somehow he'd forgotten his sleeping bag too. Since it was light, we all got up, packed everything into the kayaks, and decided to see if we could paddle to the edge of the tidal lake, enter a little river, and weave our way to the face of the glacier to see the iceberg. Mark said that the only way there was by kayak or canoe, and our problem was that the tide was going out. We risked getting stranded at the glacier if the water level dropped so low we couldn't back down this narrow, gravel-bottomed river or creek. We decided to take the chance; Mark said if we could make it, we would have one of the most amazing experiences anyone could have in Alaska. He also said few people have been where we hoped to go.

The paddling was relatively easy even as the current from the retreating water wanted to pull us back into the massive bay. Being in the bay was like being the only leaf left on a two-hundred-year-old oak. Traveling back through this mysterious passageway was like crawling through an ant colony. How fast Alaska can change what it shows you. After not much more than a half mile, we left the confines of the narrow drainage river and entered a small tidal lake. Small icebergs, the size of boats, were floating exotically here and there. Some bizarre and rare sea ducks shot up from the water, several of them surprised they were seeing humans.

As we went along, I would stop paddling to see how long it would take Rebekah to notice. Just as she would begin to turn her head, I would start paddling again.

She would exhale, then say, “Dad, you're not funny.”

This new world we were entering created its own microclimate. Fog hid and revealed the landscape. The wildlife in this place of mystery and isolation seemed surprised that humans existed. We came across some seals lying on the small ice chunks. They opened their large, round eyes and blinked surprise at our materializing. Our kayaks made little sound; we crept on top of the water, sneaking up on them. One seal seemed shocked, as if we were actually odd-colored killer whales. Those silent stalkers would never be able to reach this place. It was probably one reason the seals had come here.

More exotic, large sea ducks were startled as we paddled into a bit of open water. They flew over us; their wings made the sound of a faint whistle. A seal dropped into the water. We glided past small icebergs as they moved so slowly in the slight current of water stemming from Pedersen Glacier. For it was the glacier's melting that was the source of this little river of ice-cold mystery. Every so often cold breaths of air hit our faces.

Mark found the continuation of the water passageway where it left this interior lake and went farther toward the face of the glacier, the sculptor that you couldn't see, no matter how hard you watched, still working. It crept forward ever so slowly, carving away at the land. This entryway into the glacier's kingdom was filled with pieces of floating white ice, some the size of a sofa, a few narrow and tall and unsteady. Did icebergs block our way? This was the start—or really the end—of this gigantic slab of ice and compacted snow that stretched for hundreds and thousands of square miles. Few have been here to see it, for all the time that has passed. Several huge pieces of ice had broken off the front of the glacier and floated in the water, blocking us. It required real effort to squeeze through, but they finally allowed us into the inner sanctum.

Now it was before us; its throne room was the lake we now floated in, its surface dark and still as a mirror. The reflective water made the glacier's face double in size. I was overwhelmed by the colors, hues I'd never seen this close in nature. There were variations of light blue and ocean blue, a green shade of gray and an opal color. Some of the ice was the color of turquoise in silver that had faded to a dull polish. The height of the ice wall and the colors and the stillness—the sight of it all silenced us.

A couple of icebergs in front of the main glacier wall stood the size of a three-or four-story building. One was shaped like the profile of a polar bear head. Mark paddled right up to it. He disappeared behind it, then reappeared in a hole that went through the entire iceberg. Rebekah and I just floated in front of the multicolored face. Here, it was quieter; there didn't seem to be as many ice chunks falling into the water. Mark called us over, and it was an odd perception to hear his voice in the silence. The closer we got, the more serene it became. As a kid, I had thought that heaven would be green fields of grass and vivid blue sky and clouds as warm and white as a cotton shirt coming out of the dryer; but here was the version for those who like it cool.

We lingered for some time, but then Mark said we needed to head back to the bay or we might be stranded. We paddled out with the current this time, and when we got to the tidal lake where we'd camped on the far beach in the tender green grass, we saw a black shape, a black bear. We watched it for a bit, then shot out the mouth of this drainage back into the ocean.

The bay was sun-bright; a strong wind blew through it freely. It did not seem possible that the secret kingdom we'd come from could be only about a mile from here, and a neighbor of this light, airy bay.

Rebekah was a paddling energy machine, ready to make a wake, see more of this ocean and sharp rock world. I really wanted to pop my paddle into the water and splash her, but she seemed too focused for obnoxious Dad humor. Instead I dug in and felt my chest and back and shoulder muscles activate and assisted in pulling us through the salt water. It seemed like just a few weeks earlier that she and I had gone for a bike ride down our curving, downhill gravel driveway in Tennessee, out onto the paved roads leading away from town. At our house, you can often hear more birds singing than anything else. She was in fifth grade. We had just turned onto the paved road when I noticed I had to pedal without lagging to keep up with her. I looked over, and her thin, springy legs seemed a foot and a half longer than they had just the week before. Her arms had long, defined muscles; her neck seemed elongated; her whole body had a different energy, her face a different glow. I didn't stare but I noticed, and I remember thinking that she was the most beautiful, most coordinated, elegant, energized eleven-year-old girl in the world. And then I thought, why couldn't I keep focused on the passing of time? I seemed to spend too much time wanting to make life speed up or slow down.

We pulled up to a narrow, round-rock beach with almost black sand and hauled our kayaks out of the water to have lunch. I could not stop imagining what it would have been like for the Native people who lived here hundreds of years earlier, making a life in these sometimes sublime and sometimes intensely extreme water worlds.

Several hours later, moving quietly south, we had almost reached the tip of Holgate Head. The contour lines showing elevation gain were so close together around here on the map that the land just appeared brown. If we kept traveling west and then north in these kayaks, it would be about 140 miles to Homer from here. If we could have flown over the mountains and glaciers, it would have been about 65 miles. Why does Alaska make me feel that I can fly?

Mark had said we'd like it when we got to Holgate Head, the north point of land that opened into a small, five-mile-long bay called Holgate Arm. There were pillars of rock coming out of the ocean and arches. The tide was falling; exposed on the rock were many starfish, overlapping, offering up unusual colors to this world of blues and grays and whites.

“Dad, where are we going from here?” Rebekah asked.

Mark was a hundred yards ahead of us at a point where he'd either have to turn right to stay close to the rock or go straight and make an ocean crossing of a few miles. If we flipped our kayaks, we wouldn't be able to crawl up on the land because much of it was too steep. You could tread water for a bit, maybe hold on with your hands, but then your extremities would go numb.

Mark waited for us. He laid his head back on the kayak, kind of squeezed himself farther down in the boat, and seemed to become deeply relaxed. He made me think of a sea otter on its back; they spent most of their lives floating on the water's surface. They floated so well because they have the most follicles of fur per square inch of any mammal, and the fur traps air. It's one reason they roll in the water, to replenish the air in their fur.

“We'll cross Holgate Arm, and on the other side of here is Quicksand Cove, where we will probably camp for tonight,” Mark said, confident leader that he is.

“How far is it?” I asked.

“A couple miles. The water here is a bit rough; just ride the waves and keep going until we get there, okay?”

“O—” was all I got out before a booming breath-sound interrupted me and forced me to turn my head.

A humpback whale had surfaced not one hundred feet from us. Mark told us that out here where the bay and Aialik Bay merged, an underwater shelf went straight across from land to land; it was where Holgate Glacier's face had once been. Today the face of this glacier was about five miles away. Mark had said that the humpbacks, killer whales, salmon, and Dall porpoise liked to feed here because currents loaded with herring and other small fish came out of the deep and were pushed up along this shelf, where the water's depth goes abruptly from three hundred or four hundred feet to sixty feet.

Mark paddled with quick strokes toward the whale, as if he wanted to join it. Then two whales surfaced, one after the other, feeding aggressively and breathing in shorter intervals.

“Dad, how do the whales know what's on top of the water when they're coming up to breathe? How do they keep from hitting boats or driftwood?” Rebekah asked.

She had stopped paddling. I could tell that until she was confident in my answer, we'd be staying here.

“I would think the whale looks up before it breaks the surface, turns one eye up, wouldn't you?” At that moment, another whale came shooting out of the water, straight up like a missile. It was lunge feeding, diving down and coming straight up through a school of small fish. The water around us was strongly turbulent; the whales were feeding, surfacing quickly, moving fast.

“How about if we're not sure, we let these hungry whales pass by?” Rebekah suggested, tucking in her hair, which was tied back in a red scarf. “Have
you
ever seen a whale look up before it surfaced, Daaaad?”

“No, I haven't been that close.”

I tried to visualize a humpback whale coming up directly underneath our kayak. What would that kind of force do to us? I could see that painting of Moby Dick, breaking apart the large oceangoing whaling ship. Are whales color-blind or would they be able to see the yellow of our little cork?

We floated by a rock spire. The mountains on either side of Holgate Glacier, about five miles from us, formed the sides of a stage. The clouds dripped down from high above and softened the hard rock sides of our private show. The backdrop for the stage was the face of the glacier, which was lit bright ice-blue, like a million fluorescent lights. The top of the sea was the floor, the hunting whales the actors with the biggest parts. We were the audience, just us three. Nothing I have ever seen, including Mount Everest; my first sight of the Pacific Ocean by Florence, Oregon, after taking five years to walk there; my farm pastures, ringed by red and yellow maples at the height of fall, lit by the late-day sun; the canyon land around Moab, Utah; nothing could compare to the sight made by this stage and these actors.

I did remember someone telling me that a young whale breached somewhere near Juneau and landed on a sport fishing boat. So I agreed we should probably play it safe and stay to the side of the bay until the whales moved on by.

The hunting whales traveled closer to the glacier. Their passionate lunge feeding leaps became more numerous. The sun broke through the clouds and shone upon the glacier, and the whales were backlit by it each time they broke out of the water.

SHE COULD NOT TOUCH THE BOTTOM

The whales were halfway to the glacier now, so Rebekah began paddling. Mark was at least a half mile ahead of us. We paddled and paddled across the two miles, and I kept waiting to hear the whales' breath again. There must have been much feed for them toward the glacier. Right in the middle of the bay we passed a small bunch of feeding, deep-diving puffins. Once across we rounded a rock point into Quicksand Cove. There a dampness was in the air, and not a ripple anywhere. It was completely different from Holgate Arm, though we were right beside it.

This part of the Alaskan coast reminded me of Maine, where I had spent a couple summers during college. The irregular rock coastline, the preponderance of evergreens, the numerous bays, all reminded me of that northernmost eastern state. But for each rock outcropping in Maine, you'd have to add a rock mountain on top of it to get an idea of the magnitude here in Alaska. Also, Alaska's almost twenty times larger in area and has about half the population. No offense meant, Maine.

How could this cove be so radically different from the bay we just crossed? Quicksand Cove was total tranquillity, with a smooth and comparatively wide beach. A narrow, rushing, powerful creek ran into the end of it. Mark told us there was a small salmon run here. We could see some of them jumping out of the water where the creek flowed into the cove. At the end of Quicksand Cove, where we would set up our tents, several large logs had washed up; the land rose slightly into forest, then rocketed almost straight up from sea level over four thousand feet. A couple of smaller hanging glaciers were on top of the mountain. Every place we had been on this kayak trip had overwhelmed us, being singularly spectacular, and in every place we were the only humans around. In fact, all of Alaska had reignited my love for life; my soul felt as it had when I was in my twenties.