Glacier Bay National Park
Why is the ice blue? John Muir (or was it Mark Twain?) once said that if you were that cold you’d be blue too. How ironic that the moment we arrived at the impressive tidewater face of Johns Hopkins Glacier – one mile wide, some three hundred feet high – the sky opened up and the sun came out and we found ourselves taking off a layer or two. Wispy clouds danced about the high peaks. Harbor seals lay on icebergs and returned our stares with obsidian eyes. Then came a couple icefalls, the white thunder of massive blocks of the glacier freefalling and hitting the sea with a great splash.
But let’s begin at the beginning, with an early morning visit to Boulder Island, in the lower bay, where we witnessed hundreds of sea otters rafted together in beds of kelp, mothers with pups on their chests, floating on their backs, furry feet in the air as their cracked open crabs, mussels and clams. Then came South Marble Island with its Steller sea lions, tufted and horned puffins, common murres, and many other birds.
Yet this may not have been the high point of the day. As we made our way up the West Arm of the bay we found a mother coastal brown bear and her three cubs-of-the year (little tykes born in their den this last February) working the low-tide shore. For nearly an hour Captain Kalbach followed the bear family as they turned over rocks and ate whatever intertidal creatures they could find. We may as well have been in church, given our quiet manners in the presence of such powerful, wild animals. That is indeed where we were, John Muir would have said. “I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out until sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”
As we approached Bartlett Cove in platinum evening light, a rainbow appeared off our port bow, and a pod of killer whales (a.k.a. orca) surfaced off our starboard bow. Up we jumped from dinner to gather on deck and watch these so-called “wolves of the sea” as they sliced still waters with their tall dorsal fins.
Nightfall found us on terra firma in Bartlett Cove, walking a boardwalk through an elegant forest and later visiting Glacier Bay Lodge. The day’s glow – fired by the bounty of so much wild land amid an evermore crowded world – filled us with glacial light and brown bear karma as we found our way back to the Sea Bird and dropped into sweet dreams.
Why is the ice blue? John Muir (or was it Mark Twain?) once said that if you were that cold you’d be blue too. How ironic that the moment we arrived at the impressive tidewater face of Johns Hopkins Glacier – one mile wide, some three hundred feet high – the sky opened up and the sun came out and we found ourselves taking off a layer or two. Wispy clouds danced about the high peaks. Harbor seals lay on icebergs and returned our stares with obsidian eyes. Then came a couple icefalls, the white thunder of massive blocks of the glacier freefalling and hitting the sea with a great splash.
But let’s begin at the beginning, with an early morning visit to Boulder Island, in the lower bay, where we witnessed hundreds of sea otters rafted together in beds of kelp, mothers with pups on their chests, floating on their backs, furry feet in the air as their cracked open crabs, mussels and clams. Then came South Marble Island with its Steller sea lions, tufted and horned puffins, common murres, and many other birds.
Yet this may not have been the high point of the day. As we made our way up the West Arm of the bay we found a mother coastal brown bear and her three cubs-of-the year (little tykes born in their den this last February) working the low-tide shore. For nearly an hour Captain Kalbach followed the bear family as they turned over rocks and ate whatever intertidal creatures they could find. We may as well have been in church, given our quiet manners in the presence of such powerful, wild animals. That is indeed where we were, John Muir would have said. “I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out until sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”
As we approached Bartlett Cove in platinum evening light, a rainbow appeared off our port bow, and a pod of killer whales (a.k.a. orca) surfaced off our starboard bow. Up we jumped from dinner to gather on deck and watch these so-called “wolves of the sea” as they sliced still waters with their tall dorsal fins.
Nightfall found us on terra firma in Bartlett Cove, walking a boardwalk through an elegant forest and later visiting Glacier Bay Lodge. The day’s glow – fired by the bounty of so much wild land amid an evermore crowded world – filled us with glacial light and brown bear karma as we found our way back to the Sea Bird and dropped into sweet dreams.
