Laughter in the soul

This Humpback calf came alongside to entertain and explore before we came up close and personal with the Northwestern Glacier.

We were floating in the very center of Northwestern Fjord, in the Gulf of Alaska. The captain of our vessel, Alaska Explorer, had taken the engines out of gear. Now he put one forward and one in reverse and the vessel spun on her own axis. As he did this, I held my camera and recorded the majesty of the scenic panorama as it passed in front of my lens. I was laughing inside...laughing in the soul, you might say, for this was a wondrous moment. He allowed me – and the 121 other passengers to experience that sublime moment that comes but once or twice in a lifetime. This was that time.

The mountains surrounded us. The sky was cerulean blue, not a cloud was to be seen. As the boat pivoted, one glacier after another appeared in my viewfinder. The peaks were coated in snow and ice. Behind the peaks lay the Harding Icefield, all 334,485 acres of it, concealing mountains that lie under several thousand feet of ice. The glaciers, even though they are retreating at an alarming rate, are sky blue. And they are always on the move.

The captain, when we had pulled up alongside Northwestern Glacier, stopped all engines and said simply, “This is the time when I let the glacier speak to you.” And she did. She groaned, she rumbled, she belched and she let go of her ice which came crashing down, calving into the fjord. The kittiwakes, floating on the bergy bits teetered and floated along unperturbed. The harbor seals, great sausages of sleek fur, lay basking on the floating ice, the sun warming them, they in all their glory on this perfect day.

Before we had reached the fjord, we'd come down the Gulf of Alaska and had come upon a mother humpback whale and her year-old calf, “a 2010 model” our captain called the calf. The calf was exceedingly curious. He leaped from the water and then made his way over to our stopped boat. Mama lay back, allowing him to explore. He gave us such a show, rolling, breaching, popping straight out of the water, newly-grown barnacles on his jaw.

We poked into one cove after another, each a treasure trove of wildlife and birds. /a mother otter lay on her back with her baby on her belly. Sea Lions basked high on a rock, the bull surrounded by his harem. He bellowed his displeasure as we stood off at about 50 yards while the sea lions basked in the building tide. Black oyster catchers, with enormous red beaks nested among the pebbles on one beach. Horned puffins, as well as tufted puffins fluttered like bats. They both are members of the Alcid family. This species come to land only to nest. Then they produce their young and head out for three years . They propel themselves through the water with their wings which are quite different from other species of birds. Their wing bones are solid to provide more strength for “underwater flying.” When they fly they always flap their wings. The moment they stop flapping, they begin to fall.

Jo and I befriended an Indian couple aboard our vessel, he from Mumbai, she from New York City. They had two delightful daughters and had flown to Anchorage and then rented a small motor home. He worked at Microsoft in Seattle and she was an independent entrepreneur who had started her own wholesale and retail business on the Internet. He was determined to catch salmon and/or halibut and to fly to Kodiak Island to see the Grizzly Bears catching their salmon.

The weather deteriorated as the afternoon wore on. We were back in the Gulf of Alaska and the waves rose along with the swells. The captain did a fine job of minimizing the impact by working toward the windward shore so we were less subject to the unpleasant effects of the sea. But it also was good to return to the harbor, tired but uplifted by the extraordinary experience with nature at its best.