An appetite for ice.
We have entered the ancestral lands of the Tlingit under mystifying skies. While the greater part of Canada is burning – turning the entire state into an inferno and the Atlantic coast into a respiratory health hazard – we gaze in awe at the huge “ice bow” or sun halo that suddenly appeared in the SE Alaska sky.
The Tlingit, aka People of the Tides, were in ancient times as fierce as the Haida who they loved to fight and trade with. They used to mark the passage of time through the occurrence of important events, such as the yearly return of the salmon or a flood or the receding of glaciers. And it’s the glaciers that we are after.
Nowadays, members of the Tlingit community are also recruited to perform their dances and storytelling for cruise ship passengers. We saw a recruitment pamphlet to that purpose pinned to the message board of the local grocery store in Port Wrangell . A person gotta eat.
We spent quite some time in the Wrangell museum and later on in the brilliant Alaska State Museum of Juneau. “Wrangell has been governed by four nations:Tlingit, Russia, Great Britain and The United States. The assimilation of cultures makes the Island a good example of what it means to be American.” an exhibit in the Wrangell museum proudly proclaimed. The Alaska State Museum in Juneau gave a far more sobering account of what happened. They spoke of “colliding cultures” and “newcomers justifying violent theft by defining indigenous cultures as outside the moral protection of Christian beliefs.” The last major battle of the Tlingit against the Russians was fought in Sitka in 1804. The Russians won. The Russians sold Alaska to the USA 63 years later. The Tlingit got screwed twice.
But the main tourist hotspots are still the glaciers, if you can call rivers of ice hotspots. So, before the total meltdown and before we ourselves have receded into nothingness, we hereby have started our quest for pre-historic ice.
Under big skies O2 cautiously noses through emerald green water dotted with oversized ice cubes. As we advance up the fjord the cubes grow more numerous and bigger, enough to make me a bit jumpy. But not so much My Captain. With nerves of steel, he slaloms up the fjord with great precision. Seals watch us motor by with sad puppy eyes. I stand at the bow, but I am not belting out a song with arms spread wide. I am holding on to the extended boat hook instead. I am supposed to help guide O2 through the maze by pushing off smaller ice floes. But the ice sometimes hits the bow anyway with an unpleasant boink-boink sound of a wooden log. I try to figure out the total underwater mass of the ice floating by. It’s a 10/90 ratio but I’m not sure whether it’s a lateral or a vertical spread or both. One thing is sure: O2 ‘s fiberglass hulls and propellers are no match for those floating bigger chunks of blue. But My Captain dodges all real hazards like a pro. Never mind my boat hook.
The ice is all around us now and I anxiously urge My Captain to go no further, please. That’s when the glacier emerges in all its majesty just around the bend. The water in front of this looming wall of ice is packed with ice floes carrying seals and eagles. We cut the engines, we drift and we gaze in awe. Through our binoculars we spot blood on the ice. Two eagles are fighting over a bloody something. Oh no! Not a newborn puppy seal! But it is the rather gross looking afterbirth that the victorious eagle is lifting off the ice, up in the air where the fight continues. Some bloody morsels fall back down only to be expertly scooped up in midair by eagle number three. We are witnessing a pupping season fest in an over-the-top decor and we can’t believe how lucky we are. But the tide is turning and the ice is slowly enclosing us. We are forced to turn back lest we get stuck.
The next day, we were fortunate enough to be assigned a perfect mooring spot in the “transient, first come first serve” harbor of Auke Bay, a pleasing distance away from Juneau’s cruise ship’s skyline. We were in the company of the US Coast Guard, whale watching boats, commercial fishing boats getting ready for the salmon run, super yachts with helicopters on top and Hōkūle’a. Hōkūle’a is a Hawaiian double-hulled sailing canoe that was getting ready for her four-year “Moananuiākea Voyage for Earth.” To us, seeing her in Juneau felt like coming full circle. The first time we had seen her was in Hilo, Hawaii, more than a year ago. We have a feeling that we might meet up again somewhere down the road on some atoll of the South Pacific.
We have now reached Hoonah where Ramses is about to fly in, looking for adventure. And with an insatiable hunger for wildlife. We do believe Alaska will deliver.
