Tracy Arm
No single photograph does justice to this day. Nor do two. Our senses were overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, smells, touches and tastes that stimulated and inspired us throughout the day. This is the best way to experience Nature - immersed in awareness of the environment - no matter where you may be located on the planet.
Blue ice, green water, sunshine, mountain goats, fjord, gneiss, harbor seals, mew gulls, alcids, harbor porpoises, seracs, bald eagles, tonalite, striations, waterfalls, temperate rainforest, kayaks, skunk cabbage, Sitka spruce, salmonberries, scat, humpback whales -- are just a few of the terms that conjure up images and memories of the day. They started before breakfast and continued after dinner.
Tracy Arm, south of Juneau, is a classic narrow and deep fjord that winds over 20 miles into the base of the Coast Range, which forms the border between Southeast Alaska and British Columbia, Canada. Glaciers form and flow down from the highlands like giant frozen rivers of ice, sculpting the landscape in the process. Sawyer and South Sawyer Glaciers terminate in the salt water at the head of Tracy Arm, their faces as much as 200 feet high. As gravity relentlessly draws the ice down from higher elevations, great chunks break off at the foot and crash loudly into the water in the process known as calving. These pieces float away as icebergs, sometimes traveling many miles and taking weeks to melt. A great transformation and alteration has taken place, but it still involves the same water molecules, cycling through different forms of the same amazing substance. What tremendous power this substance has - physically, economically, politically, and spiritually. Playing with light, the ice takes on a dazzling array of shapes, patterns, and hues of blue as it goes through these changes. It may provide a temporary resting place for birds or seals. It pleases and teases our artistic souls.
The afternoon offered new and different perspectives to our senses when we walked in the rainforest and kayaked around a calm bay. It gave us a chance to closely examine some of the many small parts that make up a complex and dynamic interconnected system. All the elements of life, death, decay, and rebirth are evident here. There are the forces of apparent harmony, chaos, equilibrium, and instability - meeting and competing, checking and balancing. Each individual organism is driven to spread its own genes. Those that succeed are the ones that are best adapted for a particular niche or habitat.
Salmonberries were becoming ripe and ready for bears to gorge upon in their effort to fatten up for the approaching change in seasons. Rows of sapsucker holes were dripping nutritious pitch from the bark of spruce trees. The presence of bears, wolves and river otters was evident in the tracks and droppings that they left behind. A flock of lesser yellowlegs tolerated our presence as they tiptoed amongst barnacles and rockweed, softly peeping to each other and busily feeding on small invertebrates during a brief stopover on their long southward migration.
We returned to the Sea Lion for wine-tasting and recap. After dinner there was whale-watching. It was a busy and fulfilling day.
No single photograph does justice to this day. Nor do two. Our senses were overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, smells, touches and tastes that stimulated and inspired us throughout the day. This is the best way to experience Nature - immersed in awareness of the environment - no matter where you may be located on the planet.
Blue ice, green water, sunshine, mountain goats, fjord, gneiss, harbor seals, mew gulls, alcids, harbor porpoises, seracs, bald eagles, tonalite, striations, waterfalls, temperate rainforest, kayaks, skunk cabbage, Sitka spruce, salmonberries, scat, humpback whales -- are just a few of the terms that conjure up images and memories of the day. They started before breakfast and continued after dinner.
Tracy Arm, south of Juneau, is a classic narrow and deep fjord that winds over 20 miles into the base of the Coast Range, which forms the border between Southeast Alaska and British Columbia, Canada. Glaciers form and flow down from the highlands like giant frozen rivers of ice, sculpting the landscape in the process. Sawyer and South Sawyer Glaciers terminate in the salt water at the head of Tracy Arm, their faces as much as 200 feet high. As gravity relentlessly draws the ice down from higher elevations, great chunks break off at the foot and crash loudly into the water in the process known as calving. These pieces float away as icebergs, sometimes traveling many miles and taking weeks to melt. A great transformation and alteration has taken place, but it still involves the same water molecules, cycling through different forms of the same amazing substance. What tremendous power this substance has - physically, economically, politically, and spiritually. Playing with light, the ice takes on a dazzling array of shapes, patterns, and hues of blue as it goes through these changes. It may provide a temporary resting place for birds or seals. It pleases and teases our artistic souls.
The afternoon offered new and different perspectives to our senses when we walked in the rainforest and kayaked around a calm bay. It gave us a chance to closely examine some of the many small parts that make up a complex and dynamic interconnected system. All the elements of life, death, decay, and rebirth are evident here. There are the forces of apparent harmony, chaos, equilibrium, and instability - meeting and competing, checking and balancing. Each individual organism is driven to spread its own genes. Those that succeed are the ones that are best adapted for a particular niche or habitat.
Salmonberries were becoming ripe and ready for bears to gorge upon in their effort to fatten up for the approaching change in seasons. Rows of sapsucker holes were dripping nutritious pitch from the bark of spruce trees. The presence of bears, wolves and river otters was evident in the tracks and droppings that they left behind. A flock of lesser yellowlegs tolerated our presence as they tiptoed amongst barnacles and rockweed, softly peeping to each other and busily feeding on small invertebrates during a brief stopover on their long southward migration.
We returned to the Sea Lion for wine-tasting and recap. After dinner there was whale-watching. It was a busy and fulfilling day.
