Florence Bay, Chichagof Island
All week, it seems, we’ve been forging new trails: walking on beaches and in woods that are unmarked, scanning shores and seas for wildlife that may or may not appear. We’ve poked and prodded, looked and listened, even sometimes tasted the wilderness of the Tongass National Forest. What do you find at the end of a journey that had no final destination in mind? Well, friendship and the surprise of particularity (a whale’s exhalation sounding like a hair spray can going full bore, the blue of icebergs like a light saber wielded by Luke Skywalker’s friends). We each find ourselves at the end of this amazing week with our own memories and connections.
We put ashore this morning in Florence Bay, a small nook in the larger Sitkoh Bay. The seas were calm and silvered, so kayakers set out and were rewarded with the surprise of hearing a humpback whale exhale at their own level, the spume of its breath rising far above their heads. If that weren’t enough, a river otter trotted and sniffed along the shoreside rocks and logs before hunching back into the woods.
Hikers followed sign of another sort: the deep, clear, recent tracks of brown bears were everywhere along the trails we walked. You could stick a small finger (and we did!) into the indentation of their deeply curved nails. Each toe pad was distinct, each heel firmly set into the soft earth and mosses. Recalling that while we’d pulled into our anchorage we’d seen a bear browsing the shoreline, we kept a keen eye. All along the trail were chewed ends of cow parsnip, the tracks of a bear walking purposefully along a path originally made for people but clearly good enough (if not better) for use for bears.
It’s hard to describe what walking along the trail of an animal as magnificent as a coastal brown bear is like. Footstep after footstep was remarkable. We felt the indentation of each toe pad. We looked around us into the woods, where the bear must have gone – right? – where the bear must still be peering out at us. At one point, a clump of thick hair on the trail was passed around, its musky, gritty scent communicating its own wildness to us.
And after our morning adventures? The work of forcing our pants and sweaters and boots back into the suitcases they came in. The surprise of Dall’s porpoise cruising in the bow wake of the National Geographic Sea Lion, their white sides and brownish heads sinking out of view and then rising for breath. A humpback whale hurling itself out of the water in a crazy spin. The swirled and roiled currents of Serigus Narrows. A slide show and reading of images and text that travelers had compiled throughout the week. A final gathering of friends before airports and mail and all the un-rainforest demands are thrust upon us tomorrow. We might be dispersing after our week together, but bears and ice and the multitudinous greens of Southeast Alaska will travel home with us all.
All week, it seems, we’ve been forging new trails: walking on beaches and in woods that are unmarked, scanning shores and seas for wildlife that may or may not appear. We’ve poked and prodded, looked and listened, even sometimes tasted the wilderness of the Tongass National Forest. What do you find at the end of a journey that had no final destination in mind? Well, friendship and the surprise of particularity (a whale’s exhalation sounding like a hair spray can going full bore, the blue of icebergs like a light saber wielded by Luke Skywalker’s friends). We each find ourselves at the end of this amazing week with our own memories and connections.
We put ashore this morning in Florence Bay, a small nook in the larger Sitkoh Bay. The seas were calm and silvered, so kayakers set out and were rewarded with the surprise of hearing a humpback whale exhale at their own level, the spume of its breath rising far above their heads. If that weren’t enough, a river otter trotted and sniffed along the shoreside rocks and logs before hunching back into the woods.
Hikers followed sign of another sort: the deep, clear, recent tracks of brown bears were everywhere along the trails we walked. You could stick a small finger (and we did!) into the indentation of their deeply curved nails. Each toe pad was distinct, each heel firmly set into the soft earth and mosses. Recalling that while we’d pulled into our anchorage we’d seen a bear browsing the shoreline, we kept a keen eye. All along the trail were chewed ends of cow parsnip, the tracks of a bear walking purposefully along a path originally made for people but clearly good enough (if not better) for use for bears.
It’s hard to describe what walking along the trail of an animal as magnificent as a coastal brown bear is like. Footstep after footstep was remarkable. We felt the indentation of each toe pad. We looked around us into the woods, where the bear must have gone – right? – where the bear must still be peering out at us. At one point, a clump of thick hair on the trail was passed around, its musky, gritty scent communicating its own wildness to us.
And after our morning adventures? The work of forcing our pants and sweaters and boots back into the suitcases they came in. The surprise of Dall’s porpoise cruising in the bow wake of the National Geographic Sea Lion, their white sides and brownish heads sinking out of view and then rising for breath. A humpback whale hurling itself out of the water in a crazy spin. The swirled and roiled currents of Serigus Narrows. A slide show and reading of images and text that travelers had compiled throughout the week. A final gathering of friends before airports and mail and all the un-rainforest demands are thrust upon us tomorrow. We might be dispersing after our week together, but bears and ice and the multitudinous greens of Southeast Alaska will travel home with us all.
