The Poosey Digest... by Freida Marie Crump
Alaska redefines "Big"
Greetings from Poosey.
I was standing on the 11th floor of the cruise ship in broad daylight, 10 o'clock at night, watching a group of humpback whales spout their vespers in the distance when a fellow traveler sidled up to me and said, "Freida, you've seen Colorado. You've seen the Alps. How does Alaska compare?"
I knew the answer but it was hard to put into words. Most of Alaska makes a fool of words. Maybe it was the huge meal I'd just consumed in the ship's dining room, but my mind struggled for an answer. I thought. The Rockies... the Alps... they're vast and beautiful and breath taking but if you spend enough time and with enough thought, you can somehow define them. Alaska cannot be defined. It can't be summed up.
The size alone boggles our understanding... one-fifth the mass of the 48 lower states. If Alaska were cut in half, Texas would be the third largest state. Most of Alaska has never been walked upon by any human soul. The place redefines "Big." It paints a whole new picture of "Majesty." The Rockies gently whisper to you. The Alps murmur. Alaska sings.
The place spans time zones, includes a multitude of separate climates, and still holds undiscovered riches. The Rockies are more navigable because you simply can't drive to most of Alaska. The Alps have a richer history due to the fact that much of Alaska is so wild and undiscovered that it has no written history. It's... well, it's Alaska.
Herb and I sallied forth with a couple thousand other adventurous souls out of Vancouver Harbor, and headed up the Inside Passage of our largest state and even those among us who'd taken the trip before had little idea what sort of wonders we'd be viewing over the next week's time.
There are those who pooh-pooh the idea of group travel and I realize that traveling in a pack of 2000 tends to scare away the bears, but if you're going to see some of Alaska's most spectacular sights in anything less then three months, then cruising is the only sensible way to go. This is not the Midwest, Mabel. You simply can't get to most of Alaska by anything but a cruise ship or a floatplane.
And the splendor does not stop. A billion dollar ship, an orgy of fine food and drink, splashy entertainment in the various theatres, bars, and clubs onboard, and no one's paying a dime's worth of attention to any of it. We're all out on deck watching Alaska stride by. Even the seasoned waiters stop pouring their wine and run to the starboard windows when someone shouts, "Whale!"
Nothing puts us within gasping distance of God like seeing a whale. It's a spirit-tingling moment. Time absolutely stops and the most skeptical, traveled-hardened poophead must surely say, "Only God could do that." We stood one grand Alaska morning on the back deck of a catamaran watching a group of 18 humpbacks blowing their supernatural bubble nets on one side of the ship while a pod of seven killer whales waved at us from the other side. Our eyes bulged at the miracle dancing before us and breath was hard to come by. Mark Twain said, "I defy anyone to gaze upon the Alps and remain an atheist." In all deference to the great man from Hannibal, my whale tops his yodeling hills.
To stand on the deck at the face of an Alaskan tidewater glacier, 2000 spectators hushed into silence, all of us... including our ship... made in an instant so very tiny up against the six-mile-wide mass of glistening ice... then the sudden crack of a canon shot as five-ton shard of compacted snow breaks lose and comes cascading down into the bay, sending up a wall of seawater 50 feet high and causing waves that cause even the behemoth cruise ship to roll in its wake. A lady standing beside me after such a crash whispered, "The batteries in my camera just died. Thank God. The only way to capture this is with my eyes."
That night as I stood on the port side of the ship, watching the mountain ranges give me the gift of my own private parade, I turned to the traveler who'd asked me to compare Alaska to the world's other splashes of magic. I'm sure that my answer didn't satisfy him. I said, "I don't know. I don't try to describe it. I just look... it's worship in its truest sense."
You ever ‘round Poosey, stop by. We may not answer the door but you'll enjoy the trip.
Next week: Herb versus the cruise ship.
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