Three Days at Sea That Have Nothing to Do With Politics – Day One.

By Jeanne Devon

I just got back from a few days out on the water.  Upon my return, I was faced with two choices – 1) Spend a couple days catching up and writing about politics 2) Take you along with me on the boat trip and write about something that has nothing to do with politics.  I opted for the latter. If you are looking for a scathing post about Sarah Palin, or why Sean Parnell is even worse, or a long reverie about what flavor pie* I’d like to throw at Mayor Dan Sullivan, you’ll have to come back at another time. Today, we head for the high seas.

*Is ‘cow’ a flavor?

Tuesday, June 6, 2011

1:22pm –

We’re heading out of Anchorage, after a very late start. It always takes longer than you think. Packing food, fishing gear, clothes, supplies… And it always seems that something is forgotten, no matter how many lists there are and how many times you strain the grey matter tying to run through all the things you might need, and all the possible scenarios of meals and weather and activities. We’re heading for the Whittier tunnel, which is long and dark and goes through a mountain. It’s the only way to drive to Whittier, the community that sits at the Western edge of Prince William Sound. The tunnel is shared by the Alaska Railroad. When a train isn’t using it, it becomes a one-way vehicle tunnel – Portage to Whittier, and then back again, Whittier to Portage.

I still think of the tunnel as “new” although it was only open for automobile traffic on June 7, 2000. This is the tunnel’s 11th Birthday Eve. It’s a disconcerting drive on the railroad track, with an ambient orange light and random dripping. And it’s made worse by the fact that there are signs with a graphic of a phone and the word HELP in what feels like hundred foot intervals the entire way. There is also a series of “Safe Houses” clearly signed and numbered off to the side of the tracks behind giant metal doors. This, of course, leads one to wonder what one might need HELP from, or a Safe House for. The sign outside the tunnel’s entrance gives a clue.

Yikes. It’s not hard to come up with dreadful scenarios in a long dark tunnel, but the benefits of what awaits on the other side make the claustrophobia and irrational fear of oncoming trains, random cave-ins or unexpected explosions worth it.

Motorhomes and campers clog the road with baseball capped drivers swinging their heads to and fro as they take in the sights – powdery blueish grey Portage creek on the one side, and high snow covered slopes hugged by hanging blue glaciers on the other. The little group of glaciers is named after poets – Byron, Burns, and another that escapes me. Of course Whittier itself is named after the American poet John Greenleaf Whittier, and the entire area looks like one big unutterable poem anyway, so it all seems to fit.

We take a stop at Portage Lake (not named after a poet) to fix a squeaky trailer wheel. There are a few icebergs floating in the icy blue water. That’s becoming more and more unusual, because this glacier, like many others, has been receding quickly. When I came to Alaska twenty years ago, you could see the glacier on the far side of the lake from the visitors center on the near side of the lake, and there were large icebergs that would routinely float to shore creating a fascinating and ever-changing sculpture garden. Now, the glacier has receded, turned the corner and can no longer be seen from the visitors center that was built for that purpose. And the icebergs are smaller and less frequent as climate change has its way. The larger ones on shore are dragged over by boat.

~Small icebergs adrift on Portage Lake

Precious minutes of sunny weather are stolen as we redistribute the weight in the boat, but we don’t want to become “those people” who break down or have some kind of HELP or Safe House-worthy tunnel emergency.

3:40 –

The tunnel has been navigated successfully and without incident, and the squeaky wheel was fixed. It didn’t even need grease. We finally have the boat loaded up, launch fee and parking paid, gas, water, and I take a quick trip to the Harbor Store to purchase a chart. Yes, the chart was the forgotten thing. It’s never hard to find a chart in a harbor town, and the Harbor Store had what we needed. And luckily the fudge store was on the way to the Harbor Store, so it all worked out well, and everyone was happy. I purchased a variety of fudges from the classic chocolate to the “Tunnel Special” – a delightful combination of chocolate, vanilla and caramel, which sounded much better than other tunnel possibilities I have recently conjured.

The girl at the Harbor Store says that the weather this past weekend was terrible – rainy and windy – and that there were boats that wanted in that couldn’t make it, and boats that wanted out that couldn’t go. Luckily this Monday means no weekend tunnel traffic, and beautiful blue skies. It doesn’t get much better than this.

6:00 – On the boat at last. It has been a gloriously uneventful trip and we are about two thirds of the way to Perry Island where we will camp for the night. We pass beautiful lacy tall waterfalls coming down from snow capped peaks. One of these falls is home to a kittiwake rookery that we will visit on the way back if we have time and weather permits. Now, we are eager to make camp. There are sea birds aplenty and we’ve seen murres, guillemots, and kittiwakes, but nothing of the sea mammal variety yet.

~A pigeon guillemot

There isn’t enough wind to sail, so we’re motoring and it’s slow going compared to the fishing boats with the huge outboards we see tearing past now and then. But it’s the perfect speed to stretch out in the sun on one of the benches, hat upon face, and take a nap.

I drift off to sleep and dream a beautiful dream – the kind that you always wish you would dream if you could choose, but instead you usually dream that you’re trying to run but your feet won’t move, or that you’ve forgotten your locker combination, or you have lost someone. My dream was sweet and blissful and vivid, and I’m kept there for a long time by the droning of the motor, the gentle rocking, the slap slap slap of the prow of the boat cutting through the tiny waves, and the ting ting of the sheets against the metal mast. I awaken and stretch, and look out at the sun reflecting in big diamond spangles off the tops of the lazy waves that make the Sound look almost like it’s made of syrup.

I understand why people are drawn to the sea, not only for recreation, but to leave the life of the land with its cares and human distress. Weeks or months or years at sea, I imagine, would create for a person a whole other universe, where land and its snares would seem like a thing that should only be enjoyed briefly before heading back out to the big blue real world, where things made sense, needs were clearly understood, and the world was both small and infinite at the same time.

8:00 –

We’ve nestled in to our unnamed cove in West Twin Bay. Daughter hops off and ties the bow end of the boat to a tree and we drop anchor off the stern. Our cabin heater, which doubles as a slow cooker somehow decides it isn’t in the mood to actually work. The pilot light is all we get, and our pre-baked, foil-wrapped potatoes which I’d put on an hour earlier are barely warm. So, we fire up the Coleman stove, cut the potatoes lengthwise and put them face down in a pan with a little melted butter until they are piping hot with little golden brown faces. The smell is intoxicating, as food smells tend to be in the great outdoors. We top them with chili and shredded cheddar and gorge ourselves. Several unwanted potato skins go overboard to feed the eager little fishes, and it becomes quite an activity of interest for the crew watching the skins float down like leaves and gradually fade out of sight into the deep calm blue.

One of my favorite things about this cove is that it’s always so still, and the rocks on the shore paired with their reflections make the most interesting visual displays. Vertically, they look almost like totem poles. But even horizontally, they are mesmerizing to see, like a kaleidoscope that changes as slowly as the tide.

Some sort of lone duck-like bird is circling around, quack-honking repeatedly. As someone who has no idea what she’s talking about, I can tell you with certainty that he is looking for a wayward friend, and sending out a lonely call. A pair of eagles passes over as well. There are often eagles here, but this pair doesn’t stop. They, apparently have business in the east.

The crew goes to shore and discovers some of the native fauna hiding under rocks.

~Small crabs of an unknown species

10:00 –

It’s reading time. I had a great idea while we were packing up this morning that I’d suggest to my daughter that she bring the copy of Jane Eyre I’d bought her not too long ago. I knew that getting a teenager to read Jane Eyre might not be easy, even though it was one of my favorites at that age.

“Are you bringing a book?” I ask.

“Yes,” the voracious reader says, with a huge undercurrent of “Duh.”

“What book?” I inquire, bracing myself for some godawful vampire thing, or angst-ridden tale of high school survival, fully prepared to say, “How about Jane Eyre?”

“Jane Eyre,” she says and stops me in my tracks.

So now it’s reading time and out of the backpack comes the leather-like gold-edged volume of Jane Eyre. I read aloud, because I don’t care how old you are, it’s always nice to have someone read aloud to you. Turns out she had already read eight chapters, so I picked up where she left off. Chapter Nine seemed to begin happily with long, florid descriptions of May in England – hollyhocks, primroses, blue sky, damp earth, walks in the wood – but as fate would have it, the plot took a sharp turn and ended with Jane’s best childhood friend Helen dying of consumption in the orphanage with Jane’s little arms wrapped around her shoulders as she slept. It made me think about how many books I’d enjoyed growing up that seemed to feature sick English children, and/or orphanages. While most people who ended up in Alaska were inspired by Jack London and Louis L’Amour, I was reading the Bronte sisters, and The Secret Garden. With thoughts of my move to Alaska, and dying of consumption or typhoid, I drifted off.

(Tomorrow – Day 2, and how I awoke.)

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