Tracy Arm
Who could have predicted we would be up at 6:00 standing in the rain, binoculars glued to our eyes, watching Orcas, while surrounded by 1,000 foot walls of granite! We watched the magnificent male six-foot tall dorsal fin slice through the calm waters close to the shoreline, in concert with a second whale, possibly a female. The blows (puffy white clouds of vapor that are the forceful exhalations of air leaving the whale’s lungs) appeared several times, and then disappeared, as the whales dove for their deeper swimming dives. White and magnificent blue icebergs soon replaced the white vapor blows. As we rounded each curve and bend in one of Alaska’s most spectacular fjords, we were mesmerized by the unending beauty of glistening and scoured rock draped with misty-moody clouds, shades of gray, and the dense blue ice of the South Sawyer Glacier. Loud cracks and deep rumbles from within the glacier announced intermittent calvings. The melt-water streams and intermittent calvings caused invertebrates to upwell to the surface and were quickly consumed by a large flock of circling and plunge-diving Arctic Terns. Harbor seals lounging on ice, moving creamy dots on rocks (mountain goats!), gliding serenely and silently in our kayaks, stepping softly on thick moss carpets in the rain-drenched forest, while listening to the delicate calls of eagles soaring overhead filled our senses on this tremendously full first day in Southeast Alaska.
Who could have predicted we would be up at 6:00 standing in the rain, binoculars glued to our eyes, watching Orcas, while surrounded by 1,000 foot walls of granite! We watched the magnificent male six-foot tall dorsal fin slice through the calm waters close to the shoreline, in concert with a second whale, possibly a female. The blows (puffy white clouds of vapor that are the forceful exhalations of air leaving the whale’s lungs) appeared several times, and then disappeared, as the whales dove for their deeper swimming dives. White and magnificent blue icebergs soon replaced the white vapor blows. As we rounded each curve and bend in one of Alaska’s most spectacular fjords, we were mesmerized by the unending beauty of glistening and scoured rock draped with misty-moody clouds, shades of gray, and the dense blue ice of the South Sawyer Glacier. Loud cracks and deep rumbles from within the glacier announced intermittent calvings. The melt-water streams and intermittent calvings caused invertebrates to upwell to the surface and were quickly consumed by a large flock of circling and plunge-diving Arctic Terns. Harbor seals lounging on ice, moving creamy dots on rocks (mountain goats!), gliding serenely and silently in our kayaks, stepping softly on thick moss carpets in the rain-drenched forest, while listening to the delicate calls of eagles soaring overhead filled our senses on this tremendously full first day in Southeast Alaska.
