Alaska Dream, Summer 2024

This year we decided to check off two “firsts”—our first trip to Alaska and our first cruise. Wary of going on our own in the huge state of Alaska and of the oversized cruise ships that hold thousands of people, we chose a 50-person ship to take us up the Inner Passage of Southeast Alaska, from Sitka to Skagway and back to Juneau. A voyage that lasted five nights on board the Arctic Dream was just the ticket for us. We could view the majestic landscapes of Alaska and get out for a few quick, guided land excursions, and be pampered by the ship’s wonderful crew.

After a long day of flying from Atlanta to Seattle and then to Sitka, we were on our own for a day and a half before joining the other cruisers. Flying into Sitka on a bright, clear day, we could see the surrounding mountains and islands, the extinct cone of Mt. Edgecumbe, a lighthouse popping up at the edge of a wooded island. Looking out my window I felt that suck of air when you see something so new, so beautiful, the excitement of a new landscape, one of such wide expanses of blue and green.

Our first day in Sitka initiated us in small-town Alaska. Wally had determined to go to the Fortress of the Bear to see bears up close, but not too close. He thought we would ride the city bus out to the Fortress, five miles outside of town. After wandering about looking for the bus stops and any approaching buses, we realized that it was Sunday and that buses did not run. Plan B—call a taxi. Thank heavens for cell phones and all the information at hand. A red minivan with a taxi sign atop approached, a driver waved at us, circled around to drop off passengers and then picked us up along Lincoln Street. What a character—long hair, a janky minivan whose sliding door did not always work, patches of duct tape, he took calls for rides on his cell phone, writing addresses on a pad nearby or on his hand, juggling times of the pick-up requests that kept coming in. He told us that he is from Sitka, lives there in the summer but goes to Phoenix for the winters, not because of the cold but because of the unending winter night. He dropped us at the Fortress and said we could settle our bill when he returned to take us back into town.

At the Fortress of the Bear, we saw rescued cubs grown up in captivity, cavorting, eating, and responding to the trainers. As cubs, these bears were orphaned when their mothers died, sometimes shot for intruding into human habitat and sometimes meeting the usual accidents of the wild. By state law, orphaned Alaskan bear cubs are euthanized. To prevent that sad ending, the Fortress rescues the cubs and raises them, not to be released into a wilderness they do not know but to be kept in captivity, at zoos or other educational institutions. The center is located in an abandoned waste treatment facility with deep enclosures that allow the bears to frisk about and visitors to watch them up close but safely out of reach. As we watched the Alaska Coastal Brown Bears and the Black Bears doing their things, a bald eagle flew in with something dangling from its beak and perched in a nearby tree. Soon another bald eagle swooshed in. What a remarkable sight—to observe these magnificent birds so close that I could see the nearest one’s throat vibrate as he called to the other, not just the “rr-eee” sound but a warbling call and response across the pines. One of the young women working at the center said that when she first came to Alaska she was thrilled to see bald eagles, but now she has seen so many that they are a routine part of the landscape.

I thought that was crazy, sad, to become immured to the beauty of the wild, but by the end of our week in Alaska I was no longer blown away by the majesties we saw, everyday more sea, more forest, more mountains, more magnificent views. So much for the human capacity for awe.

We spent the rest of this day poking around Sitka. When we first walked around on that Sunday morning before our visit to the Fortress, it seemed to be a sleepy fishing town. Few cars or people were about. But by the time we returned from our visit to the Fortress, one of the monstrous cruise ships had vomited up its 4000-plus tourists onto the streets of this town that had seen the Russians come and go, the Tlingit people displaced by imperial interests, and the US asserting itself as part of “Seward’s folly.” Now, Sitka is sporadically taken over by noxious, popcorn buying, photo-shooting crowds who need signs like those at the Old Harbor Book Store to remind them of manners, to not spill their drinks on the books. It was interesting to see how downtown Sitka changed when tourists came in; suddenly the popcorn and moose sausage tents popped up, the souvenir shops opened, and just as quickly disappeared when the wave of humanity swept back to their ships.

At the bookstore, we bought a few books by Sitka authors, two detective mysteries by John Straley, a novel by Brendan Jones, and a version of an old Athabascan legend, Two Old Women by Velma Wallis. To prepare for our trip, I read Travels in Alaska by John Muir, and Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez to orient myself a bit.

Besides popping into touristy stores and getting the obligatory tee shirts (mine has seven of the important Alaskan fish figured down the left sleeve), we walked through the small Russian Orthodox Church in the middle of downtown. The iconography in the church, metallic work around painted cutouts of the saints, shapes a different kind of ornate from the more familiar Roman Catholic art. The Russian impact is felt not just in this church but in place names like Baranof Place.

Southeastern Alaska sits in a rainforest, rain and clouds hanging on mountain tops the norm. The result is a lush landscape. Some of the plants I saw and identified on our strolls around Sitka using my Picture This app:

Rockspray Cotoneaster
Rugosa Rose
Cornflower
Common Comfry
Peking Spurge
Mugo Pine
Golden Chain Tree

Before joining the other cruise members, we stopped by the Sitka Sound Science Center, a museum and salmon hatchery. We learned about the life cycle of the salmon, how researchers identify them for licensing purposes by looking at the rings in their inner ear (who even knew that fish had ears?). We also got to touch, with two fingers, tidal pool creatures, which felt like jello.

Joined up with the other 47 cruisers, we were led by a local resident to some of the other Sitka sites: The Raptor Center that seeks to rehabilitate injured raptors, bald eagles, owls, golden eagles. The Sheldon Jackson Museum at the location of the school founded by Rev. Jackson to convert the indigenous people to “civilization,” to kill the Indian to save the person, as the saying went. Ironically, as he tried to strip the Indians of their heritage, deracinating them, he also began collecting their artifacts, their artwork, tools, whaling suits, kayaks, totem poles, baskets, into a pretty impressive small museum. I was struck by the variety of tools and baskets displayed, fashioned for specific, different tasks, and how even the utilitarian tools were decorated, designs on spoon handles, intricate patterns woven into the baskets and clothing. And the attention to toys for children, dolls and miniature figures to prepare children for adulthood. The Alaska State Museum in Juneau has a similar collection.

This is a game for children to help them prepare for a life of hunting and fishing.

The Sitka National Historical Park and Totem Trail commemorating the final defeat of the Tlingit people by the Russians in 1804 features a totem path that takes you into the woods and along the Indian River. The totem poles are not ancient poles since they were destroyed, but recently carved poles in an effort, belatedly, to preserve the crafts and stories of the native people. These are impressive works of art and culture reaching to the sky, figures of ravens, bears, whales—clan icons and symbols. As magnificent as these are, they have been defaced and disgraced by egotistical tourists who feel compelled to leave their initials wherever they go.

I wonder what my totem, my icons, would be—the female, mother figure, a moon, what animal would mark my clan?

On Board the Arctic Dream

After the tour of Sitka, we boarded the Arctic Dream, our small ship, went through the safety drills, and then headed to Fin Island for our first dinner together. We were served a buffet of salmon, roast beef, and King Crab legs. This was my first time eating crab legs so I watched the more experienced eaters and then grabbed pliers, scissors, and forks to pull out the sweet, soft, succulent meat just waiting to be dipped in melted butter and popped into my mouth. After dinner, we strolled around the island’s rock beach, looking at the mix of gray rocks and shell bits. One of the crew members handed me a small conch shell, open to show its inner swirls of butter yellow tinged with shades of light peach, a tiny spot of purple at one of the spiral joints. This is one example of the kindness of the crew.

Our first day began with a morning stretch session led by Kendra, the events director. Balancing in the poses was a bit more challenging with the movement of the boat, but it felt good to stretch and meditate. After a breakfast of Swedish pancakes with lingonberry sauce, we went out for a guided hike. We could choose among three groups—Active, Intermediate, Strollers. We chose the Active group, led by Kendra and followed up by Shane, who also served as the bartender. Walking through the woods on the trail to Lake Eva, we saw the heads of a mother bear and her two cubs pop up near the stream below us. Hereafter, Kendra would blow her bear horn and Shane would shout, “Bear! Bear!” to keep the bears away from us. On the way back to the ship, we spotted a fresh pile of bear poop on the trail! So close. It was a beautiful day among the large trees, dainty flowers, including the Chocolate Lily, and moss of the Alaskan rainforest.

Much of our time on board ship was spent moving up and down the bays and channels of the Inner Passage, which is edged on both sides by mountains, many of them peaked with snow and etched by the centuries’ old movements of water, wind, and ice. Watching this panorama as we glided along prompted musings about the stories the rocks could tell, the geologic stories that John Muir had read in them of glaciers moving slowly but inexorably down to the water below. The sides of some of the uplifts, scratched with lines that could stand in for petroglyphs with stories of their own to tell, the distant moan of the ice, the bits of ice floating in Glacier Bay spoke to me of geologic stories, mythic stories, stories of life, death, the struggle to “be.”

Everything seems so quiet in the Alaskan fiords. The hum and murmur of the boat stopped, and then it was just quiet. Occasionally the lap of the water against the boat’s side or creaking of the weirdly shaped floes. Their fantastic shapes invite the mind to imagine shapes and figures just as we do when we find animals and faces in the clouds. Here a row of creatures bound by planks of ice, there a futuristic dining set, weird ice cubes floating by.

The quiet, broken too by the call of birds, gulls and the stray bald eagle. Perhaps the splash of a sea creature, whale or otter, moving between depth, surface, and air. All this stillness belies, surely, worlds of unquiet, of the struggle to live, to eat, the throes of death, going on forever below the ocean’s surface, in the wooded regions of the mountains, in the air as birds fly in line to new habitat. Even the implied peril of the silent jet overhead, its contrail suggesting stories of might and power.

The stories implied by the mountain faces—one of a face gazing skyward, a large nose pointing up under an eye of snow outlined by a ring of melt. What tales would the indigenous folk tell of this giant—a chief conquered or conquering? A godly person looking heavenward? A grieving husband or parent looking out for a missing loved one?

What are the stories the mountain, ice, and water tell and who can read them?

A moving panorama just outside my cabin door

Meandering through the splendor of air and sea and mountains

The groan and grind of the ship’s motors

The constant slap of waves against the metal hull

Gliding between past and present

Between uplifting mountain ranges

Snow-topped, jagged peaks pointing heavenward

Sun and cloud dappling the snow, splotched and frosted

Visages of mountain faces turned upward,

Noses pointing to the sky

A strip of wooded hill,

Islands shaped like women, round,

Lying, an arm stretched out above the head.

Today a ceiling of gray clouds

Waves topped white above steel-gray water

The Chilkat Mountains

Cups of snow between the sharp peaks

Rock designs created by snow, carved by wind and ice and pressure

Edged by green-brown foothills of Sitka spruce and hemlock

Ending at water’s edge, hiding the details of rainforest beneath their thick canopy

A monstrous glacier, streaked with blue, edged in brown

Making its way to the water

Down, down, inexorably down

Water falls stair-stepping down, finding passage in crevices of mountains

Ever movement.

Skagway and the White Pass and Yukon Route Rail

At the north end of the Passage lies Skagway, where gold seekers of the late nineteenth century crossed the treacherous trail into the Klondike in hopes of striking it rich. They walked with their gear through the snow and up the mountain, single file over and over, back-to-back with men and horses carrying the 2000 pounds of supplies required by the Canadian government up beyond the tree line. We could see bits of the narrow trail from the train that took us above the tree line and up to White Pass, a trail on which three thousand horses died.

The rail line from Skagway to the summit, climbing almost 3,000 feet in 20 miles, was completed in 1900. As the labor contractor for the White Pass & Yukon Route, Michael J. Henry announced, “Give me enough dynamite, and snoose, and I’ll build you a railroad to hell”—in this case a hell of rock and ice riding on a narrow track balanced between cliff and abyss.

Skagway itself is a sorry little town, living on tourism and legends of the past. When we arrived, three gigantic cruise ships were anchored in the harbor, spilling forth tourists in search of souvenirs, drinks, and jewelry, crowding streets preserved or made anew to reflect the heydays of gold mining.

Our tour guide told us that most of the summer population leaves with the end of tourist season, leaving only about 700 full-time residents to tough it out during the long dark winter. Who stays? Teachers? Construction works for the railroad? Miners? We were also told that even though Skagway has a health clinic, there is no doctor, just a PA, and that though it has an x-ray machine there is no radiologist. If someone has a real health issue they have to be flown out, at a cost of about $30,000 per trip. That is why everyone in remote Skagway as well as the state capital Juneau has Life Flight Insurance at $125 a year. A rough life, it seems, even if surrounded by astounding natural beauty.

At the end of a long day cruising, touring Skagway, and taking the train, I tried a local beer (because the boat had no wine).

Speed Dating on the Arctic Dream

How to get to know, quickly, fifty-plus people in five days. First, planned activities, like hiking, touring, and kayaking threw cruisers together-- the polar plunge, sharing impressions of the wild, identifying bird calls and plant life together, poking around looking at the rocks and shells on the beach. Stretching with women in the morning, getting snacks and drinks in the evening. Sharing tables at mealtimes. The usual conversation openers: We are Wally and Susan. Where are you from? Is this your first time in Alaska? Is this your first time on a cruise? And then short biographies are shared, interests, careers, and family. Wally developed a version of our story that he could repeat in each of our encounters with others, mainly other seniors. Thus, we learned about Froma’s head injury, Marie’s little cottage behind her daughter’s house where she tends her garden, Jesse and Carol’s careers as journalists, a shared touchstone with SCAD and Auburn, Bill’s white-guy Afro from the 70s. We watched the retired astronomer busy himself on deck painting the mountain scene and sixth-grader Noah skipping stones with his grandpa.

And we got to know some of the crew members—Kendra with her soft voice, “Good morning Arctic Dreamers”; Shane the bartender who hailed from Bastrop, Texas; John, the naturalist who read us nighttime Tlingit stories; Carl, our section’s waiter who quickly learned that I like Diet Coke with my breakfast. And the crew members who helped us on with life jackets and then into the Kodiak to take us ashore or launched us in our kayaks. One of the stories I kept hearing from these young people is the way they follow the seasons, working the cruises all summer, going to National Parks to work a season, hopping around the country and the world waiting tables and getting tourism gigs. A nomadic kind of life that seems to have a charm about it.

By the end of the cruise, we felt like a family, a unit that had come together for a short time and shared life stories and memorable experiences.