Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve
When one first visits the grand country of coastal Alaska, preliminary expectations are truthed out and ultimately exceeded. Unsuspected aspects of this pristine place unfold, its virtual vastness, beauty and biota folded in to a newfound perspective. Wildlife maps itself onto the scenery and appears on its own natural timetable, often in wonderful profusion.
The relatively recent retreat of ice in Glacier Bay lets us ponder the patterns of both ice and life on the land -- the glacial histories and the influx of flora and fauna in a newly exposed world. Throughout today’s journeying we found pulsations of biodiversity in this realm of ice and became entranced by these rhythms of nature.
At the glazed blue faces of tidewater glaciers today we see only remnants of the great icy architects that carved the waterways we course. The ocean has followed the ice in to these rounded channels but once more may be pushed out. Ice a mile high once covered the land in this area. The glaciers may once again sweep through these watery valleys and change the course of the land and life upon it.
Through a washed out sea-sky interface near an island named Strawberry, otters, porpoises and whales appeared readily in suffused early morning light. Proliferations of nesting seabirds abounded at protected and productive areas on South Marble Island and on a wall near Margerie Glacier. Colonies of cormorants, kittiwakes and glaucous-winged gulls stood ashore as tuxedoed guillemots, murres and puffins motored about and floated nearby. Bachelor male Steller’s sea lions piled upon each other on shore. An aerobatic parasitic jaeger engaged a kittiwake in a Red Baronesque dogfight, haranguing the poor bird until it surrendered its meal.
In Glacier Bay’s west arm, we came upon a healthy black bear eating barnacles and foraging in the intertidal. Distant creamy specks between wisps of clouds on green meadows high beyond became mountain goats in our perception. In a back inlet we found a magnificent pair of blonde brown bears (prescient of lunch’s dessert – “blondie” brownies?) and then enjoyed great viewing of another browner grizzly swimming and meandering along the water’s edge. There is nothing like seeing a wild bear in its natural habitat.
Reconfiguring one’s picture of a place when first being there is enlightening. The impressions we create from books, accounts and images beforehand are melded into a perspective that can only be formed by being there. There is no substitute for traveling by ship through Southeast Alaska and weaving a vibrant reality of the patterns of animals, ice and landscape.
When one first visits the grand country of coastal Alaska, preliminary expectations are truthed out and ultimately exceeded. Unsuspected aspects of this pristine place unfold, its virtual vastness, beauty and biota folded in to a newfound perspective. Wildlife maps itself onto the scenery and appears on its own natural timetable, often in wonderful profusion.
The relatively recent retreat of ice in Glacier Bay lets us ponder the patterns of both ice and life on the land -- the glacial histories and the influx of flora and fauna in a newly exposed world. Throughout today’s journeying we found pulsations of biodiversity in this realm of ice and became entranced by these rhythms of nature.
At the glazed blue faces of tidewater glaciers today we see only remnants of the great icy architects that carved the waterways we course. The ocean has followed the ice in to these rounded channels but once more may be pushed out. Ice a mile high once covered the land in this area. The glaciers may once again sweep through these watery valleys and change the course of the land and life upon it.
Through a washed out sea-sky interface near an island named Strawberry, otters, porpoises and whales appeared readily in suffused early morning light. Proliferations of nesting seabirds abounded at protected and productive areas on South Marble Island and on a wall near Margerie Glacier. Colonies of cormorants, kittiwakes and glaucous-winged gulls stood ashore as tuxedoed guillemots, murres and puffins motored about and floated nearby. Bachelor male Steller’s sea lions piled upon each other on shore. An aerobatic parasitic jaeger engaged a kittiwake in a Red Baronesque dogfight, haranguing the poor bird until it surrendered its meal.
In Glacier Bay’s west arm, we came upon a healthy black bear eating barnacles and foraging in the intertidal. Distant creamy specks between wisps of clouds on green meadows high beyond became mountain goats in our perception. In a back inlet we found a magnificent pair of blonde brown bears (prescient of lunch’s dessert – “blondie” brownies?) and then enjoyed great viewing of another browner grizzly swimming and meandering along the water’s edge. There is nothing like seeing a wild bear in its natural habitat.
Reconfiguring one’s picture of a place when first being there is enlightening. The impressions we create from books, accounts and images beforehand are melded into a perspective that can only be formed by being there. There is no substitute for traveling by ship through Southeast Alaska and weaving a vibrant reality of the patterns of animals, ice and landscape.
