Alaska Day Four--Glacier Bay National Park

“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” - Gustave Flaubert

September 19, 2017

Southwestern Breakfast

We woke this morning inside a national park. The Eurodam slowed long enough to allow 4 park rangers and a native guide to hop on as we turned into the Sitakaday Narrows and into Glacier Bay. We had an early breakfast with Joy and Mike and then headed back to our respective cabins to prepare to spend the morning out on our verandas watching the wondrous frozen world slide by. 

The key to comfort in the cold is layering. I didn’t bring a winter coat per se. Instead I wore wooly socks, black pants, a long tunic topped with a sweater, a thick cowl neck poncho (This last item I received from my sister Linda when we dropped by to see her on the way out here. All these years, and we can still raid each other’s closet!) My ensemble was completed by a red toboggan hat, a long blue neck scarf #2 Daughter knitted for me, and a pair of leather gloves.

The next step was to prepare my chair and ottoman on the veranda. First, we draped the spare comforter that was in our closet over it which made for a warmer seat. Then we covered our legs with woolen lap blankets the DH snagged from up by the unused pool. We each had a set of binoculars (We brought one and HAL provided another in the cabin for us to use. This must be something unique to suite passengers. We’ve never had one in any of our other cabins.) And our cell phone cameras (with the phones set to flight mode to avoid roaming charges!). We also had a map of the park so we could follow our progress up the bay.

It was a magical passage. In addition to the incredible glaciers, today was a big wildlife day for us. It started with seeing some harbor seals lounging on ice bergs. A little later, a pair of sea otters were playing like sea-going dogs, chasing and leaping out of the water, and treating a large block of floating ice as base in their game of tag. I wasn’t able to get good pictures of this activity because my phone camera wouldn’t zoom as close as my binoculars did, but it was such fun to watch them. To my surprise, the park ranger, whose narration was blasted over the ships intercom, told us that beneath the milky gray-green water, the sea floor is home to sea urchins, starfish and even a species of coral that likes cold water. We saw whale spouts, plums of mist shooting into the air like dragon’s breath, but the animals themselves were too far for us to see clearly. The spout sightings however proved they were there. On a small archipelago of islands, a colony of hundreds of sea lions barked and growled at us as our ship passed by.

In the afternoon, the native Tlingit interpreter gave a heartfelt talk in the main theater. His history tells him his people lived in the Glacier Bay area since “before memory.” Then in about 1750, there was a cataclysmic advance of the glacier. We normally think of glacial speed as being slower than slug-like, but he said the ice came bearing down upon his village “faster than a dog could run.” They abandoned all they had and moved south. The ice spilled out past the current day park boundaries at the mouth of the inlet and into Icy Straight. By the time Captain George Vancouver sailed there 45 years later, the glacier had retreated back into the cove about 5 miles. When John Muir, noted naturalist, visited the park in 1879, the glacier had retreated an additional 40 miles.

Now, some glaciers are still retreating but some are advancing again. The Grand Pacific Glacier, the largest one in the park, has advanced from its 1966 position, as have the John Hopkins and Lamplugh glaciers.  

Since the Tlingit’s homeland has reappeared at the mouth of the bay, these indigenous people are reclaiming the area as their spiritual home. They have a rich spiritual life. They have always acknowledged a Creator, but they also believe all things have a spirit of their own. Balance is their watchword. I mentioned yesterday that the Tlingit divide themselves into what they call moieties—either Eagle or Raven. To maintain balance, if you were an Eagle man, you must marry a Raven woman. Your children would be considered Ravens like their mother, but they would hold Eagles in high regard because of their father. And vice versa. It seems like a tidy way to keep peace between the people.

However, according to our native guide, when his Eagle father was three, he was taken from his family and sent to a boarding school where it was thought he would lose his language and culture. When he was eighteen, he was sent home, but not alone. The school had assigned a wife for him. She was another Eagle, which made their kids “double eagles.”

This was considered a great taboo, probably because following the prescribed rules would guard against inbreeding and deformities in offspring. They were ostracized, and so were their children. There was no balance. When their father died, they were not even allowed to grieve him. Finally, they petitioned their elders, who are held in universally high regard, and balance was restored when they were “adopted” by a Raven relative. They were considered double eagles no longer.

The evening show was called Alaska in Concert. It featured a video accompanied by a live mini-orchestra. Very enjoyable.

My DH only had one complaint. Our day was too full for us to have time to use the Thermal Suite!
     

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