4
The pattern: Tie up the boat, stand quietly and listen for clues to this new place, then carry up a load of gear, lift the latch to my new home, and check the stove. This cabin at Anchor Pass had a sheepherder stove, an oblong box without an oven. In Maine they call it a chunk stove. A long wet walk led through high beach grass to the stream, but all else was luxurious.
At three o’clock I arrived, and by six had washed and dried the wool underwear and socks and was creating an elegant Japanese dinner. I patted and rolled, simmered and fried, thinking of other Asian dinners. Years before, on business trips to Japan, I had learned what could be done with rice and bits of fish. The artisan sushi makers, after long apprenticeship, become so deft as to make a ritualistic, delicate ballet of the movements of fingers, palms, and wrists in shaping each two-inch block of rice. Index and middle fingers of the right hand pat the blob in the left palm. Left wrist twists the rice a quarter turn, fingers pat again until the shape emerges. I got churned up watching it, like the gut reaction to seeing a wet clay bowl growing in the hands of a master potter at the wheel. The final shape is a bite-size loaf, topped with a translucent layer of raw fish, shrimp, urchin roe, or any of a dozen other delicacies. At home I had a poster of sushi with color photos of all the different kinds, and the names in Japanese and in English.
Here, I made do with ingredients from the shore and in my food sack, then laid it all out on a red-bandanna place mat. First the hot wet oshibori washcloth, then hot sake to sip, sushi rolled in black nori seaweed, miso soup, a mound of hot rice, a tempura assortment of fresh mussels, rehydrated mushrooms, and fucus seaweed, and finally smoked oysters from a can.
There was even powdered and moistened wasabi for dipping the sushi. You had to be cautious with that, if you wanted to keep the top of your head intact. There was a mug of tea, and a sweetened black-bean paste for dessert. I surveyed it all.
“Hah.” I ran out to whittle chopsticks from spruce twigs. Next time, I’ll bring a pack of hashi from Hawai‘i. Those dry white pine sticks would make fine kindling.
After dinner it was time for a bath, but there was no furo, no traditional Japanese bath, to go with the dinner theme. Before commercial shower bags were available, I had combined the lining of a five-liter wine box with a tube and a rubber sink-faucet spray nozzle. It could be filled with hot water, placed inside the nylon bag I’d sewn at home, and hung shoulder high from a tree. The bag had a corner hole for Summit wine and a center hole for Franzia. But standing naked in the chill air, I didn’t want little sprays of water on one side while I froze on the other. I needed to soap quickly, then have a big slosh of water. I filled my large pot to the brim, heated it on the woodstove to elbow comfort, soaped, then hooked in the detachable handle and stepped out onto the deck. A big dumped wash of the warm water, then back inside to rub down the shivers and dry by the stove.
Journal, Day 12: Anchor Pass Cabin. Dug out the postcards. Ah yes. That was Orca for sure. I have a fine picture on a card. How will my own photo come out? At least seven were in that pod, maybe more, and all different sizes. A half-mile spread between the first two, my curious one, and the last four. Were the first two scouts and were they the same ones returning to the pod that I first saw heading down the channel?
Some basic decisions in the outhouse this morning: The ominous thought of crossing Clarence Strait was always there. The NOAA Coast Pilot #8 says of Clarence, “Current has a maximum velocity of four knots and strong southeasterlies” and “…gales may blow down the strait from the NW.” I had never before crossed eight miles of open sea. But one basic decision I made was “Start worrying less and enjoying more: ’Tis a mad spoof of an expedition, to be sure.”
Back to the cabin. The skylight panels of corrugated plastic were great for letting in light, but there under the trees, the drip and falling twigs were amplified into a constant ping, pung, thump, crack, poing. Scientists have said that drops of water from trees are larger than open-sky raindrops; the water slides toward the needle or leaf tip and hangs there until the weight overcomes the surface tension. T. J. Walker, author of Red Salmon, Brown Bear, called them “accumulation drops.”
All day the heavy clouds sat on Anchor Pass and on the 2,400-foot-high unnamed mountain across the way. Gray, lacy mist was tangled in the tops of hemlocks, a graygreen layer of trees and land came down to the shore, gray-blue water reflected the clouds, and in the foreground was the muted-gold fucus on the wet rocks. Smoke from my stove drifted out over the bay. A loon called; an eagle added its rasping cadenza. Minutes passed, then a single clear thread of sound was laid on the air, then one more, a note lower. The two-note song of the varied thrush will forever recall this misty enclosed world.
At one o’clock a 30-foot ketch ghosted along, half a mile away, heading down Behm Narrows, tacking easily from one side to the other with jib, main, and mizzen. After five days alone I was ready for good company, but she went on by. Few sailboats actually raise their sails in southeastern Alaska. The channels are narrow and the winds are fluky. Most boats rely on motors, but these were evidently real sailors.
Teatime: cheese and hot buttered rum tea. The canned Camembert cheese keeps fine without refrigeration. Another culinary note: Grape Kool-Aid plus vodka as a wine cooler just doesn’t make it. Better to use each one straight. My homemade jerky is good, too, but of course all Alaskans figure they know the best jerky recipe, starting with “Take one moose…”
No Alaskans were with me, and people will ask, “But weren’t you lonely?”
Yes, but it was of my own choosing. I never felt lonely except inside a cabin when it was raining. Then I was a human and sometimes lonely for another good human. Camped out under just a tarp with no walls and with all the wild out there at the four edges, I was a wary animal, alert to every sound, a part of it. If I wanted company I could paddle out and find it somewhere within 50 miles. If I wanted to be a people person, I could do something nice for the next camper who came along, even though we might never meet, like leaving a big supply of dry, split wood and a fire laid in the stove, ready to light. Instead of carving a name on a cabin wall, this kindness had always been my signature and trademark.
The cabins were a delight throughout the trip. In this year’s 85 days I would use 11 of them, each then 10 dollars a night. The Forest Service, under the U.S. Department of Agriculture, had the huge job of administrating the whole Tongass National Forest, with all the interwoven interests of logging, fishing, mining, recreation, and people’s homes. Despite budget cuts and increasing pressures, it seemed that the individuals were doing their best, even though no one interest group, not even the employees themselves, were ever in agreement with all the policies.
The hammock crab net again netted no crabs. They’d been there, taken the salami and the smashed mussels, but none were entangled. Obviously I had to sit there dangling the net from the boat, and pull it up as I felt them crawling around. I needed a rigid crab trap, but all the ones I’d seen were too big to carry on the boat, so I’d have to design my own. Later I found two designs of folding crab traps, both made in Canada and for sale at the fine Ecomarine Ocean Kayak Centre on Granville Island in Vancouver, B.C.
My right arm was still numb at times. Hardening of an artery? How would you prevent that? I later learned to cut down on butter and eggs, cut the cholesterol. I had been a first aid instructor for years and felt confident I could handle most injuries, but this was something new. It wasn’t until two months later that I read, in the first edition of Sea Kayaking by John Dowd, about “canoeist’s arm,” an advanced form of tendonitis. Prevention: Use unfeathered paddles, as it is only the arm that cocks the paddle that is affected. The condition’s effects can be long-lasting. Later medical research showed many more causes of this ailment, but for the next two months I endured it and tried to both push and pull more with the left arm. I also trained myself to be ambidextrous, feathering the left blade and cocking my left wrist for an hour at a time as a relief for my right arm.
Now, years later, tendonitis has been researched extensively. For kayakers there are many ways to prevent it. Hold the paddle loosely, not in a death grip. Angle the feathered blades 80 degrees instead of 90. The wrist flexes vertically without problems; it’s the sideways torque that does the damage, and a bent elbow can absorb some of that torque. Feather the blades only when paddling against the wind, unless you paddle such a tippy boat that you frequently need to brace and always want to know that your paddle blade is in the same position.
It was pleasant when the tide changed and went my way at the same time I was making a natural late-morning departure to continue my journey. Of course that was a poor justification for being lazy, because the wind chop was up by noon, nullifying the tidal current.
I planned to stop at Bell Island Hot Springs resort and then to camp up in Bailey Bay in preparation for a cross-country hike to Lake Shelokum and the undeveloped wilderness hot springs reported to be near there. Five skiffs from the resort were out fishing and none of them bothered to come near. Tourists and newcomers to Alaska would assume I was just some man out paddling from his bigger boat or his cabin. Old-timers would recognize the incongruity of the solo inflatable kayak, would know that no one was living nearby, and would come over to check me out.
Paddling against a headwind was always frustrating: so much effort and such slow progress. No satisfaction lay in cursing the wind, or myself for starting late, or for doing this trip at all, so each time one of the sportfishing boats was near and ignoring me, I would chant in rhythm to my strokes, “Bloody bastards with engines. Bloody bastards with engines.” Laughing at my own rage got me around to the resort, where the reception was unusually cool for Alaska. At least the water in the mossy cement pool was warm, though it smelled strongly of sulfur. Later a fisherman said that the management wanted wealthy yacht people, not drop-in small boats. As my yacht scarcely qualified, I paddled off. Since then the resort has become a private corporation, open only to members.
Four miles on I found a jewel of a campsite between two streams on the east side of Bailey Bay, a mile below the trailhead that led to Lake Shelokum. Chocolate lilies, scarlet Indian paintbrush, and yellow buttercups sprinkled color on the grass like decorettes on a cake; I leaped from rock to rock to avoid crushing them.
If no-see-ums were tiny, noiseless critters that were all mouth, then we had just met, and I smeared on bug repellent for the first time. After supper I built a small fire, then sat on a log watching the scene. A fish jumped, the stream chortled, a hummingbird divebombed my red shirt, an ember fell into the ashes. The sun sank below the ridge across the bay.
I woke at 2:00 am. It was too dark to read, but light enough to walk or paddle. I woke again at 4:00 with a constant cough. It was that touch with civilization at the resort. I brewed honeyed tea. At 5:30 the sun was touching the ridge.
By noon I was at Spring Creek, west of Lake Shelokum, sitting in the grass beside the three-sided shelter. Civilian Conservation Corps crews built it in the 1930s; a masterpiece of rough-log architecture, it had hand-split shake sides and roof, now silvery gray and brittle with age. Nearby, two hot springs boiled out of the ground. Stringy red algae trailed them down the steep slope, and sulfurous steam arose. The shallow, rock-dammed upper pool was too hot, and by the time the water reached the pool at the bottom it was frigid. There had been talk of building a series of small redwood or cedar tubs at staggered temperatures. On the topo map there are many higher lakes, and here at the shelter you could have a base camp for hiking cross-country above the thick forests of the shore.
All this was to the good, but the 2.5-mile trail to get to the place was the worst I ever hiked. An overgrown track, mud, rock slides, berry brambles, fallen trees, devil’s club, log steps rotted and slippery with moss, and torrents to cross. The wide waterfall, sucking and swirling out of the lake, terrified me. That was the thunderous sound I’d heard in the morning that seemed to be on the east side of Bailey Bay, but was just the echo reverberating off the cliff there. In the muddy trail were fresh bear tracks. This was the Cleveland Peninsula, a part of the mainland, and I would have to return to the sea over the same trail. Take care, Aud. Even the critic carping on my shoulder is concerned.
Down at the trailhead I bucked a stiff wind and an incoming tide paddling back to camp and made a supper of a rich mussel chowder, then stayed alert for symptoms of “red tide” as I packed for the morning takeoff. Paralytic shellfish poisoning, PSP, would be a complicated way to do a simple thing like dying. The culprit is a dinoflagellate, Gonyaulax catenella, and a report from the University of Southern California’s Sea Grant Program gave the specific evidence: “Shellfish living in a coastal area will ingest the dinoflagellates and store them in their viscera. Since shellfish don’t use acid in their digestive processes, these tiny one-celled animals are not broken down to any significant extent.”
Along comes man – hungry. He collects some of the shellfish for a fine dinner that evening. When these contaminated shellfish are eaten, the acid in the human stomach breaks them down, along with the dinoflagellates in their viscera. If only a few are eaten, the only effects are a passing nausea and stomach cramps. However, if a sufficient amount is consumed, death can occur within a few hours. The first signs are numbness or tingling of the lips, gums, tongue, and face, leading to respiratory paralysis and finally death. There is no known antidote or effective treatment other than artificial respiration.
The report continues for three pages. My own additional research confirmed that not all shellfish store the toxins, only the filter feeders – clams, mussels, oysters, and scallops. Shrimps, lobsters, and crabs are safe. There may or may not be a red color present in the water. There are no guarantees.
But several factors made me decide to eat mussels. They are tidal animals, out of the water for longer periods than the other filter feeders, and more cases of PSP occurred in the warmer and possibly more polluted waters of California and Oregon than up here. The symptoms usually occur within fifteen minutes of ingestion, unlike poisonous mushrooms, which have to get all the way into the small intestine before the symptoms appear – too late to upchuck. I was carrying syrup of ipecac to induce vomiting, to get them out of my stomach if the symptoms occurred. There was another reason. Delicious. I had eaten them every night in a small café in Brussels, Les Moules, where they were brought to the table in a steaming iron pot with a slab of butter, hot crusty bread, and a chilled glass of wine. The gourmet was ecstatic. I was willing to take the calculated risk. During the rest of the summer and frequently over the next 20 years I ate mussels with no ill effects. I never ate them within five miles of town – too many other chances of pollution. But as they say, no guarantees.
In the morning, Jerry Castle came by in his powerboat to check on my welfare and then gave me the 20-mile ride to Helm Bay, where I camped. The wind that day had been up to 30 knots. A mile up the bay from the boats that were taking refuge at the float was a flat campsite, and I sat there alone by a fire that night, scared. It was 10 miles from here to Caamano Point, and then eight across Clarence Strait.
“What if the wind and seas come up like today when I’m halfway across Clarence?”
And,
“Fear is more of a problem than the problem feared.”
And,
“Sunshine will make a difference.”
And,
“I can wait for good weather.”
But I was afraid, a deep gut fear.
I slept well, wakened to rain, then packed and paddled the mile down to the Forest Service cabin and the float. The cabins were frequent now, here within easy reach of Ketchikan, but when I got to Baranof Island, there would be no cabins, and Baranof is noted for grizzly bears.
By the next morning, all of the boats moored at the floating dock had gone, leaving a quiet peace of no man-made sounds and a heightened awareness of bird songs, tree sighs, stream sibilance.
I left at noon, passed the old Rainy Day gold mine and a small bay with grass and warm sunshine. The wind was rising as I passed Smugglers Cove, feeling too pushed for time to check out the waterfall and trout pool I’d read about. Five more miles of headwind and I landed on the small island shown on the topo and the chart: They both showed a neck of water, but it would have to be at a very high tide.
Someone had made a clearing in the alder trees, sheltered from the wind. The remains of a cabin were there, but no water source, so they must have relied on rain catchment. A deer walked the beach and a mink skittered over the logs as I ate a simple supper and rigged for an early start. Tomorrow, Clarence Strait.
At 3:45 am I was up. No coffee or liquids. Not with a four- to five-hour paddle ahead and no place to pit stop. To pee at sea is difficult at best: It’s never safe to take your hands off the paddle. At 4:45 I launched and in an hour was around my island and clear of Caamano Point. The pale full moon was setting over the snowy ranges far ahead. I’d not been aware of the moon these past weeks, so often was it clouded over. The outline of Grindall Island was there, faintly closer than Prince of Wales Island behind it. Five miles to my left was the Guard Island Light, flaring every five seconds.
There were four wide straits to cross this summer: Clarence, Sumner, Chatham, and Icy. I’d made rules for nasty stretches of water where there were no easy landings, based on years of paddling rough seas, and I followed them now. Think: What was the weather like yesterday? It was OK, some wind. Go early before the wind picks up. I’m doing it. Paddle out for an hour, and if it looks bad, go back. Keep in mind the tide direction.
Out in the strait now; the water dark and deep below me. To the south is the infamous Dixon Entrance, a wide line of clear horizon, but through that passage often come storms from the whole Alaska Gulf, funneled and compressed between the islands to a greater intensity. On my right is the long expanse of Clarence Strait, 60 miles of bumpy water stretching away to the north.
I line up the Guard Island light against Vallenar Point, and move it back against the open water of Tongass Narrows as I paddle ahead. I’ve gone around Revillagigedo Island, finished the shakedown. Now is the test of that preparation and of all the years before. An hour out and still OK. By 7:00 am the wind has picked up a bit. What decision do I make if I’m halfway across and it gets nasty?
Go ahead, of course, unless it’s a fierce headwind. I look back at Caamano Point. The wind and tidal current are setting me north. I shift the course to the south of Grindall, but keep moving ahead, paddling evenly, without a stop, without a pause. My watch dings the hour and I start counting strokes. An hour later, the count is 2,200, a pace of 37 strokes a minute. Keep it up.
I’m wearing the wet suit and booties, which give me a compressed body and cold feet. In the water they would be warmer than clothing, but once wet from a capsize, would they be warmer when I got back in the boat than the wool underwear and socks, covered with foul-weather gear and boots?
If I capsize, the essential thing is to get back in the boat. In this 48-degree water I might stay alive for an hour, but in far less time than that I’d go numb, lose consciousness, and be unable to climb back into the boat or do anything else to save myself. In the water it would be difficult to get the signal flares out of the emergency bag, and no one is near enough to signal to. Years later, I did get a small VHF radio so I could call for help.
In 20-knot winds in Hawai‘i, I had practiced with and without a life jacket, righting the boat and sliding in over the gunwale after a deliberate capsize. It was far more difficult with the life jacket on; its bulk prevented an easy entry. Anything that stops me from getting back in the boat is not a life jacket. I have one with me. I’m not wearing it, but I am wearing a lifeline to make sure I stay with the boat. A dozen life jackets won’t help me if I capsize and the wind blows this lightweight boat out of reach.
A 300-pound test line is looped over my left shoulder and under my right arm. The loop is spliced in, and the other end is spliced to a snap hook and clipped to the side of the boat. In case of a capsize, I’ll lead the lifeline over the bottom of the boat, put one knee on the side, and pull on the line to flip the boat upright. Then I’ll climb in, haul in the tethered paddle and supply bags, and go on. Great theory. I practiced it 10 times before this trip in the warm seas of Hawai‘i. Not here. Three years later, on another trip, I do capsize and am back in the boat in 23 seconds.
I think my nine-foot Sevylor Tahiti Sport boat survived a short Alaska trip last year, has one patched seam that split and was mended, and seems fine so far. Only coming in through 8- to 10-foot breakers have I been dumped.
Still there might be that random wave… There are no “rogue” waves, according to Dixon Stroup, the Hawai‘i oceanographer, only combinations of random waves. “Rogue” implies that it really isn’t your fault, but anyone on the sea should expect a double-size wave occasionally.
A misjudged stroke on a crest? A too-friendly orca? What if a seam pops? That hasn’t ever happened at sea; why should it now? Stop supposing. Stop thinking. Keep paddling. Each wave has to be judged and taken at the proper angle.
Twenty years later, rogue waves have been confirmed. They do happen.
I’m north of Grindall Island now and three-quarters across. The mind shifts to an old Hawaiian chant. Hoe aku i ka wa‘a, “Paddle ahead the canoe.” I wonder what the Haida Indians chanted in their cedar dugouts. I am north of Haida territory now, into Tlingit country. A mile to go and I turn south toward Grindall. Three hours now, 6,600 strokes without pause, every stroke with the full power of the back and shoulders.
Ahead, a boat comes out of Grindall Passage. She’s the Island Trader, with a big rig on the stern like a derrick, a cargo boom perhaps. They yell something, but I can’t catch it. I wave once and keep paddling – into the lee of the island, sheltered from the southeast wind. I slow the pace, watching the shore, find the charted buoy ahead and then the Forest Service cabin.
It is the poorest of all so far. Out of easy maintenance reach from Ketchikan, and often used as a refuge by fishermen, it gets frequent use. There is no ax, broom, sledge or wedge, and the wood supply is low. I suspect that some sport boater has some new tools. Cold and wet, I warm up with a fire and a change into dry clothes. I forage for wood along the steep shore in the forest and rebuild the woodpile, stirr the old ashes down and lay a new fire, and then launch again, to get more mileage in and cut off some of the 20-mile day tomorrow. I’m slowing down, easing the tension of the crossing.
Two hours later I had added six miles, aided by a tailwind. Finally I said, “That’s it,” and turned to shore, straight to a delightful site. It was a beach of rounded stones – no sharp barnacles or mussels, only the smooth pebbles shining in the clear water of the shallows, gleaming pink and gray in the evening light. From shore it had seemed to be a no-water camp, but at the edge of the forest there was an inch-wide waterfall into a clear pool, two feet across. It had no outlet, only seepage under the pebbles. I felt I should be an elf, poised there at the edge of my own lake.
By a level ledge for the tent was an alder to hang clothes on, an alder that would filter the morning sun into dappled shadows. Drift logs were there for a countertop and seat. I strung my hammock from springy limbs and lay watching the view across Kasaan Bay, then walked down to the water’s edge and raised clasped hands in salute. The dreaded Clarence Strait was done. I had made it.
