"The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands."
Sir Richard Burton
"We sail not to escape life, but for life not to escape us."
--Unknown
Coordinates: 58.0036111°N, -135.7369444°W
The sky was a thousand shades of darkening blue, the shore dunked in a thousand green. A stiff wind kicked the bight into choppy waves, the likes of which drenched Jack in spray with every dip of the dinghy’s bow. Alyssa and I laughed under our raingear, patting him wetly on the back as Captain Gary kept his eyes glued to the ocean where it wended deeper into the land.
We were hunting the end of the water, and consciously deciding to do it at dusk. It might have been a little dumb, but it was worth it. We had an island to cross.
Looking back now, I realize that last year’s blog was different. There was no tidy sum-up, no special farewell-till-next-year post. For some reason, writing just wasn’t possible when we were that busy cramming all the living in. I’m grateful for it now because it gives me the chance to look back before I return this year--probably for the last time--to the Northern Star.
So we’ve decided to start the blog early, while still on dry land and as we’re preparing to set sail again. There are too many memories that will be lost if we don’t write them down before we make new ones. These sights and sounds are too precious to lose.
We have plans, my friends. No promises, but we’re fairly certain Glacier Bay is on the Captain’s log for this year. We want to sail past glaciers and icebergs (gulp) and see some sights we haven’t before. Of course, that’s why we landlubbers took to sea in the first place. God is steering us in another direction, but not quite yet. He has one final adventure in store, and we’ll be milking it for all we’re worth.
But in some ways, the days when the crew decided to cross the isthmus of an entire island on foot, my dearest dreams came true already. Sitting in that dinghy, a tiny bit of plastic and humanity in the center of a mighty, powerful ocean, I was near crying with happiness. Not a soul was in sight but us, and as the cold wind tore at my hair stuffed beneath my life jacket, and Alaska’s spirit seeped into my soul like some potion I couldn’t define, wild and free and heart-healing strong, I had a sense that something I had longed for all my life had happened at last. I could feel my family around me in a way I hadn’t been able to before. Now there was nothing else but us and wild nature and the sea, this night before we tried to climb our Everest.
We had a purpose of course, to bobbing like sitting ducks at nightfall, looking for one of our grandest adventures yet. There is a place on the Island of Chicagoff where two huge (freakin’ huge) bodies of water--Frederick Sound and Tenakee Inlet-- nearly, nearly touch being separated by a comparatively tiny strip of land. To get from the end of Frederick Sound to Tenakee Inlet in a sailboat would take long days of sailing. The intrepid spirit can choose to sail or kayak to the end of Hoonah’s inland waters to where the water ends, hike through bear-infested woods, and come out on the other side to see a different chunk of ocean in a matter of hours. It is a bucket list on any Alaska adventurer’s list, but first you have to get there. And we had some very fun adventures getting there.
So I’m going to turn back the clock a little further, before we were scouting the way to the isthmus, before we saw a million baby crabs and nearly got stranded by the tide. I’ll go back to two days before, when we were sailing away from Hoonah Harbor, determined before we went home to cross the isthmus, brave the bears, and see the other side.
First, we had to reach eight-fathom-bight, the last place for a big boat to anchor before you reached the depths of Chicaghoff. On the way, we dropped our crab pots, only to discover we hadn’t measured the depth quite right. Yes, we anxiously hovered over the GPS, wondering if crabs and pots were lost forever in the drink due to our own, um, rope length miscalculation. Yet before too long, we glimpse a scarce two inches of the buoy above the waves, and collectively sighed in relief.
It was late afternoon before we sailed into Eight-Fathom-Bight, and saw the Forest Service anchorage that would be home for the night. It was an utterly charming place, if a bit scary. At the top of the isolated boat dock in the middle of nowhere, there was an arch of trees and greenery that looked like it could swallow you and drop you in the middle of orc-infested Wildlands. There might not have been orcs, but there were bears, and having long ago confronted our mortality in that area, Jack, Alyssa, Dad, Mom and I decided something was more important than guaranteed life-expectancy.
Clams. Big ones.
We were waiting on the tide to go find our way to the end of Eight-Fathom, and hopefully, ascertain the place we would launch our expedition over the isthmus. Until then, we decided we were going to scout this beach, miles and miles away from people and civilization, for holes in the sand. We were gonna CATCH. US. SOME. CLAMS.
Yet it was really, really difficult not to get distracted by the scenery, for obvious reasons.
With shovel, buckets and previously unused clam rake in hand, we went through the portal of green and found our way down to a beach that looked untouched by any human boot. The water was clear as glass and teaming with little crabs and anemones. Halfway down the beach, I found an anemone eating a baby crab that was still kicking. I nudged the crab free, feeling like it was tough ropes for the anemone as the crab sidewinded into the sea, and kept looking for the holes in the sand that would signal a clam or cockle waiting to be dug up.
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| Can you spot the crab? |
Alyssa was best at it. She’d be sidling along, eyes on the dark sand, until she’d yell, “Here!”
We dug and dug, and fished through the sand with our fingers. Little round lumps covered in grit would spit defiantly at us, and we screamed in delight, the Second Mate Kris already looking for the next hole.
Eight-fathom-Bight was miraculously beautiful as we searched, and we often found ourselves just staring out to sea, or gazing down into the water. We dug up many smaller clams called cockles, but we had yet to find our grand prize, huge butter clams the size of salad plates.
Captain Gary soon announced it would be too late to scout our adventure tomorrow if we didn’t turn back. So we turned back half-hardheartedly, knowing our white whale was still out there.
Halfway back, Alyssa spotted a hole bigger than all the others. With manic zeal we dug deeper, as fast as we could, not wanting the little bugger to burrow itself in where even crazy Utahns couldn’t find it. We winced when we heard a crack--the shovel had fractured the clam’s shell--but cheered when a huge butter clam the size of a small dinner plate was pulled free of the sand. We had caught our white whale.
We didn’t have time to cook the clams then, so we left them on the dock in saltwater and piled into the dinghy, a little nervous at the waves but just confident enough to risk them. As the first touch of nightfall fell, we pulled away from the Northern Star, leaving her behind to cross the bight and perhaps see where, tomorrow, we would cross an island and achieve one more dream we were lucky enough to chase.
It was glorious. It was beautiful. Yet the crossing is a story for another blog I fully intend to write, with Alyssa’s help.
Except, there’s one last thing you might want to know before I sign off for now. The story of clamming wasn’t over.
When we returned from our dinghy ride, Jack slipped into the galley, bravely sizzling the cockles in butter and garlic as the rest of us lurked nervously in the salon, steeling our nerve. We were gathering shellfish on a beach where no clear word had been given on whether or not the shellfish were poisoned by red-tide. In short, we were risking poisoning ourselves to taste clams we had caught ourselves.
Though I really don’t advise you copy such behavior, I’ll only say this. Those odd, chewy things dipped in garlic sauce were worth the risk, to me at least.
Crossing a bear-infested isthmus and getting dunked in mud was worth the risk too, but that was a story for tomorrow. We laughed nervously as we ate the last of the cockles, nibbling them down as we peered out the portholes, eagerly waiting for dawn to come so we could see something entirely new. Tomorrow, we thought. Tomorrow.
So begins one of the untold stories that I want told when this adventure is all said and done. So if ya’ll want to climb aboard a little early, you can cross the wilderness with us. There are new adventures coming, but reveling in the old is half the fun.
Sometimes, you do get the big clam. And you get to eat it too.
Skipper Krystal
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