Tracy Arm and Williams Cove
“Where’s your favorite place?” I get asked that a lot. What makes places different? Oh, let’s see…the traffic, the nature, the temperature, the weather in general? Yes, but most of all, for me, it is the light. It is what makes one home different from another, one walk, one view, one rock for sitting, one window to read in or stare out of. But is it not how much light, but how much heat? Nope, not at all. Here in southeast Alaska there is not a single light on a single day or even in a single place, it is more like a symphony of light, a harmony of shadows and colors unlike any other I have ever known.
This morning, when we woke, we knew we were somewhere extraordinary. We cruised on calm water in a narrow passage, a fjord, flanked by dark forest climbing improbably steep cliffs towering hundreds then thousands of feet above us. With the coming of the sun the water began to sparkle, light dancing off of tiny ripples, then chunks of glacial ice, white, blue and sometimes clear, almost perfect but better, crystalline and gelid, ever changing as we traveled between shafts of sunshine. High above us we passed bright snowfields feeding leaping streams of dazzling reflections racing then falling towards our feet as ever changing curtains of light and mist. And all this, almost a prelude, a drum roll for the master of this landscape, a glacier, an ancient river caught in a moment of time, the architect of mountains, cliffs and cobble beaches. I stared at it, massive and bright and I realized it was not just ice, it was light made hard that has shaped this part of our world, that continues to make it unique, beautiful…and then I could tell you about our walk in the forest, which was completely different, golden and soft underfoot on a trail made by bears. Oh well, maybe later…
“Where’s your favorite place?” I get asked that a lot. What makes places different? Oh, let’s see…the traffic, the nature, the temperature, the weather in general? Yes, but most of all, for me, it is the light. It is what makes one home different from another, one walk, one view, one rock for sitting, one window to read in or stare out of. But is it not how much light, but how much heat? Nope, not at all. Here in southeast Alaska there is not a single light on a single day or even in a single place, it is more like a symphony of light, a harmony of shadows and colors unlike any other I have ever known.
This morning, when we woke, we knew we were somewhere extraordinary. We cruised on calm water in a narrow passage, a fjord, flanked by dark forest climbing improbably steep cliffs towering hundreds then thousands of feet above us. With the coming of the sun the water began to sparkle, light dancing off of tiny ripples, then chunks of glacial ice, white, blue and sometimes clear, almost perfect but better, crystalline and gelid, ever changing as we traveled between shafts of sunshine. High above us we passed bright snowfields feeding leaping streams of dazzling reflections racing then falling towards our feet as ever changing curtains of light and mist. And all this, almost a prelude, a drum roll for the master of this landscape, a glacier, an ancient river caught in a moment of time, the architect of mountains, cliffs and cobble beaches. I stared at it, massive and bright and I realized it was not just ice, it was light made hard that has shaped this part of our world, that continues to make it unique, beautiful…and then I could tell you about our walk in the forest, which was completely different, golden and soft underfoot on a trail made by bears. Oh well, maybe later…
