Sitkoh Bay & Chatham Strait, Southeast Alaska
Visual impressions of a sunny day in a temperate rainforest that was a shrine to the Tlingit people; and in a long, ancient fjord named to honour England’s Earl of Chatham.
Speedy Dall’s porpoises catching a free ride on our ship’s bow wave, their black and white bodies bulging with muscles.
A husky, young brown bear on a beach, ignoring the silent approach of our ship as it laps up tender greens; what accident or sibling scrap stole its left ear?
An old-growth forest, increasingly rare now, casting shadows onto shade-tolerant ferns and tip-sprouting Devil’s club; our passage here is easy now, but with sun’s warmth we will soon be at risk of a million needle points.
Giant spruce trees, too big for arms to encircle; were they seen by Captain Vancouver in 1794? Were they seedlings when Columbus arrived?
A thousand trees standing tall and proud; others bent and broken with age; others misshapen by mistletoe, crashing branches and bulging burls; others decaying back into the shallow soil to nurture new growth as it reaches for the sun.
Bear spoor on trails and in estuary mud; spring is a time for bears to wolf down succulent grasses and shrubs.
A cool salmon stream percolating through the silent forest and into a sunny ocean inlet, awaiting the return of ripe salmon whose eggs it will hold in clean, loose gravel.
Listening to the silence of the forest; only distant birds issue their territorial songs.
Ripple waves lapping at kayaks as they slice through salty water.
Scanning ocean inlets for misty blows; will we find more fun-riding Dall’s porpoises? Or elusive killer whales? Or more huge humpbacks?
Megaptera novaeangliea, the whale known as the Great-winged New Englander, surfacing to restore oxygen to its enormous muscles before sounding in search of tiny plankton or schooling fish.
Visual impressions of a sunny day in a temperate rainforest that was a shrine to the Tlingit people; and in a long, ancient fjord named to honour England’s Earl of Chatham.
Speedy Dall’s porpoises catching a free ride on our ship’s bow wave, their black and white bodies bulging with muscles.
A husky, young brown bear on a beach, ignoring the silent approach of our ship as it laps up tender greens; what accident or sibling scrap stole its left ear?
An old-growth forest, increasingly rare now, casting shadows onto shade-tolerant ferns and tip-sprouting Devil’s club; our passage here is easy now, but with sun’s warmth we will soon be at risk of a million needle points.
Giant spruce trees, too big for arms to encircle; were they seen by Captain Vancouver in 1794? Were they seedlings when Columbus arrived?
A thousand trees standing tall and proud; others bent and broken with age; others misshapen by mistletoe, crashing branches and bulging burls; others decaying back into the shallow soil to nurture new growth as it reaches for the sun.
Bear spoor on trails and in estuary mud; spring is a time for bears to wolf down succulent grasses and shrubs.
A cool salmon stream percolating through the silent forest and into a sunny ocean inlet, awaiting the return of ripe salmon whose eggs it will hold in clean, loose gravel.
Listening to the silence of the forest; only distant birds issue their territorial songs.
Ripple waves lapping at kayaks as they slice through salty water.
Scanning ocean inlets for misty blows; will we find more fun-riding Dall’s porpoises? Or elusive killer whales? Or more huge humpbacks?
Megaptera novaeangliea, the whale known as the Great-winged New Englander, surfacing to restore oxygen to its enormous muscles before sounding in search of tiny plankton or schooling fish.
