... we got up early to make our way down along turnagain arm to portage and the turnoff to the port of whittier ... this is a deceptively calm moment in the daily cycles of a fjord with treacherous forty-foot tides, tidal bores, drastic currents, and quicksand like mud flats ...
... once a place that was our playground ...
... the road to portage took us through a beautiful forested valley ...
... as adrien was taking the last picture i remarked, "it was somewhere around here where we used to picnic all the time" ... there was a group of men taking photographs and we began to talk ... as we were speaking i looked up at the triangle shaped mountain in the left of the picture and—well, while i didn't say it, for sure it was an OMG moment ... i ran to the car, grabbed my ipad, and returned to the edge of the lake, where i then scrolled through until i found this picture of little patrick ...
... what a difference fifty-seven years makes, and i'm not talking about the color of my hair ... !!! ... adrien had the presence of mind to snap the following ...
... how odd, the photograph of little me ... all my life i've wondered about that picture ... all these years has been a mystery, why i was favoring my right leg ... yes, you're correct, as you see it i'm clearly giving my left leg a rest, which is normal for me ... turns out that pa wasn't so careful about which way he mounted his slides, and this one was backwards in the cardboard frame ... it was only after closely examining the profile of the peak that i figured it out and photoshop flipped it to reality ...
... to get to whittier we had to wait it was time scheduled for cars to drive through the tunnel ... with a length of over 13,000 feet, the anton anderson bore is the longest combined rail/vehicle tunnel in north america ... this is the whittier side of the tunnel ...
... we took time for coffee while waiting to board ... liz (ever and forever herself) found it necessary to indignantly point out the errors on the plaque commemorating those who first lived in whittier ("your" vs. "you're," that sort of thing) ... i said, "liz, lighten up, they were sort of like pioneers, too busy surviving to focus on grammar" ... she gave me her special liz look, which, as i'm sure some of you have learned, is to be answered only by following monty python's classic advice, "run away—run away" ... luckily, she didn't have a chisel ...
... in 1958 we packed our bags, fired up the ford, and, via a month in rhode island for mike and i to finish school, made our way to seattle, where we boarded the troopship m.m. patrick for an inner passage "cruise" to alaska ...
... never having seen snow, this was my first view of "the territory of alaska" ... congress passed the act making alaska (and hawaii) a state a week or so after we arrived, and it was another six months before it took effect ... in this, seeing as at the time there were less than 225,000 residents in the territory, i am a member of a very small (and gradually declining) group of people who can stake a claim to having lived in the "last frontier" before it became a state ...
... as near as i could get it, the same spot today ... the picture of the tugboat was one of pa's favorites, he entered it in several photography contests ... in his neat semi-cursive print he labeled the slide mount with his name and phone number, whenever i look at it i think to the great smile as he held my hand and began the process of explaining to his wide-eyed little boy the wonders of this great new world we were entering ...
... we headed out into prince william sound ... i took no notes, so i'll not try to recount the details of the different types of glaciers ... simply, from the moment we left the dock until my feet again touched tarmac in whittier, i was completely and absolutely mesmerized by the magic and majesty of this place ...
... i heard some complaining of the "overcast" ... fools ...
... this wonderful lighting, it reminded me that at best the camera is a technology rather pathetically attempting to do what with our eyes we take for granted ...
... we stopped so crew members could bring aboard ice that was frozen sometime in the 1800s ...
... liz was brave, and also quite lucky that on this day the lesson we all learned viewing "a christmas story" wasn't applicable ...
... while we floated motionless several tremendous chunks of ice "calved" from the edge of the glacier ... even this close we were distant enough that the great cracking noises washed over us only after the ice was actually entering the water, making photographing such events a lottery-like endeavor ...
... the captain brought us in even closer to view the "tunnels" in the glacier ... at times great streams of meltwater will flow from these huge portals ...
... there is a fascinating "dimensionality" to the edge of the glacier ...
... i spent some time with the captain, a moment in which he was neither actually guiding his ship nor standing to have his picture taken with passengers ... he was, to me, seemingly quite young for a position of such tremendous duty, but in him i sensed great competence ... it reminded me of my time in the military, where so very, very young i—we—were tasked with great responsibilities ...
... between stops the boat would speed across the water at a most remarkable forty-four miles per hour ... during these parts of the voyage, needless to say, even in the lee of the cabin it was a bit brisk on deck ...
... at other times, this time of year where the tour wasn't a quarter the ship's capacity, prince william sound defined the word "calm" ...
... there were also moments where was proof it's possible there is more to the universe than meets the eyes ...
... hidden beyond a majestically mysterious ridge is an ice covered wilderness larger than the state of rhode island ...
... the arapahos say, "only the rocks live forever," but here, in this place, over time even the hardest strata will surrender to the unrelenting ice ...
... a landscape which dramatically distorts the scale of time and space ... here, a "where's waldo moment," see if you can find the bald eagle ...
... yet, in a landscape that evokes even in me a most reverent awe, as i'm aware that as the glaciers melt, and we, all of us, begin to deal with the reality of global warming, i also know that there will be an epoch in which they return, and then much of our world will be blanketed in a great sheet of ice ... that, too, in its day will be a problem humanity will have to face ...
... but, as inevitable the changing of the earth, the wearing down of the mightiest of peaks and the deepest of seas filled to become great rolling plains, equally it remains to me a great truth, that my liz and adrien, they are forever ...
... but, as inevitable the changing of the earth, the wearing down of the mightiest of peaks and the deepest of seas filled to become great rolling plains, equally it remains to me a great truth, that my liz and adrien, they are forever ...
... this, among so many, was of the very best of my days ...