ALASKA: The day I hugged an iceberg

My feeble attempt at making YOU feel like you were there, too

Finding—then keeping—my balance took a bit of effort. My skirt was uneven, higher at one side than the other, and my knobby knees protruded slightly. I clenched the knife in my teeth, but there was nowhere to set the tub of hummus.

Determined to prepare the most epic picnic lunch ever, I persisted.

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Our Alaska friends, Ed and Maile, had offered to take us shrimping in Whittier on my birthday. Having never been shrimping and never been to Whittier, we had no idea what to expect.

After camping in their driveway north of Anchorage for a week to work on vehicle maintenance and assorted projects, as well as catch up on decades of living very separate lives, we had parted ways for a few days. Andy and I wanted to get off the pavement, back into nature. The plan was for us to reunite for this shrimping trip. We would rendezvous mid-evening at Portage Lake Overlook, just west of the tunnel to Whittier—the only way in or out of the rough and tumble port town.

Once we were back together again, we traversed the famous tunnel, dropped their 22-foot aluminum Hewescraft into a boat slip, and set up camp near the marina—them in their pick-up truck and camper, and us in Walter, our big yellow adventure truck. Before heading to bed in anticipation of an early start, they recommended we dress in layers and bring our lunch, rain gear, and kayak.

Morning dawned grey and chilly, making us all glad they’d recently upgraded to a boat with a fully enclosed hardtop cabin. It wasn’t heated inside, but at least we were out of the breeze.

Me, Maile, Ed, and Andy

As we sipped steaming morning glory from travel mugs, Ed steered us out into Passage Canal, one small channel of the huge maze of waterways collectively known as Prince William Sound. Motoring along, he taught us about shrimp habits and habitats and how to find the most promising locations using the boat’s depth finder and radar. Then we baited the two shrimp pots with the customary cans of fish-flavored cat food and lowered them by huge coils of weighted rope into the depths of the sea—each location approximately 500 feet down, at the edge of a steep drop off. Ed pinned the coordinates of the brightly colored buoys in his GPS so we could easily find them again.

“Now we wait,” he said, with a hopeful smirk.

Going shrimping, we learned, is not an active endeavor once the pots have been dropped. We had quite a few hours ahead of us before we would pull them back up, so Ed took us east to the end of Passage Canal, south around Decision Point, then pointed the boat west into the isolated and serene Blackstone Bay.

Pink = the tunnel, red = Whittier, orange = the area where we observed the glaciers, including where we kayaked on the left side of the point

A grey gloom sagged over the surrounding jagged peaks, and a drizzling rain had been set to intermittent. But the surface of the bay was calm, at times even glassy, inspiring a reverent stillness in us as we breathed in the majestic wildness. Occasionally, a tour boat or a half dozen hardy jet skiers with a guide would loop past us and back out again, but for most of the day, the four of us were the only human beings in the bay.

Lush spring green lined the shore and dotted the wet, black granite cliffs, which were streaked here and there with wispy white waterfalls, each singing its own private melody. The scene had an ethereal quality to it, and I could imagine the sounds of a pan flute suddenly appearing, like the score of some Middle Earth fantasy movie that was probably filmed in New Zealand.

But we weren't entirely alone. Blackstone Bay teemed with life both above and below the water’s emerald surface. Pale gulls by the thousands screeched and screamed from their cliffside kingdom fortresses, annoyed by our presence, or arguing about shore bird politics, or perhaps mobilizing for a turf war against the rookery residents down the way. Bald eagles soared above the fray, silent, watching. Curious harbor seals slid off rock outcroppings and ice floes, swam closer to our boat, then popped their heads out of the water to human-watch. A sea otter floated nonchalantly on his back, front paws folded casually on his chest, entirely unconcerned with our presence.

Skirting first to the southeast of a big island, we spotted what Andy and I assumed was the entirety of Blackstone Glacier. It was awesome, in the original intent of that word—a jagged ice fortress of white walls with an unearthly blue glowing from every craggy crevice. We startled when the glacier creaked and moaned, then we gasped when a chunk of ice as big as a dump truck broke loose with a thunderous crack, hurtling down to splash into the bay below—a white trail of ice crystals, snow, and sea spray lingering in the air to mark its path. It was the most incredible thing I’d ever witnessed.

But our friends knew more than we did. After we’d admired the scene for a bit, Ed turned us back into the channel. He smirked again, knowing he’d saved the best for last. This was only the smaller of the two arms of Blackstone Glacier. It was time for the main event.

I know I can be a talker at times. But when the fishing boat made it around to the other side of the rocky peak, now dwarfed by the massive scale of the other arm of the craggy glacier, I was wowed into relative silence. The scene defied words. The compressed ice groaned and creaked. The very rocks cried out.

By the time Ed and Maile dropped us off on a solitary rocky beach so we could inflate our kayak, don our spray skirts, and set out to explore the cove in peaceful silence, the day had already proven to be one of the more spectacular ones of my entire life.

We paddled first to the largest of the waterfalls that streaked the nearby cliffs. Five hundred feet tall, the runoff cascaded down multiple levels of the black rock face with a power that became startlingly apparent, the closer we got.

We fought against the current emanating from the furious water above striking the glassy water below, until the bow of our kayak reached the outer ring of whitewater, perhaps fifteen feet from the crushing flow.

The roar of the waterfall drowned out any hope of conversation. We winced and squinted as icy spray like fine sleet spattered our faces. The wind racing the water down the cliff ricocheted off the surface of the bay and buffeted us, filling our lungs with more oxygen than we could process.

The longer we stayed, though, blinking into the waterfall’s chaos, the less it seemed like fury, and the more it felt like pure and unbridled joy—a heavenly host at their most exuberant. The only response I could muster was a strange combination of adrenaline and exhilaration. It rose from the depths of my being in the form of laughter, pure and strong, somehow coating my inner broken parts with a healing balm as it bubbled to the surface.

Finally, we stopped fighting and allowed the current to push us back out to calmer water. We sat for a moment, not paddling. Stunned.

Selah.

We paddled across the inlet, back to the debris field of ice, picking our way gingerly through the floating chunks of glass as we approached the foot of the towering glacier. From my position in the front of the kayak, I could see the obstacles more clearly. I called out left and right while Andy steered from his position in the back. I used my paddle to nudge the smaller icebergs out of the way and push off the larger ones.

Once we had reached a stretch of fairly open water, we stopped to eat. Preparing a simple picnic lunch from the front seat of the kayak as we floated amongst the glowing blue icebergs would be the icing on my imaginary birthday cake¹.

It was our first time cold-water kayaking, so we’d never before used the spray skirts—which are worn like weird no-legged overalls with elastic along the edges to attach to a frame on the boat. Unaccustomed to the restriction of movement they required to keep us cozy and dry, I struggled, moving slowly and deliberately to keep our lunch-fixings from slipping overboard. But I struggled with a contented smile on my face, convinced that preparing lunch on the glassy water, at the base of a glacier, under a moody sky, would be absolutely worth the effort.

I carefully spread humus on a rectangle of crispbread, topping it with sliced turkey and three small, clumsy chunks of Havarti cheese, then handed it, along with a sliced apple and a can of cranberry-lime seltzer, back to Andy before starting on one for myself. Balancing everything between the watertight skirt of the kayak stretched unevenly over my lap, and the little soft-sided cooler bungee corded almost out of reach on the front of the boat, I was grateful for calm water.

The struggle was worth it. It was perhaps the finest lunch I’ve ever eaten. Between bites of our crunchy, open-faced sandwiches, we watched the glacier calve. Chunks of compressed white ice streaked with brilliant blue, ranging in size from a refrigerator to a Home Depot, broke away and fell with a deafening groan, crack, roar, and crash into the icy bay below while we contentedly dined—like munching popcorn in a darkened movie theater while an action film flickered.

We maintained a safe-ish distance, perhaps a football field away from the base of the glacier, and we kept our bow pointed toward it in case of big kerplunks that caused significant swells. Of course we were wearing our PFDs, but chilling in water strewn with chunks of ice as we were, the thought of getting broadsided by a rogue wave and potentially swamped or even capsized did not sound fun.

After lunch, we left our floating glacial picnic pavilion and paddled over to a solitary azure iceberg which had apparently been stranded on a rocky beach when the tide went out. Grateful for our tall rubber boots, we stepped into the shallows, pulled our craft up onto the shore, and went to investigate.

Roughly the size of Walter, our truck, the iceberg looked completely alien on dry land. With the air temperature in the mid-40s, the ice shimmered and sweated like Frosty the Snowman in a heatwave, each dripping trickle striking the water or rocks below like a giant xylophone.

After admiring it from every angle, I wiggled my whole body into a huge crevice, letting its glossy cerulean interior envelop me in a cold embrace. I slipped my arm through a hole, and we were friends being silly, arm-in-arm, the iceberg and me. I wrapped my arms around it and kissed its slippery wet cheek.

For the life of me, I couldn’t wipe the goofy grin off my face. It was the best birthday ever, and I didn't care how silly I was acting or who witnessed it. The joy I felt in every fiber of my being was absolutely irrepressible.

By the time the four of us were back at the campers, sitting around a cozy dinner table to raise our forks of freshly caught and cooked shrimp, I was teetering on the brink, almost teary with happiness. It had been the best day ever.

Best day ever.

I wish for you, my friend, a day like this someday. Perhaps it won't involve spreading hummus on crispbread in a kayak amongst icebergs at the foot of a calving glacier. Perhaps it will be something completely different. But I hope somehow, somewhere, someway, you get to experience this level of joy. For me, it was a foretaste of glory divine. On this birthday, I felt newly born.

Until next week,

Sherry

P.S. Some of you have shivered your way through this post, with all its grey skies, rain, wind, and ice water. Looking back on the day, however, I don't recall ever feeling cold while we kayaked. The spray skirt kept me dry below, and my bright red raincoat with the hood pulled up over my three layers of shirts and a fleece beanie kept me dry above. Paddling kept my blood pumping, and I was careful to slow my activity level whenever I felt myself getting overheated, so I never got sweaty and clammy. I could have had more appropriate gloves for the occasion, but even my wet hands didn't bother me much. I was too busy being enthralled.

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1. No actual birthday cake materialized, but our friends Ed and Maile did sneak a celebratory bag of birthday donuts aboard their fishing boat, along with a votive candle. After they’d joined Andy in the traditional singing of the birthday song. I blew out my candle and reached into the bay to pick up a perfectly clear piece of ice. Fire and ice. So nice.