Thank you Kurt for submitting this story. This is thoroughly riveting with a shocking twist! Enjoy:
I was jarred out of my sleep by the knock on the front door. Through groggy eyes I looked at the clock thinking, “oh shit, I’ve over slept.” Late for work again. My shift started at 8:00 am. The clock on my bedside table showed 6:00 am. 6:00!? “This better be an emergency,” I grumbled to myself as I threw on my robe and went to see who the hell was knocking on my door so early.
Pulling open the front door, I winched as the bright sunny morning light hit my unaccustomed eyes. Squinting through the slits of my morning vision I saw the red bearded and ruddy face of my neighbor Bill Glenn smiling back at me. “Jeez Bill, what’s up?” I mumbled still shaking the cobwebs of sleep from my brain.
“Let’s go on the bay,” he said.
It took a second to sink in. Bill was my neighbor across the street and I liked him fine but we weren’t buddies. We didn’t share beers or go fishing together. And though neighbors, we had never had him and his wife Karen over for dinner or a BBQ or anything really. I knew he had a nice little Zodiac inflatable but he had never asked me to go out with him in it, until now.
I weakly replied something to Bill about having to go to work today but was simultaneously thinking to myself what excuse to give Ivanka when I called the switchboard at AVTEC where I was a janitor. Headache, stomach problems, cold? I only hesitated a few seconds before I said to Bill, “I’ll call in.”
After calling in “sick” I got dressed in a flash. In no time Bill and I were headed to the boat ramp at the Seward harbor in his truck with the little Zodiac in tow. As we drove the few blocks to the bay I could see why Bill wanted to get out on bay. What a day! Crystal clear blue sky and warm for early summer coastal Alaska. Best of all there was not a hint of even the slightest breeze.
When we got to the beach to launch the boat we looked south across the bay towards the open waters of the Gulf of Alaska and saw the rarest of rare conditions on Resurrection Bay, flat calm. I know it is a cliché but the bay that lovely June day looked like the surface of a horizontal mirror, it really did. It was gorgeous. Sublime. Except for a sail boat it was the best of all possible boating conditions. I could see why Bill had scrambled to get out on it and why he had knocked on my door. You NEVER go out on the water alone, especially on the frequently and suddenly stormy waters of Resurrection Bay.
It would end up being a singular day I will never forget.
Once out of the harbor and the no-wake zone, Bill gunned the outboard full throttle and the little gray inflatable was jetting across the glass flat water. I shouted to Bill over the noise of the motor and wind, “where we going?” He just pointed south towards the broad mouth of Resurrection Bay and the open Gulf. “Okay,” I thought. His boat, his call. I don’t think either of us cared much where we going as long as we were out drinking up this incredible day with these amazing conditions. It was beautiful!
After clearing Caines Head, we got an unobstructed view the gigantic river of ice that is Bear Glacier. It winds its way down towards Resurrection Bay from its source, an “accumulation zone” called the Harding Icefield, which is about the size of one of the smaller eastern states.
The Harding Icefield is named after the lack-luster President Warren G. Harding (1921-23). He was the first American president to visit Alaska. Harding had traveled to the territory by steamer to drive the symbolic golden spike into the newly completed Alaska Railroad, which today still runs from Fairbanks to Seward. I have done entire length of it. Famously, Harding died on that steamer on the return trip. Some historians say that by doing so he avoided certain scandal and possible impeachment for blatant corruption. We moved to Alaska in 1976 and I met several locals who told stories of an affable Harding waking around town without a secret service detail talking to merchants and citizens on the streets of downtown Seward like a regular every day person. Different times indeed.
As Bear Glacier came into view Bill made a gradual starboard turn west towards it. I guess we were going to Bear Glacier. This was getting exciting. I had never been out into the bay this far except on the state ferry the MV Tustumena, which passed by Bear Glacier on its weekly summer run to Valdez, Cordova and Prince William Sound. Scooting around the big blue sea on a tiny inflatable was certainly a lot more intimate. And it was about to get more intimate as Billed pointed us toward the increasingly looming Bear Glacier.
I could see the long strand of a gray pebble beach in front of the glacier and thought Bill would make for that so we could land and pull the Zodiac up away from tide. However, I was mistaken. Bill had been here before and instead he made his way to the far right end of the beach. Down at that end was the mouth of a small river. This was the major drainage outlet for the lake in front of Bear Glacier. You can’t see the lake from the bay but I have seen an aerial picture of it. The lake is quite large, perhaps a mile wide between the face of the glacier (its source) and the narrow beach strand and patchy island meadows that separates the lake from the sea.
Bill carefully putted our little craft up the shallow river a bit until we found a nice grassy landing with a driftwood stump to tie the boat to. I couldn’t contain my excitement and hopped out before Bill had even secured the Zodiac. I immediately began to explore the broad meadow of low sedge and grasses that lay between the pebble beach and the glacial lake itself.
Then it kind of hit me. I was really hungry. In our haste we had neglected to bring any food or even water. With the river and the lake, water wouldn’t be a problem, but food? Damn I was hungry. Then, at almost the same moment that I noticed I was hungry I spotted little red specks nestled down and partially obscured by the delicate bright green leafs of, could it be? Yes it was, wild strawberries! Thousands of them.
Before I knew it I was down on my hands and knees gobbling up the sweetest tastiest strawberries I had ever eaten, or ever would. I remember mashing the little red jewels with my knees and leaving stains in my blue jeans that never did quite come all the way out after washing them. Oscar Wilde said, “hunger is the best condiment.” That is true but I have to say that wild strawberries are infinitely tastier and sweeter than their cultivated and civilized cousins. Bill joined me in the berry orgy and we feasted on those little things until we just about popped. I have never seen wild strawberries in such abundance nor eaten all that I wanted until full. It was glorious!
After slipping into a gorge-induced nap in the sun for an hour or so we both stirred and returned to the Zodiac, which had been stranded by the ebbing tide. We carried the light little boat several yards to the water and were again gingerly putting down the now shallower river towards the sea. You do not want to snag a hole in a Zodiac way out here.
Bill and I were pleasantly surprised to see that the bay was still glass flat and calm. Very unusual. Normally, in the summer by midmorning and into the afternoon the wind kicks up as southerlies from the Gulf are sucked inland by the terrestrial heat. But not today. This day remained truly amazing and it wasn’t over yet. The biggest surprise was ahead of us, literally.
Reveling in the memory and sugar rush of the berry orgy we zipped across the water at full speed without having to contend with chop or waves. Soaking in the sun and salt air with the wind in my face I was at the bow looking forward when I spotted a rock just ahead. I hollered at Bill to cut the motor and he did just in time.
Oddly, the rock right in front of the little boat was getting larger and larger. Then I spotted the dorsal fin. It wasn’t a rock. It was a whale! In one continuous motion, its glistening gray back kept arching out of the water as it slowly slid into the deep blue water. Suddenly, like dark sail unfurled, a gigantic tale fluke filled the world right in front of us. Water ran off of it like showers of heavy rain. It hung there looming, suspended for what seemed like an eternity so that I could see every nick, scar and barnacle. In slow motion the tale sleekly slipped into the depths with nary a splash and almost silently, except for a deep sucking sound something like a coin thrown edge-on into a pond. Then it was gone. It had sounded and we didn’t see it again.
In a little tiny inflatable we had come within a few feet of a Fin Whale, the second largest thing in the world after the Blue Whale. The only ripples in the calm waters were from our inflatable as it gently rocked side to side in the swirling current the whale’s tale had created when it dove so close to us. Stunned, awed and humbled Bill and I just sat quietly in that little boat until the bobbing stopped. Neither of us said a word as we both tried to take in what we had just witnessed.
I don’t known about Bill, but I was moved. I still am as I write of it more than forty years later. It would have been a wonderful and amazing day without the whale encounter. Instead, I was gifted a beautiful timeless epilogue to a golden day that I will never forget…ever.