Tracy Arm, Southeast Alaska
Pre-breakfast, the cold wind blew. Above, the sky was blue. We were contained within the high and rounded walls of a fjord, lost in the shadows and feeling small. Only the highest rocky domes were caressed by the sun. Glacial ice clung in bowl-like depressions and trickled over the rims spilling toward the earth below. U-shaped valleys entered our own at random levels. Their floors were carpeted with deep forest green that seemed to slosh up the concave sides like waves, the crests diluted to a paler shade as they thinned upon the walls. From each, a stream trickled. Some cut mini canyons into bedrock in their frenzy to reach the sea while others tumbled, forming frothing cascades or free fell from hanging valleys far above. The sun filtered into some of the basins painting the walls in technicolor while holding back its favors from others, leaving them a somber gray. The water was turquoise, a milky blue. Scattered bits of ice floated upon it, a sign that a tidewater glacier was somewhere near.
From the air it might appear as if some giant human form had tripped upon Admiralty Island and stumbled face first into the Coastal Range. Holkam Bay is where the head and shoulders landed. The arms reached out to break the fall, elbows bent and wrists flexed. Fingers grasped at the frigid Stikine icefield, the nails scoring its edges to release the glacier flow. Tracy Arm, the northern limb embraced our activities today.
South Sawyer Glacier was a gelid blue wrapped in a gold satin sea. Harbor seals lounged on scattered ice floats, their morning calisthenics consisting of stretching their bodies into perfect banana forms. From the ship’s speakers came the gentle tones of our wake-up call. It was at that moment that we began to suspect that the glacier was alive. It stretched and rumbled, groaned and roared and tossed snowballs and bus-sized blocks from its edges. A giant crevasse opened wide as sapphire pillars surged skyward to meet the white rampart walls of crashing castles. Again and again the glacier calved from every edge and face. Shooters shot from the tongue beneath until bergs and growlers choked the surface of the sea. The seals sedately stayed upon their floes rocking in the waves. We on the other hand excitedly cheered and ran from side to side seeking ever better vantage points.
Sawyer Glacier was as unlike its twin as most siblings are to one another. It rested quietly against its metamorphosed rocky walls, speaking only with sharp retorts when insulted for its lethargy. Within this fjord branch, it was the sounds that will last in memories. Arctic terns danced high above, their long forked tails and pointed wings adding grace to their forms. The music of their calls was a gentle creaking. Marbled murrelets littered the water squeaking rhythmically. Barn swallows dashed around the bow searching for flying gnats. Calming beauty remained with us as we headed back down the fjord until late morning when the Captain decided a cold shower at Hole-in-the-Wall would energize us for the activities yet to come.
The afternoon was warm and sunny enough to invite one to lie back upon the beach of William’s Cove or to paddle a kayak silently. It was also a perfect time to walk, to explore plant successional changes and different habitats. From intertidal to grassy knolls to wildflower meadows we went. Dense alder thickets defended the forest from random entry or exit. Inside, away from the beach, tall spruce and hemlock reached skyward. Devil’s club was the sentry here keeping us all aware and wary. Every step presented treasures; the midden of a squirrel, a bear-scratched tree and the scat of this same mammal, an eagle skeleton, ripe salmonberries, crimson paintbrush and lacy white yarrow, glistening sundews, a beaver lodge and much, much more.
Now, how would one end this perfect day? With breaching whales, how else? Somewhere tonight, one very tired baby humpback whale hopefully is resting after a playful hour of pirouettes and skyward leaps and vain attempts to fly. Its mother joined it in its aerial displays, pausing only to slap the water with her pectoral flipper perhaps as applause for a job well done.
