Fear is more of a problem than the problem feared.
—Audrey Sutherland
THREE HARD-EARNED LAYOVER DAYS in Prince Rupert recharged me, and I was ready to put on some more miles. My last night in town I’d slept restlessly in the cubbyhole hostel room I’d rented. I awoke at 3:45 a.m. and by six o’clock I paddled away from the Prince Rupert Yacht Club on an advancing tide. It was dead calm. The rising sun was already casting muted shadows on the harbor, and the saturated colors of the flower planters, umbrella stands, and cheerful buildings grew more vivid. A fog bank loomed in the distance, but overhead, clear and sunny skies were promising. I left the crowded harbor and entered the main channel, paddling under erector-set like structures loading massive container ships with supplies probably bound for Asia.
Dixon Entrance, a foreboding body of water that loosely defines the border between Canada and Alaska, weighed heavily on my mind. Once I reached its more exposed portion, I would be back in the States. It would certainly be a milestone on my trip, and the last of four cruxes I expected to contend with.
Venn Passage, the conduit between Prince Rupert and the deeper waters of Chatham Sound, challenged my navigational skills. Its shallow channels were choked with seaweed and scads of small islands. Not entirely trusting the navigational buoys, I consulted my GPS for the second time that morning—and only the third time for the entire trip—to make sure I was indeed where I thought I should be. Not only did I enjoy the tangible pleasure of using old-fashioned chart and compass to stay found, I also believed that two words could render even the best of electronic devices null and void: dead batteries. Instead, I viewed the GPS as a confidence-inspiring electronic second opinion of sorts to soothe any fears of miscalculation.
Paddling along in the still and solitude of the morning, my thoughts turned to Alaska, less than thirty miles away. I kept looking at the chart on my deck and staring at the dashed line that represented the Alaskan border. I studied the shapes of Kanagunut and Sitklan Islands—two islands I’d be paddling between tomorrow—in Alaska! I couldn’t see it through the fog, but I could feel its huge expanse before me. I brimmed with optimism and excitement knowing I would be in Alaska the next day. And if all went well, in Ketchikan, my first Alaskan port of call, in five days.
That night I awoke to the melody of a humpback whale sleeping less than twenty yards from my tent. Listening to her snore, I mused on what a nasal strip might look like for a whale and if visions of krill appeared in her dreams. Long and labored “PWOOF” sounds mixed with sonorous wheezing and whirled toward me as she hovered in her slumber at the ocean’s surface. I was camped on Maskelyne Island, my last Canadian stop. The two humpbacks playing in Work Channel earlier that day had overridden the less desirable aspects of this camp, such as a resident colony of mosquitoes and a lack of sunshine on the north-facing spit of land. Not far away, a hundred-mile-long inlet, the longest fjord in North America, collided with the ocean. In the morning I would cross Portland Canal’s five-mile mouth; from there the Alaskan border was practically spitting distance.
On my 45th day at sea, with seven hundred miles trailing behind my stern and approximately five hundred ahead of my bow, Chamellia and I bobbed on the imaginary border that represented the separation of Alaska from British Columbia. Estimating from my chart and nearby landmarks, I had reached a major milestone—I had arrived at the Alaskan border via sea kayak. I had paddled myself to the last frontier, and back to America. I was sitting on Alaska’s doorstep! Bobbing in the chop on the north end of Chatham Sound, I wondered how many of my friends were watching SPOT’s bouncing digital bread crumb trail. I was certain Jim was tuned in, but I didn’t know that at that very moment, as I bobbed on that watery border, he’d pressed the send button, delivering a message to me and all my followers that said—in thirteen different languages—“Welcome to Alaska, Susan and Chamellia.” I would burst into tears when I read this email five days later in Ketchikan.
With my waterproof camera clipped to my PFD, I snapped a photo of my bow pointing into Alaska, then pivoted in the cockpit to capture my stern in Canada. Tears streamed down my face; I had just freaking paddled to Alaska. How cool is that? I thought. Emotions washed over me as I tried to digest and distill this major accomplishment. I was proud. Euphoric. In awe.
Nine months earlier, I had stared at this point on the chart and tried to image what it would feel like. And now I was here, with Alaska’s vast landscape in front of my bow. A new adventure within an adventure. Each day on this journey had promised new sights, sounds, smells, and sensations; mirror-calm seas and surging waves; sky and wind and all the elements the day could dish out; the feel of the tide pushing or pulling on my hull. But it was the connecting with gracious people who reached out to help me, in often unexpected circumstances, that had further cemented my deep bond with the Inside Passage. I realized then that my journey was becoming a portal to a new inner resiliency, a new strength and sense of courage that I actually always had, but didn’t know how to fully tap into. I had then vowed to fully embrace the trip. To embrace myself in Alaska. To love Alaska. To love myself. To relax more. And to be open to all this portion of my journey could offer.
I PADDLED UP A NARROW CHANNEL speckled with several inviting beaches. Brilliant red Indian paintbrush flourished in pockets of sparkly white sand. Chards of mica-speckled obsidian rocks and veins of quartz punctuated the rocky seashore.
I arrived at Tongass Island at the crack of noon, on calm seas, merely stopping for a lunch break. I had only paddled fifteen miles so far and intended to push on to Tree Point another ten miles to the north. I remembered Jim being fixated on this landmark. But his notes—“steep, slippery ramp, dark, and haunting forest,”—didn’t sit well with me. I also remembered he had had a bear encounter there. The open, south-facing beaches of Tongass Island were much more appealing, with their splendid view out to the Lord Islands and Cape Fox. They contained no bears, no flies or bugs, and no cocky high tide to be concerned with. I reminded myself about my vow to relax more. I decided to stay.
While I was putting the finishing touches on my first Alaskan camp, I noticed a skiff approaching my island from the channel I had recently paddled through. I braced myself for an intrusion, and attached my bear spray to my hip. A thickset man with a roundish face, wearing faded dungarees and black rubber boots, debarked his boat in the shallow bay facing my tent and tethered it to a large driftwood log on the beach. He carried a steel bucket and began walking the beach without looking up. Odd, I thought, that he didn’t even acknowledge me. At a loss for what to do, I walked out on the point, climbed up on a rock and pretended I wasn’t watching him. “PLUNK” went one mysterious item after another into his steel gray bucket. He never lifted his head. Irritated, I slowly stood up and walked nonchalantly toward my tent, where he was now stooped over, digging in the sand. This dude has no sense of space, I thought to myself.
“Hello,” I said in the best cool-as-a-cucumber voice I could muster. I got a hello back, more like a grunt actually, but not a whole lot more. Eventually, he did tell me his name was Frank, that he lived a few miles away on a houseboat in Lincoln Channel, and that he came here almost every day to stretch his legs and beachcomb. He said he had seen me come through, but otherwise seemed disinterested as to why I was there alone, and what I was doing. This also seemed odd to me, because I’d gotten used to people barraging me with questions about my journey, but at that moment I really didn’t mind not having to tell my story.
“There used to be an Indian village here,” Frank said and held out his hand, which contained two brightly colored Indian beads. Fascinated, I stared down at his hand, and imagined this island bustling with activity: the sounds of dark-skinned children playing on the beach, the smell of smoke drifting through the forest, perhaps rows of fish hanging from a line stretched between the trees. Ten minutes later, he stepped back into his boat and left me alone again on Tongass Island.
Relieved, I busied myself with beachcombing and after that, hair washing. I had an abundance of time, fresh water, sunshine, stove fuel, and dirty hair, so why not? Wilderness hair washing, it turns out, is an arduous process. First, I filled my ten-liter black dromedary bag with fresh, cold water and laid it on a black rock to heat in the sun. I took a catnap and dreamt of silky clean hair, while the sun’s rays brought the water to a tepid state. Then I filled both my cooking pots with fresh water from a nearby creek and brought them to a boil. I added this hot water to the warmish water in my dromedary bag and hung it from a sturdy branch above me. With towel and biodegradable all-purpose Campsuds nearby, I ducked my head and let the warm water dampen my grimy locks. Lathering up, I noticed, out of the corner of one soapy eye, that a martin was watching me, but when I made eye contact, he scurried into the underbrush. After a quick rinse I plunked myself down on a large flat rock and let its heat radiate into the backs of my legs and my butt as I vigorously towel-dried my hair. The tide was still ebbing while all the intertidal creatures patiently waited out their six-hour fast. Thin spurts of seawater pulsed skyward as long-necked clams, buried in the tidal mudflats, went about their business. Gulls and cormorants cavorted on a nearby rock ledge, and I reveled in my solitude, and my clean hair.
Tonight was extra special; a celebration was in order. I commemorated my first night in Alaska by reveling in some much-deserved gluttony: a bottle of merlot accompanied by cheese and crackers and a tin of smoked oysters, followed by an overflowing pot of pasta wheels drizzled with garlic-infused olive oil, tossed with rehydrated veggies, and sprinkled with parmesan cheese. I balanced my blackened and dented aluminum pot on my knees and poured a stiff shot of dark rum into the twist-off cap attached to my flask. Then I toasted myself, my journey, and all the beauty surrounding me. After the fourth stiff shot, my camera precariously propped on a rock, and me precariously balanced on a log, I snapped selfies to share with friends back home. I’d somehow lost the cork to the wine bottle, and not wanting to waste any of it, I continued sipping while I cleaned up the dinner mess. Savoring my beachside debauchery, I admired the crimson sunset playing out in front of me, biding my time before settling in for the night, even though darkness was still a ways off.
Alaska has its own time zone, an hour ahead of Pacific Standard Time. The sun, still hovering on the horizon at nearly eleven p.m., continued to offer a glimmer of light for another hour, and even then it only halfheartedly set, as if it couldn’t make up its mind. I then understood why southeast Alaska is described as the land of the midnight sun. And this midnight sun would begin its ascent by four a.m., stymieing my much-needed beauty sleep.
That night I dreamt of a spider. A twisted, hairy tarantula whose legs, as long as my kayak, spun me in its rope-sized web. This, of course, made no sense at all because tarantulas do not spin webs and prefer hot, dry climes, but it was my dream after all. In this dream, Chamellia and I were caught in a tumultuous wave, fighting frantically to stay upright, although most of the time we were inside the wave, with the spider. Terror enveloped me as I stared into its massive abdomen. I could taste the saltwater, feel the cottony web against my face, all the while screaming underwater, wondering why I wasn’t drowning. I gasped out loud, then lay motionless, except for my eyes darting from one corner of the tent ceiling to the other. Relief flooded my body. It was only a dream. This would make a heyday for a dream interpreter, or a shrink. But I’d feared spiders ever since my brother and cousin thought it would be riotously funny to introduce me to the black widow who lived under our family sawmill. They carried me, like a human stretcher, Billy at my arms and Robby at my legs, while I kicked and shrieked, and then swung my six-year-old writhing body horizontally, back and forth, with each undulation bringing my little face closer to the spider’s abdomen, which hung patiently from its web under a creosote-soaked log.
A couple years later, on a late spring afternoon, I would suffer another spider incident. While seated at an old organ on my family’s back porch, I was screeching through a bout of Greensleeves when a large nest of daddy long legs fell splat on the keyboard, sending a flurry of spindly legs up my arms and neck. Fortunately, Mom was plucking a chicken at the kitchen window and witnessed the whole thing. She came to my rescue, dishcloth in hand, and calmly swooshed them all away. Then she took my sobbing little body in her arms and brought me into the house, where she immediately changed me into a fresh pair of plaid culottes—those hideous knee-length one-piece outfits of the sixties that were part short, part skirt—and nearly as dreadful as spiders. She then artfully diffused the drama with a bag of M&Ms. I was duly distracted and successfully soothed, yet still traumatized for life. This was a rare occurrence in my childhood where I remember my mom as a soothing and compassionate parent.
A THIRTY-MILE PADDLE WORKED OFF the hangover on my 46th day at sea. I dragged myself out of the tent at five a.m., broke camp, wolfed down a modest breakfast, and was paddling by seven o’clock. A thick band of sea fog rolled in quickly and collided with the land fog that was working its way offshore. Thankfully, the rising sun burned off the fog, and I paddled under sunny and clear skies, atop slightly swollen seas, along Alaska’s shoreline toward my final crux—Dixon Entrance.
The ocean—the open stuff—is alive, moving, bounding, rebounding, crashing, rolling, breaking, sucking back, roaring, hissing, thundering, and ominously quiet.
—Jim Chester’s Sea Diary, 1992,
describing Dixon Entrance, Alaska
MY KAYAK SLID OVER the robust swells of Dixon Entrance, and my surroundings, I thought, were beginning to take on a different look and feel. The sea exploded against the cliffs and I pulled harder on my right blade to move further out. Chamellia and I skidded around the next point, and there it was: an alive, wide-awake ocean. The landscape seemed more open. The mountains loomed bigger. Rocks seemed shinier. The water, more blue. I noticed more hemlocks and various species of deciduous trees. It all beckoned me, as if I were paddling into another dimension. The ocean was breathing and I rested on her diaphragm.
Dixon Entrance was behaving moderately well, so mostly out of curiosity and with some significant second-guessing, I stopped to check out Jim’s Tree Point campsite. I landed at the small, semi-protected cove south of Tree Point Light, which was the only lighthouse to be built on the mainland and the first Alaskan lighthouse I would lay eyes on.
Concrete pillars and a large hoisting boom hung over the water, and the front end of the elevated and gutted boathouse it was once connected to stood gaping above me. One door hung crazily askew, only partly hinged. On the ocean side, rusted steel tramway tracks dead-ended, truncated in mid-air, a good thirty yards shy of the hoisting boom. The boathouse, perhaps forty feet in length, was open at both ends, with tracks entering and exiting the rickety building. Jim had told me that an inhospitable shoreline directly below the lighthouse necessitated a narrow tramway and wooden boardwalk that snaked high above the forest floor for nearly a mile, all the way to the lighthouse. Supplies were offloaded via the hoisting boom and shuttled to the lighthouse on this tram.
On August 8, 1992, Jim took refuge at Tree Point, 88 years after the first beacon of light emanated from this structure. He penned these words on the 73rd day of his trip:
I’m hunched over a cup of coffee in an eerie boathouse at an abandoned lighthouse on the Alaska coast. This place is straight out of a Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew mystery with vacant staring windows, long silent staircases, tumble down structures and smothering green vegetation reclaiming all. Ghost, my kayak and I arrived here last evening just ahead of a dark storm on the sea. It was with relief that I stepped onto land and discovered the shelter here. I will stay a couple of days—to explore, to rest, to linger in a mysterious yet magical place.
STRONG SOUTHWESTERLIES WOULD HAVE RENDERED my already sketchy landing dangerous, and I was concerned the westerly wind would veer south while I was scoping things out. So I hurriedly explored, finding Tree Point almost surreal, mysterious, and somewhat of a haunting landfall. The old boathouse and carriage tracks were much more dilapidated than when Jim had been there eighteen years earlier. I started to walk the rotten boardwalk that sliced neatly through the thick vegetation toward the lighthouse, then realized this was not the smartest thing to be doing—tiptoeing on a dilapidated promenade thirty feet above the forest floor, in the middle of nowhere. One slip or one errant plank could result in a nasty fall and any number of broken bones. I wouldn’t be found for days, or possibly even weeks. I wasn’t really keen on heights anyway. I grumbled out loud that I should just remain at sea level. I had attached SPOT to my belt loop so at least my searchers would have a last-seen-point to recover my body in a more efficient manner. With alarm, I noticed that blueberries were everywhere. Bears like berries! I turned on my heels, mindful of Jim’s face-to-bear rump encounter when he was there. Stepping only on the stouter cross beams, I cursed him all the way back to solid ground.
As I slipped back into my kayak, I noticed the beach was strewn with beautiful white speckled rocks. I hadn’t noticed them when I first arrived because I was a little weirded-out about being there in the first place. Now that I was leaving, and Ma Ocean seemed to be holding her modest mood, I relaxed a bit and nosed around. With my butt in the cockpit, both feet out on either side, I playfully leaned over and plucked a perfectly round granite rock off the beach. I held it in my palm and let its warmth spread through my hand, while I admired the brilliant specks of black mica scattered throughout it, like a reverse Milky Way. I cupped it tight and tried to curl my fingers around it but they wouldn’t quite reach. Rocks are heavy so I had to be selective about what I gathered to mail back home, but this one spoke to me for some reason. My thoughts turned to Jim and how much he loved this place and how this would be the perfect souvenir for him. I could already see it in his home office, as his favorite paperweight. I folded my legs back into the cockpit, tucked the rock behind my seat, snapped on my sprayskirt, and shoved off.
MY EYES HAD GROWN ACCUSTOMED to deciphering Canadian charts for over seven hundred miles and I struggled to discern the much smaller scale and lack of detail on the American chart that now graced my deck. Furthermore, I felt the NOAA weather reports played second-fiddle to Environment Canada’s, which were issued four times daily and chock full of helpful information. NOAA’s twice-daily broadcasts sounded generic, as if they were telling their listeners which coat to wear to the county park, versus a marine forecast. Based on these sketchy reports, I wasn’t entirely certain that heading back into Dixon Entrance was the best thing to do. My anxiety resurfaced.
The conditions of the mind must interact with the conditions of the sea; the result is a good paddle versus a terror stricken one.
I’d first read these words in Jim’s journal and was so taken by his wisdom that I copied and laminated them on a small strip of paper and tucked it beneath the bungee cord on my foredeck. I did this so I could repeat these words aloud to give me courage, inspiration, and strength when I needed them, and I’d call upon them on numerous occasions. I did this because I felt perhaps the biggest challenge for all humans, on a day-to-day basis, is becoming comfortable with the conditions of the mind in the face of unfolding reality. On the sea, this could be the difference between life and death.
I didn’t want failure to creep into my vocabulary, and I didn’t want to be blinded by the goal of completing the trip. I knew there would be unforeseen circumstances that might wear me down as the trip progressed. Since this was my first big expedition, I couldn’t accurately predict them, but I could adequately prepare for them. In other words, I had no control over the weather, the sea state, marine events, shipping traffic, and many other things, but perhaps I could focus on my confidence in my skill level, the gear I had chosen, and the clarity of my goal. And, most importantly, on what I should control: my fear.
Fear is a wily enemy, and as a woman paddling alone on the Inside, I entertained many fears. I feared big seas and swirling currents and whirlpools and boomers; I feared cantankerous waves that go “HISS” as they break beneath my hull; I feared bears; I feared capsizing, hypothermia, and drowning; I feared getting run over by big ships; I feared getting run over by small ships; I feared getting lost; I feared men with ill intentions; I feared what was at the other end of that snapping twig deep in the forest as I lay alone in my tent at night; I feared poor choices that could render me uncomfortable—or dead. I soon realized that my body could do this trip, but that my mind controlled it—a mind that was scared shitless at times.
The ocean, and the journey I was on, were a like a hand-held mirror that compelled me to look deeper into and reflect upon all that was thrown in my path. It was a journey inside. For now the ocean was my coach, my confidante, my competitor. Hopefully the only thing I’d be drowning in would be my own determination. When the ocean was in a good mood, we collaborated to funnel my energies into moving north. If she was in a vile mood, I would wildly toggle back and forth from fear to courage, courage to fear. Sometimes humor worked, and I’d pseudo-confidently yell out “INTERACTING” as if trying to persuade the ocean that I could maintain a semblance of composure, even in terrifying moments. “One stroke at a time, one fear at a time,” I often whispered to myself.
Years ago my therapist had handed me a pad of paper and a pencil and asked me to draw fear. I looked at her quizzically. She nodded at the blank paper and asked me to sketch what might represent fear on paper. Before this could sift through my consciousness, I took the pencil and stiffly drew a rigid, serrated line. At the end of this line my pencil stopped, stabbed into the paper. I applied more pressure but I couldn’t move the pencil. It was frozen—like fear. It was fear stuck still. Paralyzing, binding, freezing fear.
There’s a difference between fear—that unpleasant emotion associated with the belief that someone or something is a threat—and being scared. Being scared is an in-the-moment feeling caused by an actual threat; when that bear is actually in your campsite, or when the ship is really bearing down on you, or the hideous man’s hands are groping your boobs. Each of these warrant being scared—and demand action. Fear, on the other hand, is subjective, just like risk. I wanted to acknowledge my fears, never dismiss them. Respect them. I was certainly flirting with danger at times, and perhaps inviting adversity. But my fears on the Inside Passage were often counter-balanced by curiosity, wonder, and the possibility of magic. Sometimes my fear and I would engage in a robust tug-of-war; me courageously pulling away from the fear, then the fear yanking me back off balance. My anxiety levels shifted with the moods of the sea. When the winds kicked up, my apprehension meter swung into the red zone. Calm seas swung it back, as did sunshine. Anything is more easily tackled in the sun than in the fog or rain. But there are exceptions. Occasionally, when my fears were cloaked behind the guise of a gray curtain of thick fog or clouds I felt less vulnerable. With limitless visibility across open expanses of ocean, with ominous mountains looming in the distance, sometimes my diminutiveness seemed exaggerated. I felt small. Inconsequential. Vulnerable.
And as to my fear of men with ill intentions: how often do you read that a woman accosted a male out in the wilderness? Right. But the reality was that I mostly felt respected. People, often men, seemed in awe over what I had accomplished thus far, and many a salty sailor knew what I was up against. They saw that I wasn’t naive or reckless in my quest, that I possessed boundless determination, that I would probably survive. They respected that. I saw it in their eyes and read it in their body language. They understood the moxie it had taken me to make it this far. It felt good to be respected and even held in awe. Although I wavered sometimes, it was my decision to stay strong and brave just as it had been my decision to paddle the Inside alone.
Paddling through the large swells and whitecaps of Dixon Entrance, I thought about that moment in my therapist’s office, and knew that I simply could not allow fear to linger in this equation. Fear would not—could not—be the arbiter on this journey. Instead I relaxed, let my hips swivel beneath me, and allowed the universe—the sky, the trees, the whales, the sea, the birds—to be behind me, with me, all around me. Fear would only freeze me in space and time. Loosening my corset of fear created more breathing room between my ribs and freed my diaphragm so I could focus and stay balanced. Many times fear prattled behind me. But I wouldn’t allow it to get ahead of me, for if I did allow it in my field of view, I would reinforce its power and weaken mine. And so I paddled wildly with fear at my back.
NEARING CIVILIZATION CAN BE A MIXED BLESSING. With it comes the promise of another resupply box; a hot shower; cellphone service; a warm, dry bed—and food. Copious amounts of sustenance that I didn’t have to squat down to rustle up. The flip side of the civilization coin is that campsites within a twenty-mile radius of town tend to smack of vagrancy. The wilderness feel has dissipated and in its place at times are abandoned tarps still slung carelessly in trees, blackened fire pits, trash, and dog shit, even human shit with scads of strewn toilet paper. An uneasy feeling would come over me when sleeping alone in the woods under these circumstances. Camping closer to town made it more likely for some weirdo to emerge out of the forest, stumble on my tent, and think, “Lookie, lookie what we’ve got here.” Perhaps my fears were unfounded but, nonetheless, I’d make doubly sure that my pitiful arsenal of self-defense items were within arm’s reach; maybe I’d even load a flare into the chamber of my flare gun. Ready, fire, aim. Constructed of fluorescent orange plastic, it resembled a toy gun, but if fired at point-blank range it could seriously injure an intruder.
My men-with-ill-intentions fear gave me great pause just outside Ketchikan. Two disheveled men in a small fishing boat, while feigning friendliness, radiated vibes of insincerity. Their tone was creepy, they were creepy, their boat, I thought, was creepy, and the way they repeatedly suggested the campsite I was considering was a dandy, was creepy. My confidence deflated like a flat tire on the interstate. With misgivings, I landed at the so-called dandy spot and dug out my lunch bag—and my cellphone and bear spray—keeping an eye on the creepy boat. “No service,” the miniature screen told me. I sat on a Volkswagen-size piece of driftwood and ate my lunch as the two men coasted back and forth three times, indubitably watching me. Trusting my gut feeling, and my woman’s intuition, I packed up, mindfully inhaled two lungfuls of dense, moisture-laden Pacific Ocean air, and moved on.
FIVE DAYS AFTER LEAVING PRINCE RUPERT, I paddled into Ketchikan with a slight tailwind and a light drizzle. The smell of chemical-laden dryer sheets wafted down from a vent on the hillside and intermingled with the organic scent of salt and sea. To my right, a car sped along a paved road, spewing out black clouds of exhaust. This peculiar combination of aromas reminded me that I was back in civilization. I had arrived at my first Alaskan resupply town on the summer solstice. This stretch had been kind to me: good weather, pleasant tail winds, magnificent scenery, accessible beaches, manageable tide levels, and a scarcity of bears. All these things helped shape a relatively uneventful leg of my journey, a welcome reprieve compared to the drama and trauma of getting myself to Prince Rupert.
Ketchikan struck me as a western Venice with a San Francisco feel. Essentially built into a cliff, most of the city’s precipitous streets ended abruptly at the sea. I imagined many of the fourteen thousand locals maintained solid relationships with their brake mechanics, lest they go careening into the depths of Tongass Narrows.
Ketchikan is the first port of call for northbound boaters and a mandatory stop to check in with customs. I parked Chamellia at the public dock in Thomas Basin, just behind the mammoth luxury cruise liners. With passport in hand, I marched into the Pepto-Bismol-pink federal building to check in. The agent asked me the prescribed questions, stamped a few documents, and handed me back my passport.
After going through customs, I paddled the 45-second route over to the yacht club, where John, the manager, agreed to store my kayak for five dollars a day. Chamellia would proudly sit on the dock directly in front of John’s office, and my two carbon-fiber paddles would be under lock and key beside his desk. My next task was to find a room for a night or two. I retrieved my cellphone while John dug out a rumpled phonebook and made a few recommendations.
The cheery voice on the phone at the historic Gilmore Hotel informed me they had one room left, to the whopping tune of $157 a night. All the other accommodations already had their no-vacancy signs up. Sensing my disappointment, she asked if this was a business trip. “Well, sorta,” I fibbed.
“Come on up, honey. I’ll give you the discounted rate of $109, plus tax.” I dug deep down into my dry bags to fetch the American currency I had stashed what felt like so long ago, grabbed a few other essentials, secured the hatches, and fastened the cockpit cover.
“Thanks, John,” I said on my way up the dock. “I’ll be in town for at least two days, maybe three. I’ll be back tomorrow to check on things and visit.”
“I’ll look forward to it, young lady,” he said. I beamed as I walked away. It must have been all the fresh mountain air and exercise, because I hadn’t been referred to as a young lady in—well, a long, long time.
Helen’s smiling face at the front desk of the Gilmore Hotel matched the cheery disposition she had exuded on the phone. “Helen is my Mom’s name,” I told her. “Should be easy for me to remember.”
“It’s a good name,” she replied, cradling a black phone handset in the crook of her neck while handing me my room key and retrieving her cigarettes and lighter from her faux leather purse.
I ascended the stairs to the second level, admiring the authentic oak banisters, paisley carpets, stained glass windows, and golden chandeliers. Holding my camera strap in my teeth, I juggled three dry bags and a water bottle while I nudged the key into the slot and turned the knob. I pushed the heavy oak door open with my right kneecap. A queen bed with a beautiful green comforter and six matching pillows filled nearly half the room. A mahogany desk, small nightstand, floor lamp, and a tall dresser adequately rounded out the decor. An old-fashioned metal radiator sat beneath a large window. What struck me most, however, was the view—or lack thereof. The gleaming white superstructure of the Holland America loomed five stories above me, eclipsing my view of Tongass Narrows. Three other cruise ships were berthed behind her. I marveled at the juxtaposition of this huge ship dwarfing the Tongass Trading Company, a large tourist trinket shop that sat just below it. Below that, a green Mack truck drove by, resembling a child’s Matchbox toy.
I wondered if the gargantuan cruise ship that slid by me earlier that day, its nose pointed in the direction I was going, was among these. I had pictured its occupants being pampered with massages, steam baths, and fine dining. Its massive size had overshadowed a large freighter chugging up the passage in the opposite direction.
These metal monsters towered like floating skyscrapers above the waterfront, deploying tourists by the thousands. For the next two days I witnessed the ebb and flow of throngs of people flocking off these ships, much like I had in Prince Rupert. Once docked, tourists would spill out, storm the sidewalks, and infiltrate the bars, restaurants, and trinket shops. “Ka-ching, ka-ching,” went the cash registers, their drawers opening and closing as shopkeepers smiled and stuffed crisp bills in the appropriate slots. Within hours, the sightseers, summoned by the clock, would make their way back to their soon-departing ships, and recede like the tide, leaving a human wrack line in their wake. The streets were nearly empty and the town quiet, until the next flood of travelers would descend upon Ketchikan. With a wary eye, I strolled Creek Street at proverbial “slack tide.”
Creek Street isn’t really a street at all, but rather a narrow suspended boardwalk built over salmon-choked Ketchikan Creek. It threads through the city’s historic red-light district, charmingly lined with stilted buildings housing saloons, curio shops, art galleries, and some private dwellings.
Ketchikan receives an average of about 150 inches of rain a year. That’s over twelve feet. It’s one of the wettest places in the US, so no wonder it’s nicknamed the rain capital of Alaska. Seattle, in comparison, a damp and drizzly seaside city that I occasionally enjoyed exploring, was a dehydrated dustbowl with its paltry average about 35 inches of yearly rain. In 1949, the wettest year on record, 202 inches of rain fell on Ketchikan. Fittingly, it poured nearly the entire time I was there.
The rain manifested in a medley of forms. It drizzled. It poured. It teased and threatened. The sky wept and moaned and sent the tourists all askitter. It pittered and pattered, lulling me into another blissful nap. It came in torrents, pelting sideways, then vertical sheets. Incessantly, it soused the temperate rainforest that without it would not grow two-hundred-foot trees with bases as big around as a trampoline. Sometimes intermittent, often nonstop, always soaking, nearly maddening.
Drowning gutters overflowed onto sidewalks, sidewalks morphed into shallow rivers. Sheets of featureless clouds drifted in haunting heaps and discursive layers above splashes of Ketchikan color: yellow-hooded slickers, pink goulashes, and rainbow umbrellas.
“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass … It’s learning to dance in the rain.” This anonymous quote not only ping-ponged in my head, it also occupied a shoebox, along with other refrigerator art, in my Montana storage unit. Rain seemed to symbolize my lifelong challenge to live differently from what I learned from my family, and to accept myself fully, the dark and the light. Challenge is my rain, and sometimes I allow the storms to rock my world, while other times I weather through them—brief cloudbursts to torrential downpours—and still other times, when I am truly in control, I dance with them.
IN NO HURRY TO PADDLE in the rain, I lazed about Ketchikan for another day, and languidly tended to my resupply chores: laundry, food shopping, calling friends and family, mailing a few things back to Jim (including his Tree Point souvenir rock), showering, sleeping, and seeking out high-calorie comfort food. Once again, I had the pleasure of seemingly eating my way through town. Back in Prince Rupert, I had stepped on the scale in the hostel’s public bathroom and weighed myself. The needle hovered between 125 and 126. For years I had maintained a somewhat muscular build on my 5’7” frame, and my weight fluctuated between 145 to 150 pounds. When I set off on this journey I weighed 140 pounds. Anticipating some weight loss, I wanted to bulk up for the trip, but I was so doggedly determined to whip myself into the best shape possible, that I ended up being leaner than I’d originally hoped. I had calculated that I would need to consume a minimum of four thousand calories a day just to maintain my body weight. I had assumed that as the trip progressed I would become leaner and fitter, which would further boost my metabolism and require even more calories.
In addition to stuffing my face and busying myself with resupply chores, I sometimes, though rarely, primped. While camping it seemed pointless to spend time on anything more than the basics of personal hygiene. I’d brush and floss (my dentist would be proud), run a comb through my chronically damp hair, then braid it, and apply lip balm. That was the extent of my beauty regime.
Now, with a large and ornate mirror in front of me and seductive trial-size designer soaps, lotions, and potions sitting on a plastic tray, I went wild. I scrubbed my face with a deliciously soft washcloth steeped in warm, soapy water. My face, leathery and tan after living outdoors for weeks, absorbed a palmful of creamy white facial moisturizer like a weathered sponge. “Satiny smooth and yummy for your skin,” read a tiny bottle of complimentary body lotion. I unscrewed the cap, sniffed the bottle, and squeezed a large dollop of the lavender-scented emollient into my calloused hands, then smeared it all over my arms and elbows. More, I thought. I wanted more. I pounded, and squeezed, and coaxed the upside-down bottle until the “yummy-for-your-skin” elixir finally oozed onto my hands, then onto my legs. My five minutes of decadence concluded with a manicure with the world’s tiniest pair of silver nail clippers, which I had tucked inside my toiletry kit.
All glammed up and smelling pretty, I decided to check on Chamellia. During this expedition, she’d always been in my sight and leaving her unattended was a bit nerve-wracking. I wandered down toward the yacht club and found her right where I had left her, as if patiently waiting for me. Other than a small skiff and sailing dinghy pulled up on the dock next to her, she was surrounded and overshadowed by hundreds of boats many times her size—charter boats, private yachts, pleasure skiffs, water taxis, and sailboats whose masts towered over her. Beyond this menagerie, the cruise ships bottle-necked the top end of the marina. A stately yacht, trimmed in teak and brass, quietly steered out of the harbor, dwarfed under the prow of The Golden Princess. Chamellia held her own, in spite of her diminutive size, and in the right hands was every bit as seaworthy as these larger vessels.
Confident that Chamellia was safe in port, I slipped onto a barstool at the Totem Bar, two doors down from my hotel. A frosty mug of cold, dark beer slid down the shellacked counter top. To my right, a fellow wearing tattered Levis and a dark blue hoodie with “Glacier National Park” imprinted in white struck up a conversation. Turned out he lived in Montana for a spell. Quickly, we realized that we both knew some of the same folks. Small world. We talked about mom and pop radio stations, Glacier Park, and the eclectic ski resort town of Whitefish. Landlocked Montana and maritime Alaska share some similarities: mountains, beauty, big skies, and hearty, adventuresome souls. I told him about Jim, and all the caving, kayaking, and exploring he’d done in those landlocked mountains.
Later that night, as I drifted off to sleep in my warm, dry bed, my thoughts turned to Jim. He would undergo the knife first thing in the morning. If the stent insertion was successful, we could all take a deep breath. It was the alternative that worried me. Linda and Dave, our friends visiting from Great Britain, would take Jim to the surgery center in Kalispell. They promised to phone as soon as they knew more. I resolved to not paddle away from the dock until I received that all-important call.
Early the next morning, under a steady rain, I packed my kayak on the yacht club’s dock where I had paddled in just two short days before. My cellphone sat face up in its waterproof case in my cockpit, with the ringer set loud. A small crowd of onlookers began to gather, asking the same questions I had fielded over and over at these ports of call. I was tense today, not my jovial self. As my mood deteriorated on the dock that morning, so too did the weather. A stiff wind had picked up, and the rain, which had been nearly round the clock since I arrived in Ketchikan, kicked up a notch. Fuck the metaphors, I thought. I was restless to get going, worried about crossing Clarence Strait and camping in some serious bear country, rebellious about the rain, and agitated that my stuff was already getting wet. Most of all, I was anxious about the phone call from Linda.
A well-meaning elderly man asked the quintessential question, “Where do you sleep at night?” I bit my tongue in order to not sneer out I sleep in a fucking Motel 6 every night. Where the hell do you think I sleep? I sleep in a ridiculously thin nylon tent in the middle of this godforsaken, sodden country running amok with bears that would snarf me down like an appetizer. I sleep on the cold, hard ground, piss in the bushes, and dig a hole to shit. I squat to cook my meals, I lug this freaking heavy boat around all by myself. I have another 450 miles to paddle until I run out of ocean at Skagway. And YES, I’m doing this for fun. Any other questions? There, I felt better entertaining myself with a barrage of words that would never, God willing, leave my lips. I was entitled to my snarky fits.
Startled, I looked over at my cellphone, ringing loudly. I recognized England’s country code on the caller ID—it was Linda, calling about the surgery.
“The stent won’t work,” she stated matter-of-factly. My heart sank. “Jim’s got too much blockage, and his bloody kidney issues aren’t helping matters.” Jim’s only option—quadruple bypass surgery—was scheduled for the 30th of June, less than a week away.
John overhead the conversation, and although he could see that I was visibly upset, he lacked bedside manners. He mentioned a friend of his who had bypass surgery and that all it did was “buy him a couple of years.” Within seconds, a cloudburst opened above us, releasing, with all its fury, a torrent of raindrops that bounced on the wooden planks where we stood, as if emphasizing John’s ignorant remark. I packed faster and politely asked John for my paddles. As he handed them to me he warned me again about the brown bears. “A fella was gobbled up by a griz a couple weeks ago—right where you’ll be paddling by!”
Knowing that Cleveland Peninsula and this stretch of the Tongass National Forest had the heaviest concentration of grizzly bears on this entire stretch of Alaskan coastline didn’t help matters any. Fighting back my tears, I took my paddles, wheelbarrowed my kayak off the dock until her bow plunged into the cold, dark water, and paddled off into Tongass Narrows. A hard rain drummed on Chamellia’s deck. I sobbed for miles.