Tracy Arm & Sawyer Glaciers
Ice is the beginning and the end; an architect and a finish carpenter that expresses itself in glaciers, those crystal agents of change that for thousands of years have shaped Alaska; ice as a chisel and an axe that shapes peaks and fjords and creates habitats for mountain goat, sea lion, bear and whale. Ice that shapes us too. We’ll go home different than when we arrived, younger and friskier in the high-latitude air. We’ll feel as John Muir felt, alive with greater vitality and imagination, made so by the deep blue looking-glass ice, the tall, mossy green trees, the determined salmon, the animals so wild and free and far from domesticated, manicured America with its golf courses, amusement parks and zoos.
First we sighted a black bear on shore in Tracy Arm. Then we put our bow into Hole-in-the-Wall Waterfall, where it spilled down steep polished granite and wetted our faces. Deeper into the rock-ribbed topography, 3,000-foot cliffs framing us, we sighted South Sawyer Glacier and entered a garden of floating ice. Slowly we approached, accompanied by arctic terns on angelic wings. We hoped for an icefall, a so-called “calving,” as if the frozen river might come undone. And it did. One-third of the entire ice front fell, subtle at first as it sank into the sea, then buoyant, staggering as it rose higher and higher, 200 feet tall, 500 feet across, 30 feet deep, with curtains of water cascading off minarets of ice, the whole mass bobbing, falling again, then sending out a giant wave that rolled under us and through us. We shrieked, cheered and laughed like little kids, filled with that sense of wonder that left us long ago, once television arrived and we stayed indoors.
By afternoon we had worked our way through thick brash ice, where 250+ harbor seals studied us with keen, obsidian eyes. Then, in open water, we took Zodiac excursions and kayaked off Margarite Island, not far from Sawyer Glacier. How Zen-like to sit in the silence with ice light all around, filled with gratitude and glee. “Don’t just do something, sit there,” the Buddhists say.
Back on the Sea Bird, we headed down Tracy Arm, retracing our path, lost and found in a thousand impressions, reflected in the blue ice that carves rock and calves into the sea, a beginning and an end.
Ice is the beginning and the end; an architect and a finish carpenter that expresses itself in glaciers, those crystal agents of change that for thousands of years have shaped Alaska; ice as a chisel and an axe that shapes peaks and fjords and creates habitats for mountain goat, sea lion, bear and whale. Ice that shapes us too. We’ll go home different than when we arrived, younger and friskier in the high-latitude air. We’ll feel as John Muir felt, alive with greater vitality and imagination, made so by the deep blue looking-glass ice, the tall, mossy green trees, the determined salmon, the animals so wild and free and far from domesticated, manicured America with its golf courses, amusement parks and zoos.
First we sighted a black bear on shore in Tracy Arm. Then we put our bow into Hole-in-the-Wall Waterfall, where it spilled down steep polished granite and wetted our faces. Deeper into the rock-ribbed topography, 3,000-foot cliffs framing us, we sighted South Sawyer Glacier and entered a garden of floating ice. Slowly we approached, accompanied by arctic terns on angelic wings. We hoped for an icefall, a so-called “calving,” as if the frozen river might come undone. And it did. One-third of the entire ice front fell, subtle at first as it sank into the sea, then buoyant, staggering as it rose higher and higher, 200 feet tall, 500 feet across, 30 feet deep, with curtains of water cascading off minarets of ice, the whole mass bobbing, falling again, then sending out a giant wave that rolled under us and through us. We shrieked, cheered and laughed like little kids, filled with that sense of wonder that left us long ago, once television arrived and we stayed indoors.
By afternoon we had worked our way through thick brash ice, where 250+ harbor seals studied us with keen, obsidian eyes. Then, in open water, we took Zodiac excursions and kayaked off Margarite Island, not far from Sawyer Glacier. How Zen-like to sit in the silence with ice light all around, filled with gratitude and glee. “Don’t just do something, sit there,” the Buddhists say.
Back on the Sea Bird, we headed down Tracy Arm, retracing our path, lost and found in a thousand impressions, reflected in the blue ice that carves rock and calves into the sea, a beginning and an end.
