Freshwater Bay and Peril Strait
Immersed in organic hues of sea, shore, and forest, we awoke at anchor in a corner of Chichagof Island’s Freshwater Bay. The trance of the misty morning was snapped by a delightful pair of grizzly cubs romping in a beach meadow as mom slowly mowed down vegetation. These ‘ABC Bears’ of Admiralty, Baranof, and Chichagof islands, brown bears with a kids’ cartoon name, are more closely related to polar bears than they are to other brown bears. As the ever-seeping tide erased the intertidal’s golden fringe, the polar bear southern cousins went ‘indoors’ into the rainforest, seemingly escaping a drizzling rain.
The sea seamlessly segued into a silvery sky, creating the illusion of floating islands about kayakers enjoying the morning’s serenity. Surface waters were dappled by raindrops, dots and circles continuously forming and dissolving. In a corner of Pavlof Harbor, hikers traversed a trail beside a cascading creek descending to the inlet. Red and yellow paintbrush blooms, banana slugs, a salmon ladder, a crystalline cave, a deer’s bedded down area in a tree hollow, and other impressions were discovered on walking streamside to the lake above.
Felled trees attached to pointy stumps, and a semi-submerged lodge of sticks told of the work of that aquatic architect, the beaver. And sure enough, the buck-toothed rodent was soon seen plying the waters. As we walked in the wet lakeside grasses and amid tangles of roots, pools and mud, boreal toads leapt aside. Amphibians are relatively uncommon in Alaska, and as an indicator group of environmental health, are in decline worldwide.
The Sea Bird journeyed through Chatham Strait to Peril Strait in search of wildlife en route to our voyage’s end tomorrow in Sitka, once the capital of Russian America. Humpback whales surfaced off Morris Reef, some mouths agape, in the misty gray of the afternoon, reminding us of even more spectacular sightings we experienced. Salmon are now leaping outside stream mouths, about to finish their journey as well.
Immersed in organic hues of sea, shore, and forest, we awoke at anchor in a corner of Chichagof Island’s Freshwater Bay. The trance of the misty morning was snapped by a delightful pair of grizzly cubs romping in a beach meadow as mom slowly mowed down vegetation. These ‘ABC Bears’ of Admiralty, Baranof, and Chichagof islands, brown bears with a kids’ cartoon name, are more closely related to polar bears than they are to other brown bears. As the ever-seeping tide erased the intertidal’s golden fringe, the polar bear southern cousins went ‘indoors’ into the rainforest, seemingly escaping a drizzling rain.
The sea seamlessly segued into a silvery sky, creating the illusion of floating islands about kayakers enjoying the morning’s serenity. Surface waters were dappled by raindrops, dots and circles continuously forming and dissolving. In a corner of Pavlof Harbor, hikers traversed a trail beside a cascading creek descending to the inlet. Red and yellow paintbrush blooms, banana slugs, a salmon ladder, a crystalline cave, a deer’s bedded down area in a tree hollow, and other impressions were discovered on walking streamside to the lake above.
Felled trees attached to pointy stumps, and a semi-submerged lodge of sticks told of the work of that aquatic architect, the beaver. And sure enough, the buck-toothed rodent was soon seen plying the waters. As we walked in the wet lakeside grasses and amid tangles of roots, pools and mud, boreal toads leapt aside. Amphibians are relatively uncommon in Alaska, and as an indicator group of environmental health, are in decline worldwide.
The Sea Bird journeyed through Chatham Strait to Peril Strait in search of wildlife en route to our voyage’s end tomorrow in Sitka, once the capital of Russian America. Humpback whales surfaced off Morris Reef, some mouths agape, in the misty gray of the afternoon, reminding us of even more spectacular sightings we experienced. Salmon are now leaping outside stream mouths, about to finish their journey as well.
