On our last day in Seward and the day before we flew home, there
was one more item on Julia’s “to-do” list that needed checking off.
Before we left Alaska, it was important to go out on a boat and see the
glaciers and sea life.
Now, while Julia grew up in a fishing family and around boats, I
barely know how to swim and have already been seasick several times when
out on the Pacific or Gulf Coast. I am not a boat/water person. Then
there was the matter of cost. An all-day ride was over $200/person.
Marriage is about compromise, however, and we were on our 30th
anniversary celebration trip, so we were going on a boat ride.
Partly
because of low expectations, I was pleasantly surprised by our boat
experience. We left on a gray, drizzly morning. Staff warned us to
take medication if we were at all susceptible to seasickness, because
seven-foot waves were expected in the Gulf of Alaska, which we would be
crossing. The boat seemed big enough that I wasn’t too worried. During
previous bouts of being seasick, I was either on a smaller boat and/or
had possibly too much fun on the night before going out to sea.
There were a handful of people on our boat who were unpleasantly
surprised. I would guess about a half-dozen passengers spent most of
the trip hanging over the back railing and filling up paper bags, as the
boat rolled up and down through the waves. One elderly woman spent the
entire trip throwing up or laying down in a dead-like position. She paid
big bucks to be absolutely miserable for six hours.
We started the trip sitting at the rear of the boat, but as people
succumbed to the rolling motion, we quickly moved to either the top or
front deck, depending on the best vantage points. We had assigned
seating inside the cabin, and we spent some time talking with our
table-mates. It was harder to see inside though, and the fresh outside
air helped me from joining the sick folks on the back railing, so we
spent most of the trip outside.
Within the first hour, we saw a pod of killer whales (orcas).
We
drifted with the pod for about 30 minutes and watched these magnificent
creatures surfacing and blowing. It was an unexpected sighting, staff
told us, because these killer whales were passing through on a late
migration. While this wildlife sighting was our most memorable, we also
saw sea lions, seals, dolphins, rare birds and mountain goats. Due to
the limitations of my phone camera, I cannot share most of these
sightings with you, but I have a small sample. If you click and
enlarge, you can see the sea lions in the lower portion of first photo
and mountain goats at the top of the second photo.
If
someone asked me what my favorite part of Alaska was, it would be the
glaciers. The views from the boat were amazing, and we spent about an
hour by the glacier.
As
I watched the glacier calve (the breaking away of icebergs into the
water), it occurred to me that future generations may not be able to see
glaciers. It’s natural for glaciers to retreat/melt in the summer and
build back up in the winter. It’s natural for ice ages to come and go.
However, the rapid retreat of glaciers today is not normal. No matter
what your politics, it would be a rare person to view a glacier, see
photographic evidence of how fast they are disappearing, and not wonder
what the world will be like for future generations.
I don’t have any
answers. Even if human beings are totally responsible for today’s
climate changes, it seems unlikely to me there’s enough political will
to have a snowball chances in hell to reverse those changes, even if we
could. One thing is for sure: nature is one powerful force to reckon
with.
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