Tracy Arm and Sawyer Glacier
“Magnificent.” “Rugged.” “Humbling.” “Awesome.” “Impressive.” These were some of the words I heard from people in the Zodiac as we stretched the limits of language attempting to describe the experience of being where we were, in Tracy Arm, in front of a glacier. Ice floated all around us, sculpted into shapes and facets, some clear, some blue. Cliffs with their feet in the fjord soared upward to either side, etched by waterfalls and traced with the returning green of tenacious plants recolonizing rock swept bare by glacier. Seals lazed about on the flatter pieces of ice, lifting their heads to see us pass by. The mighty Sawyer Glacier creaked and rumbled as it carved its way down to the sea.
It was a good place to think about time. High mountain peaks in the distance that raised their rocky heads 50 million years ago. Ridges 2000 feet high sculpted by ice 20,000 years ago during the Great Ice Age. Ice breaking off the front of the glacier that might have fallen as snow when our great-great grandfathers were alive. A bright blue berg so big it will take weeks or months to melt.
As for us, we were something like a small bright spot of warmth in a vast expanse of space and time. Not that our insignificance was all that serious: when seals swam close to look at us, we wondered, were they perhaps admiring our festive array of hats?
A cup of hot chocolate, and lunch, and we were ready to go back out again, kayaking this time. Paddles dipped with almost no sound on the waters’ placid surface. Small pieces of ice were investigated, waterfalls appreciated. We paddled right up to the steep fjord’s sides, looking at patterns in the rock and the small plants colonizing cracks and knolls. Back on the ship, we took time to look at mountain goats, creamy dots with legs way up on a mountain. Then it was time to head back down Tracy Arm, a scenic journey punctuated by a visit to a waterfall – I should say right up to a waterfall, with the nose of our ship nearly in the falls. The word for that experience, I think, was “hilarity.”
Tonight, heartfelt sharing by many guests at recap brought home some of what we experienced this voyage. We are none of us, it’s clear, exactly the same as when we came. We have been shaped and moved and inspired and made grateful by the gifts given by this wild and wondrous trip through Southeast Alaska. And now, we are steaming in to Juneau, or as I call it, “home.”
