Travelers' Tales Alaska (18 page)

A
S A DECKHAND ON A JET BOAT TAKING VISITORS ON
two-hour whale-watching tours, my summer is filled with rushing, always at the beck and call of captains, owners, staff, and tourists. I meet each load of passengers delivered to the dock by the company bus, walk them down the ramp, and help them aboard the red jet boat. “Watch your step please. Make yourself comfortable. Watch your head stepping down. Watch your step please. Make yourself comfortable.” One after the other. Time after time.

When everyone is seated, I untie the boat and cast off at the captain's pleasure. Usually he is in a hurry: impatient, concerned about every minute, mindful that we are scheduled to return in exactly two hours for another load of tourists. Sometimes, though, he gabs on the radio or visits the head or compares notes with other captains on other boats while I stand smiling, waiting for his signal to cast off.

As we leave the harbor, motoring slowly through the no-wake zone, I stow the bumpers, close the hatches, and grab an
orange Mae West life vest for the requisite safety talks. I point out the fire extinguishers and flare kit, demonstrate the floating device, and caution everyone to remain seated when the boat is in motion. Children fuss and people who don't speak English chatter loudly.

“Humpback whales from the greater Juneau vicinity are known to winter in Hawaii, where they breed and give birth but do not feed,” I repeat to a new group every two hours. “They return to our rich waters here in Alaska where they feed on krill, herring, and other small schooling fish. They eat a ton or more a day, every chance they get. Sometimes it seems like they're eating all the time.” I pause here to glance at the ship's progress, timing my speech with the buoy marker past which we can try our luck at accelerating, not always a sure thing. “Captain says that's what it's like to be on a tour ship.” Pausing here, I get a sense of the group; the more they laugh at my first joke, the better the crowd.

“The mountains around Juneau are only three thousand to five thousand feet in elevation, but they appear much higher because they're so steep,” I brag. “Picture that many of these islands are just as steep as the mountains, so the water is quite deep even close to land.” I gesture toward the coastline. “Remember we're looking for a column of vapor. Be sure to look right up against the islands, because there might be a whale where we would normally consider the shore.” I look around again. “It's a beautiful day in the rain forest!” I exclaim, no matter what the weather. “Let's go whale watching!”

I hold my breath, hoping that the captain will synchronize the boat's acceleration with the end of my talk. And when he does, the captain and I will both hold our breath and hope that the boat will speed over the water, instead of dragging itself along, jets clogged, plugs misfiring, rpm on the starboard engine only half what it is on the port side, while I stand
smiling, bagels and juice in hand, offering refreshments to visitors who have paid good money to see whales, and by God they expect to see whales.

“They told us not to let you go more than two hours without giving you something to eat,” I shout over the jets, pausing again for laughter. The boat bounces and lurches over the waves while I brace myself and balance a platter of twenty bagels and twenty pouches of juice, waiting for some matron from Florida to decide just exactly which bagel she really wants (
They're all the same! Take one! Take one!
) and for her husband to decipher what a dadgummed pouch is—a bag of juice? Never heard of it. Juice? You sure this is juice? (
Yes, it's juice. Take one. Or not, I don't care. Just make up your mind. Please
!)

“On the port side in the far distance is Admiralty Island,” I continue. “The original name for the island is Kootznoowoo, which means ‘Fortress of the
Brown Bear.' That's a good name for it, because the brown bear population on that island is thought to be one per square mile. At sixteen hundred acres, it has one of the world's greatest concentrations of bears.” Another pause while I hold up my hands to show my silver bracelets. “The Native people of this area associate themselves with different animals that we then take as our crests. My clan—the wolf clan—considers itself related to the brown bear, so I'm always careful to point it out to you when we go by.” For some reason, this never fails to make them laugh.

“When I was a girl, my grandmother used to tell me we don't eat brown bear meat, because to do so would be just like eating our own cousin!” The captain was surprised to learn that I still consider the brown bear my cousin, the Taku wind my grandfather, the spider my neighbor. After being brought the truths of virgin birth, resurrection, and walking on water, why would I now persist in believing a myth? But I let the passengers laugh, the captain preach, the jet engines clog. Every day is the same, every passenger is the same. Every captain is the same. Every moment is unique.

Just outside Bartlett Cove, a dozen humpback whales have surrounded a school of herring in the deep ocean water. Beneath the surface, one circles a spiral net of bubbles around the fish. The whale constructs the net of bubbles upward from the ocean floor, trapping the herring in smaller and smaller circles, nearer and nearer the surface. Then one humpback begins to circle the net, singing in a high-pitched haunting voice, frightening the herring into a huddled ball of prey that rises to the top.

We hear the song over a hydrophone that the captain has lowered into the water. We look in every direction, searching for telltale bubbles. Eagles and gulls fly overhead, circling, calling,
searching. I watch the gulls. They will know before we do where the whales will come up. “There! Over there!” A dozen whales lunge out of the water, mouths open, pink tongues and baleen and splashing water, gulls diving, passengers gasping, hearts racing. Then they are gone. Back under the water, checking for herring, swallowing the last mouthfuls, yumming their dinner. They surface again, slow and graceful. Their breaths explode and their spouts are a loud wet sticky
whoosh.
They are powerful, graceful, gentle. They are so close to us, yet oblivious to our presence.

The whales begin to travel away from us, into Barlow Cove chasing herring. We all want to follow, but the captain has something else in mind. “Be seated, please.” In a flurry of joy and disappointment, thrills and complaints, the passengers are seated. I close the hatches, the jets roar and we're steaming toward False Point.

We no sooner round Point Retreat than we are in the midst of two dozen or more boats: whale watchers, sport-fishing craft, commercial fishing vessels, private motorized skiffs. The late sun reflects off the almost calm waters of Lynn Canal. The lighthouse at Point Retreat catches a ray of afternoon sun, Eagle Glacier glistening on the mainland behind it. The beautiful Chilkat Mountains are capped in white and shrouded in patchy, summer-evening clouds. The captain slows the boat, I open the doors to the decks, we pile out onto the aft deck. All around the boats spread up and down the waterway are the dorsal fins of killer whales. There must be more than sixty. In the reflected sun, their fins are dark against the water, black signals rising from the water, moving fast and disappearing, running in the water. The wolves of the sea.

“It's very rare for us to see both killer whales and humpbacks on the same trip,” I tell the passengers, “especially humpbacks that are bubble feeding, and especially so many
killer whales. We're very fortunate.” A few passengers are not yet satisfied, but they will never be happy; if nothing else, they'll complain about the bagels. Most are thrilled to silence, beside themselves with joy. They realize what I'm saying is the truth. This is a rare trip. This is a rare moment.

The air becomes still. We become quiet. Together, we witness a sight that few people ever see: we are surrounded by killer whales. We are surrounded by freedom.

Conventional teachings suggest that eternity is something that starts after death, and then goes on—well, forever. But I know that it is this moment that is eternal. One wave moves in a certain manner while that particular killer whale rises above the water and catches one ray of light against the flash of its singular fin, and I stand here on this particular boat, late in the afternoon of this certain day, with these people who have traveled distances near and far to stand here and be captured with me in this moment, which is gone before I blink and which will continue always to exist.

Before long, the captain gives the signal to be seated for our long return trip to the dock where we will off-load these passengers, refuel and clean the boat, radio the dispatcher for tomorrow's schedule, and be finished with our work for this day. I will limp home, feet sore, tired, hungry, sick of bagels. I will wash the saltwater out of my hair, lie down on the couch, talk on the phone, fall asleep. I will rise the next day to work again until the summer ends, and then I will return to the university where I am belatedly completing my education. I will see more whales and eagles, I will see rough seas and calm. I will grow older. I will die. And all the while, a part of me will be lost in one moment. Killer whales will surround me forever in an eternal moment that will never happen again.

Tlingit Ernestine Hayes belongs to the Wolf House of the Kaagwaantaan clan in Southeast Alaska. Born and raised in Juneau, she moved with her mother to California at age fifteen. She lived outside Alaska for twenty-five years, always longing to be home. Upon turning forty, she vowed to return home, or die trying. It took her eight months to move up the coast from San Francisco to Ketchikan. Along the way she lived out of her car, stood in food lines, slept in shelters. After settling in Juneau in 1989, Hayes enrolled at UA-Southeast as a non-traditional student. The mother of three and grandmother of four graduated magna cum laude, with a bachelor's degree in communications, at age fifty-five, and has since gone on to complete her M.F.A. in Creative Writing. She is now on the faculty of UA-Southeast and lives in Juneau.

PAM HOUSTON