Dropping anchor early at Pavlof Harbor, on Chichagof Island, we seized the chance to really “get after it” in the backcountry. While others spend our last morning together kayaking past bedrock walls squirming with intertidal critters, or taking photo walks to the waterfall of a major salmon stream, I join some intrepid hikers for three hours off-trail, bushwhacking to Pavlof Lake the Alaskan way.
We ducked into the woods, passing mud holes thick with skunk cabbage and deer tracks, and marveling at the engineering of a beaver lodge. Before long, word drifted back through our line to shush up and look–brown bears ahead! Cautiously we moved forward, gathering at the lake’s edge. In awestruck silence, we watched the mother and two cubs swimming gracefully, powerfully across the lake, an easy stone’s lob away.
Entering the lakeside meadows and thick forests, it became an atavistic romp for me and the four young boys at the lead. We gobbled blueberries right off the bush, no paws allowed, brown bear style. Reaching a wet, grassy knoll, we imitated the bear digs along our path, clawing and sniffing in the sweet rotten earth, and smearing dirt on our cheeks like warpaint. We see plenty of wild country from the deck of National Geographic Sea Bird–but I think we really come here to rediscover the wildness in ourselves.
How much have we seen this expedition? And yet how little? Looking around as we steam south, I realize that Pavlof is only one tiny indentation in Chichagof’s vastness, the follicle of a single whisker on a thousand-pound brown bear. And even Chichagof is swallowed up by the unimaginably larger Tongass National Forest. This is exactly as it should be. This is where we come to feel small again–to be one species among many, exploring our shared forest.
