Murre and the Pacific

Sept 19 – 30

Port McNiell is “tree farming country”, if a sign at the head of the dock can be believed. The sign is small, easy to overlook as the eye scans a town of neat houses, neat yards, and a well laid-out shopping mall around an asphalt parking lot with space enough for the cars of three such communities. In the mall are two groceries, a liquor store, a barber, a realtor, and the public library, whose door announces “Sadly, Miss Silverstone will not be in today.”

To the north along an undeveloped flatness of bay I see hill-sized stacks of logs and hear the whir of heavy equipment, ready proof of the town’s declared occupation. Above these the low mountains of the Vancouver Island coast offer another in their patchwork of greens, smoky blues for the old forest next to the bright Kelly of the new.

It is Sunday afternoon. The marine store at the head of the docks is dark; its winter hours posted in the window do not include Sunday. I pull on the door anyway and it opens. Inside, a gray haired couple look up from the register.

It’s our first winter Sunday,” says the man, “but we’re open for a while yet.”

I am searching for a specific cruising guide, I explain. The one I have has abruptly ended 30 miles north.

“Not much call for that this time of year,” says the woman.

“Can order one though,” says the man.

“Is there a bookstore in town?” I ask.

“No, not for that kind of book.” says the man. “The A Frame is all we have. Not from here, are you?”

Lacking anything more pressing, I hike over to the A Frame bookstore, an annex to one side of the A Frame Baptist Church. As I enter the room smells of potluck casseroles and the close-packed bodies of the parishioners in Sunday attire who fill it. All are standing, the casseroles having been eaten, and the sea of conversation is running high; small children dash around the room crashing into adults like white caps on rocks.

“This is a social for the church treasurer. She retired last week,” says a smiling man who quickly approaches. I am dressed in pants and a t-shirt that are the worse for their continual wear, am heavily bearded and carry a sweat-soiled back pack. That I am the odd man out is suggested by the speed with which I am greeted. “Usually the room is full of books,” says the man, still smiling. “Their sale supports the church.”

I explain my quest. He shakes his head.

“Not from here, are you?”

That evening I discover a pub near the marina. Smooth cement floors, a sleek bar of black stone, flat screen televisions on all walls, one of which is in the second inning of a Giant’s game. Along this coast it is not unusual to find baseball, in season, playing in such establishments, but the broadcast selection is typically limited to the Toronto or Seattle teams with an occasional east coast match-up thrown in to balance the scales. Being able to watch the San Francisco home-team is a privilege vanishingly rare, and I quickly settle-in.

“You from around here?” asks a man to my left. He is middle height, middle age, sports a salt and pepper mustache. He’s a charterman now, he explains, but has done some logging. “They’re nuking this island,” he says. “Won’t be any trees left in a few years. It’s really too bad. Glad I’ve moved to fishing. I live in Campbell River. Just up here for a gig. You a fisherman? Yes, fog is usually bad this time of year. Chuck.” he says though I have not asked. “Chuck Stanley.”

Bars are a ready source of conversation, which is why I seek them out, but tonight I want to watch the game.

“Loser. Loser. Loser!” says the man to my right tapping in turn the lottery tickets he’s lined up next to his beer. Already he’s visited the vending machine several times.

Chuck rolls his eyes and withdraws.

“Willard.” says the bartender, “You don’t have to play Lotto. No one’s forcing you.”

“But I ain’t got no friends,” says Willard. He is thin, his face drawn; his beard and head are gray. He wears tight fitting jeans and a jean jacket but, in the appropriate attire, would look the part of a prospector.

“Sure you do,” says the bartender.

“OK.” he says, “but they’re just the ‘Hello Willard. Nice day, Willard’ type.” Willard feigns a spit that would have landed at my feet. “Not real friends at all.”

The bar tender smiles and moves off. Willard turns to me and continues.

“It’s not like I’m unfriendly, you know. Little kids love me…”

He leans over. I lean away.

“…my cousin’s son used to sit on my lap all evening. He would pet my knee like this…” Willard pets his knee–his fingers are long and pale, “…and give me a peck on the lips…” Willard touches his index finger to his lips and makes a pucker. “…Like this…” he says and kisses his index finger again.

I fix my gaze upon the television.

“Of course, when he turned fourteen I suggested kissing me on the lips was not such a good idea. Might give people the wrong impression. I advised him against it, you see.”

“Another beer?” the bartender asks.

“Not tonight,” I say.

***

Next morning, fog. A sea plane motors into the fairway and returns, defeated. Out in the offing, the car ferry blasts its horn at regular intervals. Murre and I depart at eleven, tired of waiting, though the fog is just as thick and the tide contrary. Two blips on the radar dead ahead: hard right wheel: a tug and barge fade into focus, pass, fade away. Mid afternoon the sky clears and a small wind comes up out of the northwest. I marvel at seeing Pacific Storm Petrels playing at the water top. By late afternoon wind is brisk. I pull into the single dock at Port Neville and require help landing Murre alongside. The dock is exposed to the wind and the tide is again contrary. I make two passes at the heaving platform before colliding with enough slowness to allow my assistant to grab Murre’s bow line.

That help is there at all is a surprise. In its heyday, Port Neville was never more than a store in a large, two-story log cabin, but the store has long since closed, and the land was, I thought, abandoned.

The man who greets me is stocky, short, well past retiring age, soft-spoken but garrulous. He is Joe, a custodian from Duncan when he worked but now a volunteer for the local mission that is leasing Port Neville with plans to turn it into a training camp for young proselytizers at some future date. He’s the caretaker, the lone resident on this wind-swept point. Three daughters, one in the Yukon, one in Duncan, and one in northern Maine. Two are married with children. Each year he drives from Maine to the Vancouver Ferry Terminal in two and a half days and without stopping; he uses alfalfa pills sold by Amway to stay awake. He has installed hydrogen injection cells into his truck, which have doubled his gas mileage. “It’s how I can afford the trip,” he says. He’s long since divorced. “I couldn’t please my wife. Being married to a janitor embarrassed her–she would rather have had the Prince of Wales.” And he’s long since caring, “I’ve had a couple of … opportunities … over the years, but hell, I’ve already done that!”

All this I learn while Murre’s engine idles itself cool.

Next morning, fog. Joe is already on the dock measuring the depth of water at low tide with an iron stake tied to a long length of rope. Last evening I had asked how much water would be under me at low tide. He didn’t know. “26 feet,” he says. Murre’s depth sounder shows 20. Again we talk. Or rather Joe talks. I depart early so as to catch a stand tide at Race Passage and am immediately bucking two knots against.

It is here that the navigation of Johnstone Strait becomes interesting, its walls increasing in height, growing shear and constricting as it drops from a course of east to south before pinching into a dog leg called Seymour Narrows–where spring tides can run 16 knots and even the cruise ships wait for slack water–before terminating into the Strait of Georgia. To the north and east of Johnstone is a network of waterways with names befitting a fast-moving river: Whirlpool Point, Surge Narrows, Devil’s Hole, Dent Rapids. The chart warnings are numerous: “Overfalls and eddies in Okisollo Channel upper rapids regions are extremely dangerous.” “Violent eddies and whirlpools exist on the east of Gillard Islands.” The choices for a passage south are numerous, all bad.

We buck a flood through Race Passage as the fog clears and are still bucking it until early afternoon. The sun is now full producing on the water far ahead a mirage that appears to be the silvery wave of an approaching tsunami out of which materializes the occasional tug and barge. The tide begins to ebb and our speed increases. At three Murre is tracking at seven knots over the ground; by four her speed is up to nine. Slowly we are overtaken from behind by a small fishing boat, a gillnetter, and as we approach Brown Bay, it passes. Brown Bay is at the head of Seymour Narrows and is where I intend to wait for the slack water of early morning. But the gillnetter is not waiting, and as our two boats are of similar size, I decide to continue.

Now the gillnetter seems to zoom ahead. And soon Murre is accelerating too, making ten knots in the narrows, then twelve, then fourteen in the gut before Seymour’s dog-leg. In the distance I see the gillnetter lean way over and whip around, and now I am steering heavily through glassy boils and depressions, seeking only to keep Murre to one side or the other of Ripple Rock, a mid-channel protrusion that hung just below the surface until it was purposefully blown up in the 1960s. Now depths over the much-reduced rock are to 65 feet, but the turbulence is considerable.

And suddenly we are through the turn and around Race Point. The sun is just on the horizon. The gillnetter is continuing on, but I pull Murre into a Campbell River marina for the night.

***

Passing through Seymour Narrows from Johnstone into the Strait of Georgia, one crosses a natural though invisible boundary. For one thing the next morning brought no fog; nor have we seen fog since. For another, grass in the parks of Campbell River is brown this time of year; the red and yellow leaves of trees turn in the wind; the air carries the spicy scent of chaparral. Another still, the shopping complex near the marina sports a Starbucks, our first since Hawaii, where, sitting outside in the sun I speak to a man who says it has not rained all summer.

Murre and I stay two days and another in the next town down, Comox. From here south the coast is a continuous line of generously spaced homes and denser centers, and any sense of wilderness is gone. Even at our next stop, Lasqueti Island, where Murre rests in pint-sized and bouldery Squitty Bay while I get to know new friends Joe and Linda (introduced by Bruce Allen), the wild resident is not bear but feral sheep. The people on Lasqueti are homesteaders, their houses largely built form the coast’s plentiful driftwood or its ample forests of Doug Fir; electricity is solar and this powers the freezers, the lights, and the pump that pulls drinking water from the well. Fresh vegetables are grown or acquired by barter. Entertainment is provided by neighbors rather than television. That first night Linda’s dinner is fresh baked bread and a soup of ingredients that were in the garden hours earlier; the next day I get to help Joe finish siding the new mud room. Life on Lasqueti is quiet, deliciously slow, but from the ridge at night I can see the amber lights of bustling Nanaimo across the channel.

This is where we head next day, and the day after to truly urban Victoria. Here the waterfront architecture suggest the age for which it is named and give to the city the feel of Londonesque sophistication. The near bay is crowded with boats, ferries, float planes, and streets are acrawl with tourists enjoying a late burst of summer. Booths line the promenade selling artwork and jewelry. Jazz bands, men on banjos or xylophones, women in pantomime busk late into the night. All this below the heavy, elaborate exterior of the Empress Hotel and the equally ornate House of Parliament.

Victoria ends our Canadian cruise. By noon on September 30th Murre has crossed the line. The maple leaf is lowered from the starboard spreader and no flag takes its place. At three we enter Friday Harbor and tie alongside the United States customs dock.

en

September 10 – 18

Some may contest that given my mode of transport I cannot possibly be racing through anything; that whether it be 140 miles noon to noon in boisterous trades or eight under similar suns in the doldrums, Murre is a slow goer by any meaningful measure. Doubly so, it could be argued, since averages are currently down to forty miles a day and every night is spent at anchor. But within the context of this cruise, where a month on the hook in a charming bay is the norm, our forced march through this network of intricate channels and narrows bordered by landlocked bays, deep fjords, snowy mountains feels a blur of speed.

The cause is winter’s approach and the only cure is southing. In summer the North Pacific High standing between this coast and the low pressure systems that spiral down from the Bering Sea shoulders north the worst of the wet and chill wind. But sometime after the solstice, after the sun begins its recession to the line, the High follows. The year matures; the High falls away, and without obstruction the lows lay in upon the land. As we moved along glassy Chatham Strait in mid August, a gale boomed up in Cross Sound; in early September we rounded Dixon Entrance as Chatham blew; when we rested in Prince Rupert, strong winds overtook Dixon. Each week that we make southing the southerlies are but one week behind. We are pushing to outpace winter and cannot afford to dawdle.

Mornings of this migration follow a ritual progression. Rise before sun-up into a cold cabin and argue with self which should come first: lighting the heater or dressing warmly. Sometimes it’s one, sometimes the other, but both occur before the cooking of water for coffee. Next, listen to the weather radio while topping off engine fluids, oil and coolant. Start engine. As it warms, prepare coffee and oatmeal and consume both while entering the day’s course in the chart plotter. Then switch on running lights, hook-up Wanderer, don boots, more sweaters, gloves, weigh anchor and put Murre out into the channel.

*Wanderer* is the electronic autopilot, a portable, low-power technology designed for small boats with tiller steering and adapted to Murre because of its price: cheap. I clamp the body of the Raymarine Tillerpilot to the aft rail and the head of its ram to the Monitor’s vane mount, and voila, we steer without wind. But badly. Murre’s forty year old wheel has some play in its worn bronze connections as do the gears in the twenty year old windvane. These combined with a necessary flaw in my Tillerpilot installation–it’s mounted backwards–means that our closest approach to a fair course is a lazy “S”. Thus the name.

In this way we pass down high-walled Grenville Channel, straight and uniform as a canal, to Kxngeal Inlet for the night; then next day we cross Wright Sound, passing close to port a floating Fir tree so large I learn of it first from a “hazards to navigation” bulletin on the radio. It includes green boughs and a root ball and appears freshly plucked from a nearby hillside. A seal rests on its trunk. The weather is deteriorating now, the sky lowering with wind from the south, some rain, and I fret over our night’s anchorage, Angler’s Cove. A mere scrape in the coast, Angler’s Cove was called Fisherman’s Cove until recently, renamed so as to disabuse first-timers like myself who might think that professional trollers would call it safe. They wouldn’t because it’s not. All night Murre swings close to the rocks as winds whip the water.

Wind eases to calm as we push next day down Fraser Reach past the collapsing cannery at Butedale then down Graham Reach by the Indian village of Klemtu and down Jackson Narrows, more rocks than water, to anchor in landlocked Rescue Bay whose complete protection is a wonder of nature. Next day dawns thick and foggy and we motor blind, except for radar, down Mathieson Channel and through the rocky turns of Perceval Narrows without seeing a thing. An hour into Seaforth Channel the sun has burned through, and the various blips on the radar screen become a tiny fleet of cruisers. Each passes Murre in turn, making our way feel all the slower as we round Dryad Point for the Indian village of New Bella Bella, so crowded with boats we opt for Shearwater, the next town on.

At the fuel dock I meet the harbormaster.

“I just saw a tug pulling a Swiss Chalet across the water on a barge,” I say in amazement as Murre kisses the dock and the man takes my lines. In fact, behind the tug was not only a Swiss Chalet, a brightly painted building of several stories topped by a steep roof and dormer windows, but also a barge carrying a large farm house and a barge carrying containers and a barge carrying heavy equipment, all behind the same tug.

“Just a fish camp,” he replies. “They move them around.”

Shearwater may be the only town in BC that has developed around a marine haul-out and repair facility. Even fifty years on the haul yard dwarfs the town, which includes a fine chandlery, a small grocery, a coffee shop that seconds as a book store, yoga studio and massage salon, and a store called Hodge Podge, where the inventory includes such things as lipstick, computer parts, Halloween costumes, extension chords, light bulbs, board games, greeting cards, and one pink and lavender tutu.

And of course there’s a pub.

Here I have a beer with the harbormaster that evening, a handsomely featured young man wearing a red flannel shirt and wool pants. He is a sailor too and has spent the last ten winters on his boat in Baja because “it’s cheaper to live in Mexico for six months of the year than to work in Canada for all twelve.”

I think to suggest that his salary for mastering a remote marina of twenty slips may be the cause of Canada’s expense, but he is obviously enamored.

“I got free room here.” he says. His diminutive two story, three room house is on floats at the head of the marina ramp.

“My commute is three minutes.” He rows the 50 yards to the fuel dock each day in an aluminum skiff.

“And when you yachties all leave, I shut’er down and go to Mexico.”

“But what do you find to do there each year?” I ask, suddenly forgetting my own occupation of late.

“Do?” He pauses. He seems not to comprehend the question. “Well, we snorkel some. Not much, I guess.”

“We” includes his girlfriend, who has just arrived. She is blond, dressed entirely in black, and her lips, tongue, nose and ears are pieced with silver metal. In my city she would be a commonplace, but on a small island whose town has 25 year-round residents and is 400 miles from Victoria, the nearest city, her appearance is strikingly unusual.

“I’ve lived here all my life,” she says. “I was the last white born on New Bella Bella. Now they like to fly pregnant whites down to Campbell River for the delivery.”

“Why?” I ask. She shrugs. “Better doctors I guess.”

“And the Indians are flown out too?”

“No. They have their own people.”

Fog is thick again next morning when I put Murre into Lama Passage and it clears by the time we reach Fitzhugh Sound. A group of four Sand Hill Cranes pass overhead. I spot a large log, but only after it is astern, and then two whales are ahead. A defect in the blowhole of one makes the heavy exhalations sound like a scream. Currents flow in our favor today, and at 4:30 we leave behind Addenbroke Island, our planned stop-over, and steam on until sundown, dropping anchor into landlocked Millbrook Cove off Smith Sound.

What do I mean by “landlocked”?

Millbrook Cove, for example, deeply set into a perfect circle of sheer rock, requires that Murre work in slowly and dog-leg fashion around two small islands whose channel is no wider than she is long. As she rounds the last of these it is like she enters an amphitheater. From the perspective of within, the two entrance islands overlap each other and the two exterior points of the cove and, like closing doors, shut off any view of sea beyond. Except that we had just entered, I would have said there was no way out.

The view from within is not what’s important, however. What’s important is that these islands that overlap the entrance lock outside any dangerous seas. Murre could ride out a hurricane in such a harbor and likely feel no effect but the wind.

There is not a single anchorage like this in San Francisco Bay, nor along any of the coastline between Cape Flattery and Cabo San Lucas. The Baja side of the Sea of Cortez has but one, large Puerto Escondido. Yet up here, with diligence, a cruiser can dig from his chart a cove or bay with these characteristics each day of his passage between Sitka and Victoria. It is enough to make a man weep at the injustice of such an uneven distribution wealth.

Next morning, the now usual fog, spun thick like cotton candy. The gillnetter Murre and I joined at anchor the previous night appears in no hurry, and the engines of our two boats tick over as we wait for the day’s intent to manifest. I am the less patient and weigh at ten when visibility in the cove is just better than nill. Today we will pass out into the open of Queen Charlotte Sound, and I want it done before the wind picks up to its predicted 20 knots from the northwest.

Out in the sound visibility is better than two miles. Seas are sloppy as we round Cape Caution. Rolling gunwale to gunwale as we are, I admire the stabilizers deployed on the gillnetter that has now departed Millbrook and is fast closing the gap between us without rolling at all. Ten hours later Murre and I are anchor down in Blunden Harbor, tucked behind Robinson and Edgell Islands, another landlocked anchorage.

Next day fog is thicker still as we cross Queen Charlotte Strait, dodging three tugs enroute to the town of Port McNiel where the sky doesn’t clear until late afternoon and just moments before the harbor entrance.

September 3 – 5

It is freely claimed by residents of other towns in southeast Alaska that Ketchikan has prostituted itself to tourism. But prostitution in Ketchikan has a long history. Faced with repeated economic crashes, the town needed a dependable, recurring source of income from a client base it could invite in and dismiss at will. By opening itself to cruise ships, Ketchikan is simply continuing to do what it does best.

The jump from Prince of Wales Island to Ketchikan almost beats another small low. Our ride across Clarence is smooth, but entering Tongass Narrows the sky lowers and the wind picks up to twenty knots on the nose with rain, which lightens only some as we approach the town.

Ketchikan is literally abuzz. We first pass a working dry dock with three ships sitting high, then fleets of float planes, many revving to take off, and as we round the final bend, a Princess Line Cruise ship passes heading north.

I call the harbor master for a slip, and am told there is plenty of room at City Floats.

“Which are where?” I ask.

“Just past the cruise ship,” he says.

“But I see three in a line. Which one?” I ask.

“Ah yes, I’d forgotten they’re all in. There’s a small opening between the first and second ship. In there is the harbor. It’s right downtown.”

***

And so it is. Except the downtown I explore that afternoon is not that of a working town, for the city has converted the entire district adjacent to the ship wharf into a tourist district. Scads of trinket shops, clothing stores, restaurants, bars, cafe’s fill several square blocks. Alaska’s version of the New Orleans’ French Quarter is here. Here you can have a drink at the Happy Grizzly, dine at Sockeye Sam’s, and then take in the Alaskan Logger’s show. But hurry, your ship leaves at sundown.

Even the historic district on Creek Street has been converted into a walk-through museum where I find that Dolly’s famous brothel is no longer hot pink; the house is yellow, but you still must pay before you enter.

In the window of Parnassus Books is a sign reading: “The closest bathroom is in the public library; the closest restaurant is four doors down; you can buy umbrellas at Wild Salmon store near the wharf.”

“People tend to think I’m a concierge because I run a bookstore,” says the owner when I ask. “So I try to help them out with the sign.”

“Has it always been like this?” I ask.

“At least since the 70s–they were running cruise ships here when I arrived. In Sitka they’ve voted down cruise ship piers many years running. But we’re more conservative here, more business oriented. Though we too have a public radio station.”

From her I learn that the town of 8,000 routinely doubles its size when the four cruise ships are in. “Nearly 900,000 visitors this year,” she says, “12,000 on our busiest day. Here for a few hours, and then, poof, gone.”

In the evening I watch the last cruise ship depart. When I turn, the district is shut and looks exactly like a ghost town.

***

“It’s a little like Las Vegas,” says the librarian who hands me a free pass for an hour’s worth of Internet connectivity. “Downtown is just for the tourists, but if you look at a city map, you’ll see a whole other section of town up north. This is where most of us live–we’ve got a big Safeway, a couple gas stations; the float planes fly from there; it’s where the banks are collected, and the restaurants we like. The historic district’s not really downtown any more: it’s all been given over to the cruise ships.”

***

Next day I visit the museum hoping to find some explanation of the transition form logging town to cruise ship hub.

“Nothing in there you won’t find in any small-town-Alaska museum,” say the docent at the door. “Some old chain saws, a few hard hats, mounted black and whites of a logging camp.” I hesitate. “Don’t want to pay the two bucks? OK, Go have a peak. But there’s really only one thing to see.”

He takes me into the back and up to a glass case filled with Tlingit artifacts, old fishing lures, wooden canoe paddles, woven hats. And then he points at two boxes, each of a size one might use to pack books. Each is painted with a black and red totem, now quite faded.

“Those are bent wood boxes,” he says, “made from thin sheets of wood pressed with steam into squares and then decorated. Used for storage and mostly by the men: boxes for men, baskets for women. They’re special because they’re the only two boxes we’ve found that predate the white invasion.

“Everything useful in Tlingit culture was made of wood, from houses to fishing hooks, and it was then usually carved or painted to honor the family, commemorate ancestors, etc. But when the Tlingits converted to Christianity, when they stopped putting ‘pagan’ designs on everything, the existing wooden artifacts that recorded these designs for posterity rotted away within a generation. Jump to this age when First Nation peoples are interested in their heritage, and suddenly they have a problem: there is no record of their artwork. Nothing. Until these boxes were found in the back of a restored chief’s house. Now all the Tlingit art you see for sale in those trinket shops downtown, the totem poles, the paintings, the necklaces…it’s all based on the artwork on these two boxes. It’s the most amazing story–how the Tlingits have literally reinvented their culture.”

“Kind of like Ketchikan reinventing itself from its past, don’t you think?” I say.

“No, that’s different. It’s not like that at all.

end

September 1 and 2

From Wrangell south toward Prince of Wales Island. A low pressure system is approaching, and I want to get ahead of it, ahead to a protected anchorage called Coffman Cove where Murre and I pull in mid afternoon.

If Petersburg and Wrangell are one horse towns, the community of Coffman Cove struggles to maintain a dog or two. But even here the evidence of some inexplicable “boom” money is everywhere. Its few houses host a permanent population of three hundred, yet Coffman Cove sports a new, state-built marina and ferry terminal and the now usual new high school building, “Home of the Timber Wolves”, for its twenty youngsters. There is a small grocery near the marina, a take-out restaurant, and a bar so new it still smells of fresh paint. That evening I am the only customer.

“Lived here long?” I ask the barkeep, a middle aged woman with a small mouth and pinched nose. Her expression suggests my question has been taken as a pick up line.

“All my life,” she says, and then stops. Getting the story will take some work, I see.

“Oh really,” I say.

“Yep.”

We both look toward the flat screen TV hung above the bar on which a pride of lions is taking down a large elephant in some unnamed African savanna. The sunny yellows and oranges of the NatGeo channel clash with the growing gray seen through the window. Rain blankets Coffman Cove and the wind is coming up from the south.

“My parents moved here when I was a child for the logging. They’re retired here too, and then my husband and I got together this bar.”

“Very nice place,” I say.

She smiles awkwardly and the conversation fizzles. On TV the bloodied elephant has fallen but is still panting as the lions gorge. A caption reads, “It takes 90 minutes for the elephant to die.” So I have time to look around, I think.

At the bar there is only space for five stools and a couple tables against the outfacing wall. But the room is long and in back is a single, warmly lit pool table set upon new carpet. Care has been taken to add character to what I slowly realize is a prefab building. Above the bar hang the usual neon lights advertising local brews and below these a window dressed in red lights with a view into the adjoining building, a liquor store. Over the door a sign reads “If it’s got tires or testicles, it’s bound to give you trouble.” The entire wall facing the bar is pinned with paper money, dollar bills inscribed by previous patrons. Most messages are well wishes for the new enterprise, but one is decorated with the AC/DC emblem drawn perfectly in black and red crayon. Another says simply and inexplicably, “Hooch and Cha!” Several are no more than drunken scribbles. As I scan the wall of money, my eye lands on a crisp Ben Franklin placed randomly amongst his brother bills. I do a double take, and in the process notice the bartender watching me. I look back to the TV on which NatGeo now features Crocodiles drowning Zebras in a mud pool. Still there are no other customers.

“Quiet here?” I say.

“Yep, especially now the season’s over,” she says. The cove is a popular sports fishing spot. “It’s back to just locals.”

Even before my nightcap I’d seen how I stood out, not just as an unusual face but also as the only man not wearing the logger’s seersucker shirt.

***

“Logging pretty much shut down here in the mid 90s,” says the restaurant owner next day when I stop by for lunch. I am again the only customer and have just ordered a sandwich from a young girl behind the counter. Standing on the covered patio is a middle-aged man in a loggers’s shirt jangling keys.

“This your place?” I ask. He nods. “So, what’s the story?”

“Coffman Cove’s an old logging camp. In fact, all these communities around here were based on logging, but then Time/Life did an expose in the late 70s showing ugly clear cuts and everyone got to thinking loggers were destroying Alaska’s wilderness. Tongass started shutting everything down; didn’t renew logging permits or leases on pulp mills and over ten years or so logging just quit. And it’s still quit.

“Irony is we’ve checked and most of the Time/Life photos were shot on native land. Well, when they figured how much money they could make on lumber, they logged everything. Deplorable practices. No buffer zones, no nothing; log right down to the crik and onto the other side. Stripped it all.

“There are 17 million acres here in southeast alone, and nobody’s never logged more than two percent of that. But in Alaska it’s all or nothing. Either whole hog on logging or no logging whatever. We don’t manage our forest like they do in Europe; no selective taking of trees, no cultivation, no plan. Turbo charge your chain saw one summer; throw it in the river the next.

“I mean, see that island over there? It was clear cut years and years ago, and now it’s all back. Hell, even the forest service says that grow-back after a clear cut is 15,000 trees per acre. That’s a mess; not even room for a squirrel to piss in that. You gotta thin it. You gotta manage…”

My sandwich is delivered and I excuse myself while it’s still hot. I eat it hunkered behind a log near the beach as the wind rises.

Two fishing boats pull in, the Erika Ann, a tender (large vessel used to collect fish from boats on the grounds, allowing them to stay out longer) and a small troller called the Viejo del Mar. Both the boat and her captain are ancient and much the worse for wear such that it’s impossible to ascertain to whom the name refers. Viejo arrives first, and because Erika Ann is ungainly in such a small space, both the old man and I grab her lines.

“Carl Christiansen,” says the captain of Erika Ann, “and thanks so much for the help. Bringing the family into town for the weekend, and to get out of this weather.”

Two kids bound onto the docks with two dogs and sprint up the ramp into the forest.

“Much wind out there?” I ask. Clarence Strait lies on a northwest-southeast line, in the direction of both prevailing summer winds and winter storms. Add to this its four knot run of tide, and a vile chop is typical.

“Barometer’s really taking a tumble,” says the old man.

“Glassy,” says Carl. “But don’t worry; it’s comin’. Last winter I heard reports of 100 knot winds at Lincoln Rock all the time. No place to be in a blow is Clarence.”

These two begin to talk fish. The old man is from San Diego; fishes summers here, winters there. I interject occasionally to ask a question, but he ignores me. I am not a fisherman; he has nothing to say to people like me.

Carl has no such reservations.

“From Frisco, eh?” he says, eyeing Murres’s transom. “I fished herring out of Frisco when I was young. Based in Sausalito. Rough and tumble place, Sausalito. Pretty girls though.”

Wind comes up at midnight and screams in Murre’s rigging. Next morning I hike in the rain out to a near promontory and watch Clarence get lathered up. Lincoln Rock Light is on the opposite shore; she flashes with breakers.

The blow lasts all day and into the night, but lying in my bunk in the early morning I can feel it relax and go calm. Viejo del Mar has already departed by the time I make coffee. The forecast calls for 25 knots from the northwest in Clarence. I hesitate. But once in the strait I see it’s calm, calm all the way to Ketchikan.

end

Even into the present day, Alaska is a boom and bust state, says John McPhee in *Coming into the Country*. It begins with Russia and the fur trade–otter in particular, but also mink, bobcat and fox, which are trapped in such numbers that populations are wiped out before they have a chance to collapse. Gold strikes begin soon after the US acquires the territory; as these fizzle lumber harvests boom, then salmon and halibut fisheries, and now oil–each cycle leaving the state with a staggering, temporary wealth.

And like a scar worn with pride, each town along my transit claims at least one part of the story for itself, if only to have something to tell the tourists. Sitka, the fur capital; Petersburg, home of the Viking fishermen; Wrangell, gold rush crossroads and logging boom town; Ketchikan, all of the above.

***

From Petersburg the most direct route south is via Wrangell Narrows, a harrowing, twenty mile shoot of rapids and shoals in its day, but now dredged for ships in the tight spots and so well marked as to be but a fun ride for the small boat in clear weather. Here the tide flows briskly in from both ends toward the middle, so Murre and I depart mid morning on August 31st on a half flood and catch the beginning of the ebb at red marker 42. Wrangell Narrows is a marine highway: it is not unusual to jockey for position with a cruise ship or a large tug and barge, but today our company is three other sailboats after the same favorable tide, and a small fleet of fishermen heading for some southern bight. We are flung out the other side at two in the afternoon. Murre and I make Sokolov Island Cove by early evening.

Next morning a thick, low, stagnant fog. Unable oftentimes to see water past the bow, I motor slowly the last ten miles to Wrangell entirely by radar. We are inside the harbor breakwater before it is visible.

***

Once an author has set a book in motion, pages must be filled, filled regardless, and this is no less true with guide books. Mine calls the people of Wrangell the friendliest in southeast and full of wry humor. “Unafraid to meet your eye,” it says as if this is a characteristic entirely missing elsewhere in Alaska. But I fail to notice any particular friendliness. Wrangell’s people are ashy-white, an effect of substituting cigarettes and whisky for sunlight, I suspect, and they go about their own business without much regard for this visitor.

Humor is only in evidence on the blind side of the Fenimore’s Bed and Breakfast where a sign declares to no body in particular, “Voted #1 by select members of immediate family,” and on a bumper sticker stating flatly, “Guns don’t kill people, guns kill dinner.” Then there is the subtle jab made by putting the Catholic Church at the corner of Church and Grief Streets, but the Catholic school squarely on Grief.*

A quick scan of the town suggests Wrangell has never left the frontier stage. Many of the old store fronts appear to have been pulled from the set of a classic western with the buildings themselves restored in correlated siding. New concrete streets and garnet-lined sidewalks (a once-working garnet mine is close by) were being poured as I toured, but I could imagine them turning to mud in the first good rain anyway.

Wrangell is where gold rush miners come ashore to begin their overland journey into the Yukon; later it is one-upped by a port further south whose overland route it shorter, and the town economy crashes. For a time it becomes a major logging hub, home to the largest mill in southeast. When that is shuttered Wrangell crashes again. Neither boom community had bothered to build a proper town. And now residents are left with rebuilt clapboard structures as their heritage. All this makes the new, first-rate museum all the more welcome.

In the evening I walk to the Marine Bar and Liquor Store, which is also a restaurant, a laundry, and a place sea-weary fishermen and sailors can bathe.

“Would you like a beer?” asks the bartender not looking up from her smartphone.

“Yes, but I’d like a shower first.” I say.

The man next to me breaks into a great guffaw. “Funniest thing I’ve ever heard,” he says. “…but I’d like a shower first. Whoo Haa.” He doesn’t look up from his phone.

I eat at the bar. No one talks. The Seattle Seahawks win their football game. No one cheers. Karaoke Hour, which follows, fails to attract participants; even the moderator prefers the company of her beer to announcing songs no one sings.

end

***

*Sadly, this joke suffers from what I can only guess is a deliberate attempt to obfuscate the intent by spelling the name on the street sign as GREIF.

Aug 25 and 26

From Kake it is fifty miles north through Stephens Passage to the Tracy Arm, a long fjord at the head of which the Sawyer Glacier calves directly into the sea. I had not planned to come here–sailing Murre into ice is not my dream–but then I had not planned on Sitka. One step farther always beckons for one step more, and with glaciers all around, it felt a crime against adventuring not to take the one hundred and fifty mile detour.

Our first target is No Name Cove, a tiny indentation on the northern lip of the entrance to Tracy Arm. For its entire length the fjord is abyssal; ice carved cliffs drop into water and keep going for a thousand feet. There is no anchoring once inside, and so this cove serves as base camp for visiting cruisers.

The run up from Kake is eventless–the sky clear and the sea calm. The southerly wind predicted for the afternoon doesn’t develop, and I loll in boredom as we motor until unusual specks on the horizon turn out to be our first icebergs. They float off Holkham Bay like asteroid, a striking white against the background of black rock and green forest. Then just off the cove, another berg has run aground on the entrance shoal and serves as a temporary navigational marker. I drop anchor on the shoal’s edge as the sun sets.

Next morning we are underway by seven. Tracy Arm is twenty-three miles long, and for boats of Murre’s speed (5 knots) an early start is required in order to get to the glacier by noon and then back to the cove by evening.

And right away it’s obvious that the day I’ve chosen for our ascent is a bad one. As we motor past the cove’s berg, thick fog pours out of Tracy Arm and comes with a chill breeze; cloud is low and drizzly. I don three layers of fleece and then oilies and am still shivering within an hour.

The fjord is relatively ice-free before its big right bend, and the fog dissipates just after. And even here the bergs are separated enough that I can keep Murre on autopilot while I huddle behind the cuddy. Rain pours now and waterfalls are in such number and variety that one might think they are beings with their own biology, their own speciation, like their neighbor fir trees or the brown bear in the next valley. Some drop thick and heavy, frothing as they turn, pounding the sea with their cannon fire. Others starting far into the summits are thin tendrils, spider silk sliding continuously over slick rock for thousands of feet. I start counting waterfalls but quickly give up.

I am passed by a small excursion boat from Juneau making fifteen knots, the Chinook. She is steel, and her bow is deeply cut away for climbing over ice; her decks are lined with passengers in parkas, all huddled into the boat’s covered spaces. We exchange waves, and she is soon around the next bend.

As Murre and I climb into the fjord the water begins to change color. Infused with silt, it turns a milky-green, reminding of the Chicago River a few days after St. Patrick’s day. And here the bergs are more numerous. Sizes range from that of an ice block one might buy at a grocery to bergs the size of houses. Some are snowy, while others are a pure ice of the densest blue. Many have been melted by the warmer water of the fjord into fantastic shapes–swooping pinnacles, delicate arches–suggestive of flight while others are pitted, dirty hulks with all the grace of floating boulders. From a pilotage perspective the most worrying are the “black ice” bergs, small and almost entirely submerged but still as big as travel trunks and more than capable of holing the boat. They are difficult to spot until the last moment. Sometimes I see them only as the faintest difference in the water’s ripple as we approach. Twice I don’t see them at all until they pass our quarter. At this I reduce Murre’s speed. The height of the walls in Tracy Arm means there is no radio contact with the outside world. This is no place to get into trouble.

Still five miles from the glacier the ice thickens. A cold drizzle continues but at least the wind has calmed. I switch off the autopilot, taking over the wheel and begin to choose my way carefully as if steering between rocks at low tide. The path is obvious when looked for, and if I follow a kind of race-driver course around the inside bends of the fjord, I can miss most of the larger bergs, which seem to swing to the outside as they migrate toward the bay.

Now I can see the small island that defines the terminus of the fjord, and near it, a small cruise ship, the National Geographic Sea Bird. Then there is the barking sound of big diesels from aft and Murre is quickly overtaken by another fast excursion boat, the Captain Cook, swinging expertly between bergy bits. Its decks are entirely enclosed and apparently heated; I see a man in a t-shirt near one window. I would boil with jealousy, I think, if I weren’t so cold. I haven’t felt my feet in an hour.

A few minutes later the radio calls.

“Captain Cook, Sea Bird.” It’s the voice of a young woman. No answer. “Captain Cook, Sea Bird.”

The sound of a microphone crackling as if being fumbled for. A lazy voice: “Is someone calling Captain Kirk?”

“Captain Cook, please switch and answer channel one three.”

On marine radios all hailing is done on channel sixteen, but this frequency is monitored by the coast guard and reserved specifically for emergencies and brief outreach. So Sea Bird’s request to switch to another channel for conversation is standard protocol. It is also a little strange since no one can hear us outside the fjord.

I switch to thirteen.

“Captain Cook, Sea Bird.”

Long pause, then sighing, “Captain Kirk.”

“Captain Cook,” it’s still the woman’s voice, “this is a request for no wake as you pass. We have kayaks in the water. We don’t want them getting upset.”

Long pause.

“Is that really what you called me for?” replies Captain Cook. “Kirk out.”

I can now see the kayaks, small slivers of yellow that look like banana peels floating amongst ice cubes.

“Captain Cook, Sea Bird,” says a male voice. “Thank you for NO WAKE AS YOU PASS.” These last words are said with a polite firmness. The loud sound of Captain Cook’s engines promptly go quiet.

I overtake the island and the cruise ship and round the last bend. Ice is dense here and finding an open lane takes concentration. I go dead slow. Ahead is a veil of mist, but the next time I look up from ice avoidance duty it has dissolved, and a mile on is the Sawyer glacier.

How to describe a glacier? It is a river of ice, we are told, but though its twists and turns do mimic those of a river its mass resembles more a giant rock slide holding still. The chaos of jagged edges slowly calving into the sea I expect, but I had not anticipated that this chaos would continue up the mountain as countless deep fissures and crevasses–ice pulled apart and then pressed together in great piles as though the glacier is a jumbling earth-quake of ice falling and crashing over itself. Except that it does not move. And the blue! The entire aspect of the glacier is an egg-shell blue against the black of mountain; blue is the main color, not white, although there is plenty of white to be seen. From deep within the splitting crevasses and on the remaining wall after calving emanates a rich, gem-quality blue. The glacier is a vast, frozen sapphire.

Here I stop. The ice has become a loose pack and along one side of the fjord slush and small bergs are flowing briskly down. Zigzagging in clear water is no longer an option. To make way, Murre will have to shoulder slowly through, taking her thumps to the hull in stride. I see the Chinook returning from the glacier’s wall, jogging around larger pieces, occasionally colliding, riding up high, then backing down to find another path. My cruising boat is capable of many things, but this?

The radio sounds again.

“Chinook, you are coming in broken, please repeat,” says the Sea Bird. I cannot hear Chinook at all.

Then “I repeat: one of your engines is out and you’d like a relay to Coast Guard Sector Juneau. Please be advised we have no radio contact outside.”

There’s a pause.

“Yes, we are trying alternate methods of contact,” says Sea Bird.

The Chinook passes me slowly, her passengers now huddled in the main cabin and looking grim. The windows are fogging up.

“We have reached the Coast Guard,” calls Sea Bird after some time. “They will be attempting contact every fifteen minutes; they will start this in one hour, which should give you time to make the Tracy Arm bar.”

By now all her kayaks are aboard and the Sea Bird is herself turning to depart. Where Captain Cook has gone I do not know. I stay right at the edge of the pack ice trying to enjoy the wild, alien splendor. I put the dinghy over the side and row around in the smaller chunks, but I don’t have the guts to let go the tether. I take pictures. I pull ice bits aboard for quick examinations. I can’t get comfortable. It feels a little like dithering on top of Mount Everest.

I turn for the four hour motor back to No Name Cove.

From behind the island, Captain Cook powers past me with a roar.

“Captain Cook, we appreciated the no wake,” says a male voice from Sea Bird.

Long pause, then the lazy voice, dripping with derision, “This is Captain Kirk. Out.”

Murre and I descend the fjord, and as slowly as it constricted, it opens. The rain stops. Our marker berg is still grounded on the shoal of No Name Cove, where we anchor at six in the evening.

I fire up the stove first thing.

end

Aug 22

All I know of Kake is covered by one sentence in the cruising guide: “Kake is a Tlinget Indian village of 700 residents and boasts the world’s tallest totem pole.” I find no other references to the place in my books aboard except that the town has fuel for sale, which we need.

On the five hour hop from Red Bluff across Chatham Strait to Kupreanof Island I try to imagine what a modern Indian village looks like. Before I can stop myself I have envisioned wigwams and people wearing cloths made of bear skin. It’s an embarrassing revelation of my ignorance, and I move on to other topics.

A vista of high, snowcapped mountains surrounding a gentle sea is not beauty enough to free one from the boredom of a motoring boat. So to pass the time I next imagine how the Kake Chamber of Commerce has jingled the village name to good effect. My inventions are either hackneyed (Kake–it’s not just for breakfast anymore) are obtuse (Kake–where the icing only melts in summer) until I hit upon a gem (Kake–where the people are sweet as pie). I make a promise to share this with the Chamber.

I am still congratulating myself when I pull into the fuel dock, where, at the head of the ramp is a small building with a large sign on the outfacing wall reading, “Welcome to the Village of Kake Alaska, the town that never sleeps.”

The flatness of this slogan rankles me–it’s a missed opportunity–and what’s more it’s obviously false. In the parking lot next to the building is one car and in it a man who is napping.

Murre’s approach to the dock somehow wakes him and as I secure ship he wanders down the ramp. He is a heavy-set, Indian in his late thirties. He wears a flannel shirt and shorts. He carries a clipboard.

“Need fuel?” he asks.

I contemplated something clever but answer, “Yes.”

“Diesel?”

“Yes.”

He unrolls the appropriate hose and hands me the nozzle, which I insert into Murre’s tank. I press the lever. Nothing happens. I looked at the man.

“I need to turn on the switch,” he says, wandering into the shed on the dock.

“Still nothing,” I say when he pokes out his head.

“I need to open the valve. It’s up by the store.”

“Not many customers?”

“Not many.”

“I’m in no hurry,” I say.

I see my encouragement has been unnecessary: hurry is not in the cards. The man ambles slowly up the ramp as if waiting for the flooding tide to make it level before he proceeds. He is gone for some time. I putter at small tasks in the cockpit, and when I look up, the man is back on the fuel dock, sitting in a chair by the pump and staring at his clip board.

“Ready to pump?” I ask.

“All done?” he asks.

“No, I haven’t started. Did you turn on the valve?”

“Oh, yes. You’re all set.”

In Kake the fuel dock is known as “The Tribal Fuel Dock.” And once in the store to settle my bill, I see a piece of paper next to the register stating, “The Tribal Fuel Price for Diesel is $5.57 per gallon.” My 18 gallons comes to $120 with tax, and I’m suspicious that the stated Tribal Price is, by some strange twist, the white-guy price and that everyone knows this but me.

I motor back to the village front and anchor. The day is overcast and the ramshackle buildings lining the bay appear drab. Many are unpainted. It’s around noon, and even from the water there is a noticeable lack of activity for a town that never sleeps. From this vantage it appears sleeping is all it does.

I row ashore and make a left on the main street intent on touring the town and stretching my legs all in one go. But within five minutes the road trails off along a coast heavy with forest; I’ve run out of town to tour.

The village is without a center. It’s mostly small houses along the water, some neat but most run-down and one recently burnt to the ground. The exceptions are an anonymous blue building that turns out to be the Community Liquor Store, closed, and a trinket shop, which is also closed. A sign on the smartly painted Presbyterian Church announces the “Piece of Cake Cafe”, and my hopes take a leap–surely this is where the people are–until my eyes reach the bottom … “Open Fridays”. It’s Wednesday.

Most of the paint has worn off the world’s tallest totem pole, I find when I climb the hill, and there are no plaques around to explain its origin. It stretches into the sky and is braced by large steel cables, but the logs on the top don’t appear to be carved at all. Across the street is a beefy new cell tower that is higher than the totem pole by a third. Again, bad planning on the part of the Chamber, I think, to allow their tourist attraction to be so one-upped.

On the hill next to the totem pole is a newly-built hospital. Above this a newly-built high school. A neighborhood stretches away from these whose houses are small, newer than the ones on the bay, and have suburban gloss. Their sidings are pastel blues and beige and each roof carries a satellite dish. Surprising are the number of yards that fly an American flag. A banner above one house says, “We support our troops.” The only evidence that this is a Tlingit village is a bumper sticker on a totalled car parked at the side of the road that reads “Proud to be Tlingit.”

As I pass one house a small man is suddenly in front of me. He has few teeth; his face is pockmarked; his clothes are soiled. “He’s been barkin all night I heard him,” he says.

I look to where he points, and there in the dirt yard before one house is a dog tied to a stake. A salmon lure dangles from its lower lip, the hook buried deep in the soft flesh. On the steps a woman sits looking on. “Belongs to the man here,” she says nodding toward the house, “but he’s out fishing three more days.” A stocky, adolescent boy stands over the dog. He is putting on thick leather gloves. “What will you do?” the woman asks the boy. “Momma…” says the boy and then breaks off. His concentration is with the dog. He is steeling up his face.

At the bottom of the hill is the Eye Opener Cafe, and the sign says OPEN. The cafe is a small vending trailer with a covered porch in front and a few tables. I see no other customers as I approach, and it’s only when I’m on the porch that I see the vending window is closed. Next to the window the hours are handwritten on construction paper: “Open 6:00 to 8:00, 10:00 to 12:00, 3:00 to 5:00, 6:00 to 8:00,” and below this is noted “Hours may change as needed.” Below this is another construction-paper sign that reads, “Please don’t hang out on my porch when I’m closed. Thank you, Carrie.” I’m just turning to avoid a trespass when a voice from the trailer says, “I’m here.” The window flies up. “I’m open. I know I’m not supposed to be open, but I was just in back.” I look in and there is only the one room of the trailer. There is no back.

The woman is short with dark hair and dark skin. She wears a baggy sweatshirt and baggy black jeans that are a foot too long and pile up over her sneakers. A dog barks. “Shut up Stevey,” says the woman. “He’s not suppose to be here either.” Stevie continues to growl. She smiles, but if anything this makes her face look tired and drawn.

“Do you have fresh brewed coffee?” I ask.

“Oh yes,” she says, touching a thermos next to the window.

She pumps into a paper cup as she talks, filling it right to the rim. “Brewed it early. This thermos is really something amazing. It keeps the coffee hot all day, and sometimes if there’s leftovers I can just pop the coffee in the microwave next morning and then put it back in the thermos.”

I look at a tablet next to the register on which Carrie has tallied the day’s sales. Only five other customers have come to the cafe today; it’s now late afternoon.

“Cream?” I nod and she slides over a jar of white powdered. I look at the jar and my over-full cup for a moment, pondering my next move. “You just spoon it in, honey” she says by way of encouragement. I spoon in the powder and stir and as coffee spills on the counter she mops it up with a paper towel with a routine that suggests this is how things are done in Kake. The liquid is gray and only just warm. She smiles. “78 cents,” she says.

“And food?” I ask. The menu is small and uninspiring–burgers and nachos; bagels with cream cheese–but I’ve not eaten since the morning.

“Today I have bagels.”

“What kind?”

“There’s a plain and blueberry and an everything bagel.”

“What’s everything?” I ask.

“Well,” she pauses. “It’s got seeds on top.”

“I’ll take that.” And then by way of caution, “Does it come with anything?”

“Sure,” she says brightly, “Cream cheese.”

“Toasted?”

“Sure. I make the bagel nice and hot in the microwave.”

I move my cup of tepid coffee to a table and wait.

A pickup pulls into the driveway and a logger gets out. I know he is a logger because he is a burly white guy who wears mud covered leather boots, a seersucker shirt, and jeans that are held up by suspenders emblazoned with the words “Logger”.

“Hey Bill. Long time no see.” says Carrie.

“Hey Carrie. Glad you’re still open. Anything but bagels today?” he asks.

“Not today.”

He orders a blueberry bagel with cream cheese and a mocha and sits down. Stevey growls softly. Carrie turns on a small boom box that plays pop music.

“I can’t remember when you took this place over from Liz,” says Bill.

“It’s only been eight months,” says Carrie. “I was going to move it back to my lot in town, but then my house burned down.”

“Burned?” says Bill.

“Didn’t you know?”

“No, I’ve been working for SEA Alaska up north this summer. Just got back.”

“Ya, forth of July. All three boys were in the house. It was raining and so they were lighting fireworks in the living room and throwing them out the window. You know, one of my boys is a pyro. When we take the garbage to the dump, he’s always lighting stuff on fire. Like old refrigerators or tires. Can’t figure him out. Anyway, one of the smoke bombs or bottle rockets or whatever bounced off the window and rolled under the couch. Shit but that couch burst into flames just like that! We barely had time to get outside, and then the whole house kinda went whoof before the fire department could even get there.”

“That’s terrible,” says Bill. “I had no idea.”

“Ya, I mean who knew couches were so dangerous. They can kill you.”

“No body got hurt though?”

“Now I tell everybody to watch out for their couches. They’re a fire hazard. It’s important.”

“But the boys are OK?”

“Oh sure,” says Carrie, “My oldest was so close to the fire his thick gold necklace got hot and burned his neck. He still has a scar. Now we’re living in a trailer on the property. Not sure what to do with the house.” Carrie laughs. Her cell phone beeps.

“Well, that’s good,” says Bill.

“And now they text asking when am I coming home to cook dinner. Boys will be boys,” says Carrie.

Stevey barks.

I pay my bill and leave.

Kake is beginning to get to me. It feels like a place adrift. What is the purpose of this Tlingit Indian village? What *is* a Tlingit Indian village if it has no obvious ethnic roots or even a physical center? How is this place any different from any other generic American town?

I am walking back to the boat. I turn a corner and in front of me stands a little white boy. He is blond and wears bright yellow waders. He addresses me but his language is unfamiliar.

“Pardon?” I say.

He begins again in what I presumed to be Tlingit, but then finishes with “You have a beard, so you must be Bob.”

Confused still I say, “I’m sorry but I just don’t understand what you are saying.”

“I only know one man with a beard,” he says in English, “His name is Bob. So, you must be Bob. Hello Bob.”

Though his logic is unassailable, I respond with, “But my name is Randall.”

“Aha! — Randall Randallasoras!” he replies, brightening.

I wait. He stands there digging a boot into the mud.

“And what is your name?” I ask.

He ponders awhile, and then concluding this is the dullest question he has heard all day, he runs off toward the beach.

I row out to the boat thinking I don’t know much more about Kake now than when I arrived.

end

Murre and I departed Warm Springs in the early morning for the short, fifteen mile hop south to our next destination. I had just finished a Wayne Short story about the mail boat Yakobi that ran a 500 mile delivery circuit out of Juneau to this part of southeast in the 40s and 50s. She made weekly calls year round to out of the way places like Petersburg, Kake, Port Alexander, Warm Springs, and Murder Cove. Winter storms were frequently so fierce that when she arrived at her next port of call, ice covered her decks and house, and she was in danger of foundering. Those who met her at the dock had to chop into the encoffined bridge so that Martin, the captain, could get out.

Murre and I were transiting the same waters as Yakobi. But for us it was pure summer. I sat on the bow marveling how bright a day can be absent of cloud and how glassy a sea without wind. The red bluffs announcing Red Bluff Bay were just coming into view when the radio sounded. It was the sailboat Espa just exiting.

“You been to Red Bluff before?” asked a male voice from Espa.

“First time,” I said.

“Two hints then. One, the best anchorage is up in the right corner in a cove behind a small, hooking island, and two, the Pinks are running in the creek and they’re still good eating.”

“A guy in Warm Springs told me he saw thirty six bears in the meadow two days ago. That sound right?”

“Well, I don’t know about that. We only counted nine. ”

“Nine!”

“Actually eleven if you included the mother and cub. She and the kid were pounding the water in our anchorage all night. Not a problem except it’s so tight there you’re only a few feet from the rocks when you swing. Kind of unnerving to have a big mama bear playing in your end of the pool.”

“Where you headed?” I asked.

“Seattle,” said Espa. “We came up from Hawaii and down through the Aleutians, Kodiak. I’m done with this. I want to get somewhere where I can stay awhile and warm up. Here the sun is like a tease. Sure, today is nice, but you wait. We’re headed out Chatham now…Seattle next stop.”

I thanked Espa and signed off.

***

Two small islands tucked just inside the entrance to Red Bluff Bay effectively close off the fjord from Chatham Strait. Murre zigzags her way around, and it is like a door shutting. There is no more world outside. A mile on the fjord constricts and becomes so narrow that finding another boat there could be trouble. Here dark cliffs climb straight from the water on either side and might easily be mistaken by a fanciful mind as the gateway to an ancient fortress. Arrows whizzing past would not have been a surprise, nor a “Who goes there!?” Then the cliffs pull away revealing high, snowy mountains on all sides. Around the next bend, a thundering, muscular water fall whose bottom is so deep I ease Murre’s bowsprit up to the spray without running aground. About four miles in the head of the fjord is created by a vast meadow, known informally as Bear Park, and to the right a tiny, hooking island near the shore that cordons off a tiny cove.

And here we anchored at noon.

I sat on the stern for some time pondering whether we even had room to swing. The protective island appeared to be a boulder stack from which grew enough fir trees to create a forest in miniature. A small, grassy swale, submerged at high tide, separated the island from the rest of Baranof proper, which bent around as a rocky beach from which poured a bubbling stream. Schools of salmon lolled in the shade. Bear Park lay but a mile off, and above it hung the mountains. It was as serene and picturesque a scene as one could imagine–the ultimate in seclusion. And from the anchoring perspective, it was tight as hell.

Murre obliged by not moving on her chain, and I soon forgot my worry.

I had resolved to go for a walk, had loaded myself and kit into the dinghy and was rowing over to the small island when a large brown she-bear and one cub wandered down from it, across the swale and up into the forest proper.

Change of plans, I thought. I’ll stay in the dinghy.

So I spent the afternoon fishing among a most uncooperative collection of ornery salmon. I trolled the cove and then cast the cove using every lure I had, dropping my enticements in on the meandering schools or tossing them over and then dragging them back. The fish either ignored the lures, or worse, swatted them away with annoyance as if to say “dude, you are so off trend.” I suspect the three pounder I landed by day’s end was in this category, a swatter unlucky enough to get her gill caught in the hook as I yanked the pole skyward. Her belly was full of roe and her flesh was only lightly pink. She tasted good grilled with bell peppers and zucchini.

In the evening I pulled over to the wide meadow for the bear show. Bears snatching salmon from the rapids in the stream. Bears wading out into the bay to lunge at passing fish, grab a bite, then sit on their haunches to nosh. Lazy bears pulling at spawned and putrid salmon on the beach. Bears huffing and chasing each other. Small bears on the periphery standing on their haunches, sniffing the air and then running away when a larger bear but glanced in their direction. Bears wandering the meadow haphazardly as if looking for their lost keys. Bears standing in the meadow staring off into the distance for long periods of time before resuming the search for lost keys. Bears wandering off into the woods, then reappearing moments later to chase a nearby bear, give up, wade into the bay and lunge for salmon and then sit to eat looking for all the world like a happy gorilla.

The current from the stream circled back to the beach, pushing the dinghy in toward shore. Every so often I’d softly row out a bit, noting that the water was only two feet deep and if a bear wanted he could still charge me. Of the nine big brown bears I counted, not one even looked my way.

It was dark by the time I returned to Murre. I went right to bed. It was a quiet night.

We are underway next morning before eight o’clock. Back in Sergius Narrows the tide is at full flood and launches Murre like a beach ball. We fly at ten knots through the final tight turn before being laid gently into wide Peril Strait. Wind is calm; the sky low and drizzly. It’s 55 degrees. I had expected to make fifteen knots through Sergius and so am disappointed.

At the transition of narrows to strait, bright white whale spouts–a pod of six humbacks sounding against a cliff that is sheer into the water. One whale breeches, a splash like a freight train. Then all are gone only to surface on the opposite shore bubbling and gaping a school of herring into utter frenzy.

Peril Strait’s approach to Chatham Straits is long and featureless. Now there is a light wind at our back. I pop the jib, but it hangs lifeless and I roll it back up. A haze on the horizon resolves to be the catamaran Fairweather, an Alaska State Ferry of 200 feet and making 36 knots. She is the size of large hotel and is making 36 knots! Murre is the size of a phone booth and does well to maintain five. My radio announces, “Fairweather approaching Sergius Narrows. ETA twenty minutes. All concerned traffic please advise.” Which is polite talk for “I’m coming; get out of my way.”

We don’t pass into Chatham until mid afternoon. Wind has evaporated. Except for the occasional log and frequent rafts of kelp, the water is like a mirror. The morning’s low cloud has pulled back revealing blue sky and Baranof’s spine of snow capped mountains. “So much taller, snowy than anything on Admiralty Island,” I write in the log. Even from Peril Strait I could see the mountains of Admiralty, and was impressed. But they are low and round compared to Baranof where some peaks are like iron towers, others jagged and saw toothed, and all carry serious snow-pack. In the saddles snow is glacial, cracking thickly, revealing an icy-blue centers. Like the Rocky Mountains jutting right up from the sea, I think.

It’s 57 miles form Baby Bear to Warm Springs where we anchor at seven in the evening. Below the several cabins along the north of the bay and downstream from a pounding waterfall is a small pier, but it’s full of other boats. One is a large, sleek charter yacht named Caledonia, and another I recognize from Sitka. “I thought you were headed to Glacier Bay?” I yell to Randall of Tregonig, who is eating greedily in the cockpit. “We are; this is on the way,” he lies. “Hey, you got dancing shoes? We’ve all been invited over to that palace, Caledonia, this evening. I’m sure there will be ball room dancing, and if not that at least they’ll have central heating!”

Anchored on the other side of the bay is a pretty troller named Coronation and a fat ketch, Kotik. I drop the hook in 40 feet near the south wall. Murre eases in under the break of trees and I immediately lower the dinghy.

In 1962 Wayne Short published a book called CHEECHAKOES (Chinook for *greenhorn*), which describes his experiences as a young man in southeast Alaska. Wayne’s father was a jack-of-all and a wanderer, and after he’d “pretty much wore out the western states, Pa decided we should have a go at the Final Frontier.” So he moved his family of five, a wife and three sons, to uninhabited Murder Cove at the southern tip of Admiralty Island (just an hour east by boat from Warm Springs) where they lived the life of pioneers.

This life required they build their own cabin from scratch, hunt and fish for their food, and defend their stake from bears. The family’s misadventures are superb tinder for crackling-good stories, and Short misses no opportunities. As a kid living in Sitka, I found it irresistible reading. From it I learned what I took to be key life lessons; for example, if during your walk in the woods a bear “gets the drop on you”, don’t run, don’t move, not even an eye lash, or, if you fall into the icy water, when you climb back ashore, wring the water from your wool clothes (of course, you wear nothing but wool) and go on about your business.

Murder Cove was a terrible place to settle. It was open to winter storms and its stream lacked the power to generate hydroelectricity. So as an adult, Wayne Short moved *his* family to protected Warm Springs, where he raised five boys and encountered enough adventure for two more books. My coming here is a bit of a pilgrimage.

I row around the tiny bay. Near Murre is a bubbling stream that looks to be falling from a lake just barely above the high tide mark. Over near the cabins, the main fall thunders, and I take Coot into the current that swings me easily to the docks where Randall is waiting.

“You call those dancing shoes?” he says, pointing at my rubber boots. “Better than yours,” I say. Both he and Alicia are wearing leather moccasins, and Roger, her nephew visiting from London, is in socks. Alicia carries a tray of freshly baked, savory shortbreads. Roger hands me a beer.

“I can’t go,” I protest. “I’m not showered and have been wearing the same clothes for a week.”

“Excellent,” says Randall. “You’ll make us look good.”

Caledonia is 100 feet long and has two decks of cabins. Aft on the third deck is a sun room with wicker chairs and popular magazines in wicker baskets. Just forward is a full bar, then a dining room above which is a huge, flat screen TV. There is no ball room, but pervading all, as Randall has predicted, is an even, delicious warmth.

We are greeted by Penni and Bill, Caledonia’s owners. She wears a tennis visor, a light, jaunty wind breaker and shorts; he is in jeans and a polo shirt. Quite obviously both have recently showered. Alicia introduces her husband as “Randall1” and me as “Randall2”. “Oh,” says Penni with surprise, “Are you two related?”

Randall is well over six feet tall and in his sixties. He is stocky but with a delicate face; his remaining hair is gray; he is clean shaven.

“Brothers,” says Randall

“Twins,” I add.

I like Randall.

Alicia quickly explains, “Actually he’s just some cruiser we met in Kauai; he’s been following us around.” This is close enough to true and seem to suffice.

Two other couples, local cruisers, are at the party. It is slow going, at least for me. I’m tired from the day of travel and excuse myself after an hour.

Next day I hike to Baranof Lake, lunch on a boulder, and attempt, unsuccessfully, to build fire from moss and pitch in the afternoon. I’m using a “fire stick” (think high-tech flint) which throws sparks. After ten minutes of trying I’ve gotten flame twice, but it won’t catch. I need more practice.

The lake appears to be at great altitude–ringed by mountains, water green as emerald–but in fact is less than five hundred feet above sea level. I hike until evening and see no one.

Back at the bay both Tregonig and Caledonia have departed. In their place is another large, charter yacht whose guests are just returning from a kayak of the small lake near Murre. I’ve learned it’s called Salt Lake because it fills and is accessible by boat from the bay at high tide, which now is in. I row over and up through the pass that was a small water fall the day before. A seal, who also knows the secret, follows. Inside the lake-water is glassy calm; sun warm on my face. I doze briefly in the dinghy and wake to find the tide falling and the pass back to the bay is now a rapids. We shoot through, but I misjudge one turn. The Coot heals sharply, throwing me to one side. The rail dips and we start to fill with water. I lunge to the other rail. Suddenly we are righted and through into the main bay. I am relieved until discovering one oar has remained behind, twirling upstream behind a large rock. I struggle back to the rapids with the other oar, but can’t make any progress against the flow. With the falling tide the contour of the rapids slowly changes and finally the oar comes to meet us.

I am just ship-shape when a skiff carrying a man and two women, all in life jackets, motors quickly over. My exploit has been performed in full view of the visiting yachts, so I prepare for a tongue lashing. “Have you been to Red Bluff yet?” yells the man as the skiff zooms by. “We counted 36 bears there last night. Quite a show.”

“Tomorrow,” I yell back.

The casual observer of a Sitka-area satellite image might believe the town to be situated on the lower third of a long, dagger-shaped island–tip down, its serrated edge facing the sea–whose in-land coasts are bordered by the broad blue waterways of Cross Cape and Icy Strait to the north and Chatham Strait to the east. But a closer look shows these waterways actually surround several islands, of which the largest are hulking Chichagof sitting atop finely pointed Baranof on which Sitka rests near the top.

What keeps these islands apart is a series of small channels running between the Pacific and Chatham Strait that connect Sitka with a watery highway known as the Inside Passage. With rare (and notable) exceptions one can cruise all the way from Skagway to Seattle, some 900 miles of southing, without ever seeing so much as an ocean swell. High pressure along Alaska’s panhandle in summer also keeps at sea much of the Gulf’s frigid wind, if not its cloud and rain.

And it’s this Inside Passage that will shape our course over the coming weeks. Unlike the vast, anonymous ocean, here every feature, every inch of surface is charted and named such that the names themselves define the way. From Sitka Murre and I will climb up and over Baranof via Stergis Narrows and Peril Strait into Chatham Strait, then drop down and around Admiralty Island and through Fredrick Sound to Petersburg; down the Wrangell Narrows to Wrangell; down Zimovia Strait to Ernest Sound to Clarence Strait and Tongass Narrows to Ketchican. On and on until we reach Seattle or jump to the outside, having tired of an endless fir-lined coast.

**

Delayed a day, as usual. The evening before departure from Sitka I test the running lights and the forward two are out. Somewhere between the switch in the galley and the bulbs at the bow the forty year old wire has failed. I spend the morning pulling down wiring trays and testing, cutting and testing, and I never find the break.

Alaska’s summer may provide twenty hours of daylight in these parts, but that doesn’t mean it’s ever very bright, which is why the trollers tend to leave their running lights constantly lit. “I turn mine on at the beginning of the salmon season, and I turn them off at the end,” says one fisherman.

Mine must be fixed and my last resort is to run new wire from the galley to the head, some 30 feet through bulkheads and around tight corners, which fixes the problem, but by then it’s late afternoon. The day is blown. I’m discouraged until Randall from yacht Tregonig walks by. He and Alicia were to have departed for Glacier Bay that morning. “Pulled away from the slip. Turned on the radio and chart plotter. Got nothing. Pulled right back into the slip,” he says. We have a beer and celebrate cruising in old boats.

**

Early next day I am hustling to be underway. Always there are more chores to be done than can ever be done, and finally one must cast off the lines in despair. I have the engine running when George hollers from the next finger, “You want a Salmon?” George and wife live and fish each summer aboard their beamy troller the Norma Rae; next to them docks his brother Gene who solo fishes on a boat named Byng. They all winter in Washington State.

“Let the man be,” yells Gene, “Can’t you see he’s trying to make a tide?”

This is true, but I haven’t had any fresh salmon yet. “I’ll bring over a six pack,” I yell. “But hurry.”

George graduated from university with a degree in engineering. He worked for NASA on the first Shuttle’s heat shield. “Can you believe it? Our prototype was water bags. Thought they’d just boil away on re-entry.” He didn’t like the work. He’d already been bit by the fishing bug. George is 75 now, loves a good conversation, and will do anything to get it.

Aboard Norma Rae, George climbs into the hold. “Have I shown you where we ice and store the fish? Come on down.”

“No time, George,” I say.

“Oh, right. Man with a plan. Well, we had a good week’s run out at the Cape. Nine, ten Kings a day. Not great, but good. And the price is about $3.50 a pound now, also not great, but good…”

“The fish, George! Get the fish,” says his wife, standing in the cabin door. She is George’s age, thin, looks strained. She is used to her husband’s ways, he doing most of the talking and she doing most of the work. She is used to this, but not resigned.

“Oh, right.”

George brings up a big silvery King in one hand that is equally as beautiful as the big rock fish under his arm is ugly.

“Not that one, George,” says his wife, “That’s our best King.”

George ignores her and quickly cuts off half a side. “There’s $50 in a grocery,” he says handing it to me with a smile, “but I’ll trade you for an IPA.” He then cuts off a chunk of rock fish. “And this is free. Grill it meat side down until it browns, then flip it over. When done the meat should just flake off the skin. Great for sandwiches. Also a good BBQ fish. I remember last summer at this spot we caught…”

“George!” yell his wife and brother in unison.

“Oh, right.”

**

I am at the fuel dock by ten o’clock and into Sitka Sound by ten thirty. Murre rolls slowly on the Pacific swell leftovers as we head northeast. Mt. Edgecumbe towers to the left. The sky is lead. There is no wind. The autopilot whirs reassuringly.

We pass a spray of small islands, then the Alaska Ferry terminal, and suddenly we are inside Olga Strait, a narrow shoot between Krestof and Halleck Islands, its high, wooded sides reminding of a purpose-built canal. We have two knots of tide with us. We shoot out the other side into Krestof Sound and are sucked immediately into tiny Neva Strait. On our right is Baranof, and on our left a curiosity called Partofshikov Island–curious in that it is not part of Shikov; there is no Shikov.

Here the quarters are so tight that boats line up single file like cars on a road. I am passed by speed boat after speed boat, charters headed back to Sitka from a day of tourist fishing. The guests look down; the drivers look ahead. No one waves. All the trollers in their slow, heavy boats wave as they pass. I think again how much I like the troller guys. Fishing to them is not a business, it’s a livelihood; there’s a difference, and they know it.

Neva dumps me into Salisbury Sound where the tide begins its stand. This pleases me; tide is crucial for the next leg through Sergius Narrows where the whole of the Pacific must suck in its belly to wriggle around a hair pin curve into Peril Strait. At its peak water boils through this pass at eight knots, which is tricky enough without the right angle turn.

I pass Kakul Point, bend right, and hit a three knot tide square on the nose. It’s still ebbing. I’m too early. I check the current tables and find it is indeed thirty minutes to slack water. Nothing for it but to continue chugging.

Drizzle. Other, faster boats, pass me and my two knots over the ground. The current pushes Murre like a toy. The autopilot can’t adjust. I take over the wheel.

Finally we’re into the short section between Rapids Island and Chichagof. This is the squeeze box, and still the tide is ebbing strongly. Murre is nearly abeam of the first red buoy when the radio crackles. “Boat in the narrows, this is Mist Cove. Port to Port good for you?” Rounding the bend ahead is a small cruise ship. Docked in Sitka where I saw her last she seemed a show room piece, a plank on plank hull of 150 feet, superb joinery in her cabins, all varnish and neat, white paint. Now she is tall and gray and churning up the water, bearing down with all the amiability of a hungry shark. What luck to be the only boat to meet another in the Sergius Channel.

I can’t leave the wheel so hug the red buoys by way of a response to Mist Cove’s question. She passes quickly, her captain waving a long arm out the bridge window.

It is evening by the time we reach Bear Island and the tide is finally at its low stand. A fog is descending. At dead slow I turn right past a set of rocks sharp as diamonds, weave around heads of kelp, squeeze through a tiny pass, and rattle out the chain in the hook of Baby Bear Bay. Room for one boat. Surrounded by trees. Land locked and utterly still. All night Murre does not move over her anchor.

end