Looking for Alaska (21 page)

The tears stopped. Her chin jutted higher and tilted slightly. “Really? Well, good.”

We walked back to the house. She started to head inside still wearing all that green on her side, her shorts, her T-shirt, her shoes, like a ribbon won in a race. I suggested we hose off her shoes and leg first.

“Dad,” Rebekah said now with a teasing tone. “Earth to Dad. Where are you, can you see this unbelievable waterfall?”

I was coming back slowly. Had I paid enough attention to each and every moment we'd spent together? Did I do all I could for her brothers and sisters? Even when we were together, like now, was I somewhere else some of the time? Much of the time.

“Yes, it's fantastic, isn't it?”

I remembered my mother, who, although she was blond and hadn't matched Rebekah in “fight back” strength, reminded me a great deal of Rebekah. One Saturday in a field at one of my college professors' farms, my mother had run from one wildflower to the other, filled with joy. I remembered being slightly embarrassed at her childlike expression.

“Dad, what's up, where are you?” Rebekah kept pulling me back.

“I'm thinking back on our life.”

I watched the water running down the front of that unrelenting rock face, falling, falling, falling, never stopping until it froze again. I saw that water as my tears, tears of joy at being in this kayak with my little girl, who was now a woman. The glacier and the rock were me: too often frozen, seeming still, expressionless. But glaciers do cry in Alaska.

“Dad, this kayak is way heavier back there on your end, so paddle. Look, Mark's right up to the waterfall.”

“All right, honey.” For most of the rest of our journey together I paddled and was present with her, Mark, and our often truly unbelievable environment. But maybe its power was what had brought the memories welling up in me in the first place. When we got right up to where the waterfall hit the ocean, the mist was cool and cleansing, and it washed over me.

LIKE ANOTHER PLANET

I began to dig my oar into the glass-clear ocean with more energy. We headed west out of the cove and across the bay. Two or three miles in front of us was a wall, a wall that could enclose a contented people, a wall of white and blue ice, the face of Aialik Glacier. More than halfway across the water we began to see chunks of floating ice, like mini icebergs, some the size of our kayak above water. Occasionally crashing, cracking sounds, sudden and violent, came from the direction we were headed. In an irregular, puffy wind, we moved toward it, silently cutting the salt water, which was surely several hundred feet deep below us. Clouds hung on top of the peaks rising up behind the glacier. Was that a front? Would it overtake us before we made it to the other side?

We were now in the middle of this twenty-five-mile-long bay, and it was only us on the water as far as we could see. We were as insignificant as a dry spruce needle floating on a lake. Mark said there were bears all over but we would not see them unless they crossed the barren fields of boulders or we found them grazing on a just-melted patch of avalanched snow.

Floating in this place was more like being in another world than anyplace else I'd ever been. Photographs I'd seen of planets with rock mountains and no plant life almost seemed to have more in common with this place.

We made it to the other side and pulled our kayak out of a beach made of rounded, smooth rocks. We were now at the side of Aialik Glacier. From our little toehold on the beach at sea level to a little over three miles inland, this world rose over five thousand feet. The humbling sound of the glacier calving was intimidating.
Crack.
An ancient piece of glacier fell from the face of Aialik Glacier and hit the ocean. A resulting large ring of waves came toward us, some big enough to surf on. A few people in Alaska have been killed by kayaking up to the face of a glacier. Out here alone, the power of this magnificent structure creates a false sense of invincibility. Only those who know what can happen can force themselves to be wary and remember how quickly humans can be swatted by the power of even a little bit of it.

We pulled our kayaks far onto the beach. Ours was so heavy, Mark and I had to pull it together. People on an Alaska high may get careless. They don't pull their kayaks far enough onto the beach; a glacier calves or a salmon seiner goes by, sending a wave high on the beach. The kayakers are off hiking or distracted by some awesome sight. When they come back their kayak and all their supplies are floating away, there is no way to reach it. You don't swim out to get your kayak in glacier-cooled, numbing Alaskan salt water. A local might swim out a short way, but you get too far out and your arms and legs quit working and you're gone, sinking, though your brain is still functioning. Many Alaskans have watched loved ones, brothers, best friends, barely known crew members, strangers, drown, unable to do anything to save them. Some have tried, knowing better, and died too. No wonder people dive in; the pristine water doesn't look dangerous. It is so enticing, so seductive. But because of the temperature, it is deadly.

Dark sand dunes rose from the beach. We walked over them toward the face of the glacier. A fresh line of wide tracks led away from the beach up toward the steep rock mountains. Mark said they belonged to a large black bear, that he could have been there a half an hour ago, even fifteen minutes. When we got to the left edge of the face of Aialik Glacier, it seemed that the glacier could be the size of twenty five-story buildings, stacked side by side. Some large pieces of ice, some the size of a pickup truck, were floating in front of it.
Crack.
A piece the size of a house popped off the glacier without warning and fell like an ice guillotine. A couple of seals, laying on floating pieces of the glacier's ice that had already fallen, were given quite a ride.

A rushing, turbulent creek streamed out of the far left side of the glacier. You could almost do some white-water kayaking down it, if you were skilled enough. Rebekah and I stood together, not talking, being uplifted by what spread out before us, feeling the cold blasts of glacier air, hearing so much. Sound was now coming from all around us.
Bang
came the largest sound we'd heard yet, as if a third of a mountain peak had just broken off. Large pieces the size of small cars had fallen into a heap at the mysterious hole in the bottom of the glacier that was also the source of this creek. The water was a brownish gray, full of silt. Pieces of the glacier were being washed down the fast-moving creek as they fell, some too large to float. They were the most pure ice-blue color, bouncing, rolling over the rocky creek bottom and standing out vividly from the opaque silver-brown water.

Rebekah and I stood silent and overwhelmed; we shared this spectacular moment, just us. I realized we didn't need the “spectacular,” just the moment, just the two of us. Mark was relaxing on top of one of the dunes.

Mark and I dragged the double kayak across the sand until about three-quarters of it was in the water. Rebekah waded in and spryly eased into her front spot. I climbed in and, to keep water from getting in the kayak, attached my spray skirt to the plastic lip around the hole I sat in, and then we were moving. Our plan, really Mark's plan, was to make it to another hard-to-reach glacier and camp there. We paddled along about a hundred yards offshore. There were pieces of a narrow beach, and then the land began to climb and climb. I saw a black bear feeding. We were so silent it didn't notice us at first, then it ran into the dense underbrush. All we could see was the movement of the brush as the bear made its way up the mountainside. Even the bear had to squeeze and maneuver in and around the seemingly impregnable alders that grew up from the oceanside until there was mostly just rock.

Ahead was a bit of land shaped like an eagle's head, jutting into the bay. We'd paddled ten miles or so. We hugged the beach, looking for an opening somewhere that Mark said led to a saltwater lake. He had pulled out away from the wilderness beach, farther into the calmer bay waters, and he motioned us to join him.

“We need to be careful here. The tide is coming out and the current in that passageway to the lake can be dangerous,” Mark said. He was a gentle, sensitive soul with eyes like a mischievous boy. “Follow my kayak and keep your bow into the current; you don't want to get sideways and get flipped in that current, okay?”

“We will follow you,” Rebekah answered.

I could see turbulence, almost like whirlpools, where the water coming from Pedersen Glacier and the tidal lake met the prevailing water currents of the bay. Once past the agitated waters near the mouth of the creeklike entry, the water got shallow and clear as empty space. I looked for salmon or seals, anything swimming, but I saw nothing. Inside the cove we steered right and pulled up to a place to camp. There was no way to hike into this area. Mark immediately found bear sign everywhere. There was a metal container to put our food in, and we had gotten some “unbreakable” plastic containers from the park headquarters in Seward. We pitched our tents in an island of spruce, choosing the only area that had not been dug up too recently by bears. What were they looking for in the dark, loamy soil?

When I saw the claw marks in the soil, though, I realized what made me feel as if I were on another planet. There was almost no soil out here at all. It was mostly glaciers and ice fields and bare rock mountains and ocean and melted snow falling here, running there. The few trees or grass or lichen that did grow appeared lonely, just barely welcome.

There was bear sign all over. They had used some of the spruce to sharpen their claws. The ground was so shaded that little grew, but something must have been in the ground, grubs or roots or something tasty. Otherwise, why would so much of this dark soil be dug up? Some relatively big holes were here and there. The other thing I was surprised at but didn't mention to Rebekah or Mark was the amount of bear crap. There were many piles, much of it fresh, as if a couple of big bears lived in this spot and slept here every night, whenever they were not out foraging for food. Some clearings in parts of this island-shaped woods appeared to have been cleared by bears, the ground raked clean with their long claws. Rebekah paid close attention to all this recent bear activity. From the look of some of the bear piles, the bears could have been here ten minutes before we landed. I wondered where they were; maybe in some tall marsh grass at the north end of where we camped?

We chose the least-disturbed place to set up our two tents. I had done such a careful job packing: my still camera, my video camera, my minidisc player, and shotgun mike—all so sensitive to water, especially salt water. Mark didn't feel that we could get in too much trouble out here, or get lost. He had a handheld radio that could communicate if we needed to with any charter fishing-boat captain or tour boat that might be around.

I put all my electronic gear in a corner of the tent in a pile. We put our food in the “bearproof” containers. Rebekah was clearly accustomed to living in the wilderness after her recent monthlong experience. She had every piece of her equipment in an orderly pile. I looked around—something of mine was missing. I knew there should be a purple stuff sack I'd bought at REI in Anchorage, along with the waterproof bags. Where was it? It had my sleeping bag in it. I went back to the kayak; surely the purple stuff sack and the sleeping bag were in one of its holds. I went through every one, stuck my arm down the bigger ones until it disappeared. No sleeping bag. Okay, no problem. I did have my sleeping mat and the warm fleece pants and JanSport parka I'd used when we had gone to Tibet and Everest in 1984. I had warm socks and even a wool hat.

Rebekah noticed I was looking around too much. She lifted her head up from writing in her black notebook.

“Dad, what are you looking for, anyway?” she asked, mostly consumed with her journaling.

“Oh, nothing,” I answered, hoping for no follow-up question. I didn't want to confess my mistake and look foolish.

She went back to writing. I just laid down my head and curled up on my mat. Only the faintest sound of her Pilot Precise Extra Fine pen was audible.

“Dad, what did you forget, some food?”

“No, it's all here.” I hoped she would leave this alone.

“Well, what then, Dad? Let me see, you lost your paddle and now I'm going to
really
have to paddle you everywhere.”

“No, the paddles are safe.”

“Well, then what's up?”

“Wass up den, Reee-BA-kah…”

I switched into one of our accents, something of an inside joke in our family. We were known to carry on lengthy conversations in a variety of accents gathered from some places we'd been like Appalachia, Mississippi, a northeast country club, an electronics store employee going out of business in New York City,
The Simpsons.
I was hoping to sidetrack her inquisitive mind.

“Dad, seriously, you must have lost something important. Will it endanger us?”

“No…”

“Well, then, what's the big deal about telling me. What is it?”

“I forgot my sleeping bag!” I answered meekly.

“Dad, you're kidding.”

“No, I'm serious, and it's supposed to be in the forties, maybe colder, tonight.” The incredibly dramatic Pedersen Glacier was directly west of us; it looked so white and wide. It would certainly cool the night.

“Dad, before I was born, you walked
where?
” She seemed serious, then smiled with her warm eyes.

“I walked across the street.”

“I should let you have my sleeping bag,” she said, more serious.

“No, no. I'll pile all my clothes on top of me, the ones I'm not wearing. No problem, I'll be fine.”

That night I could never get warm. It seemed that I went to sleep after it was very dark, when it was already getting light again. Soon after I finally fell asleep, I heard something. Either Rebekah was yelling something or I was dreaming.