Losing All Proportion

 In May, I returned to Rapport. Kent had transited through Canada in April, and I flew to meet him in Ketchikan. Alaska! Cliff walls, silted-oceans, snow-capped mountains: all of enormous heights and depths. I can do nothing but stare, maybe absorbing the scale of the scenery, and possibly allowing the pandemic grief to diminish its hold.
 
Day one aboard, I slept soundly after 16 hours of traveling in middle seats and shuffling through packed airports of the lessening pandemic. After six months, I expected to slip back into boat life.  Below deck, at the new table in the main cabin with a cup of tea, I gaze at a grey world outside the portholes, spotted with raindrops. I didn’t expect the space to feel tight, but perhaps after leaving Vermont when spring was shouting—daffodils in bloom, horses back in work, pastures greening up, leaves unfurling—it’s hard to rein in my energy. I am not quite sure what to do with myself while Kent fritters with electronics, checks oil, stows covers, and prepares to cast off.  
 
The day before we wandered the single street of Ketchikan, the fifth largest city in Alaska with a population of 8,050. First stop, I went to Rainforest Cannabis, located conveniently at the top of the dock ramp, to prepare for whatever rough seas may lie ahead aboard Rapport. Kent had ditched my stock in Seattle before he went through Canadian waters. I was not going to sea unequipped. Luckily for him, I could resupply.
 
The following day, we cast off from Ketchikan and set course for Misty Fjords. As we pull away, I coiled lines and pulled in the fenders. The day was grey with calm waters, a head wind, and cool skies. Ketchikan (possible Tlingit definition is the Thundering of Eagle wings) and all her eagles slipped away.
 
By 8pm, we dropped anchor in Punchbowl Cove, finding a manageable 50-foot shallows.  I didn’t realize until we were deep within the tall rock walls that we would have no service. I had not alerted our children nor work that I would be completely out of reach for who knows how long. They do know I am on a sailboat in Alaska.
 
Light for another hour, we took the dingy ashore to scout out the trailhead up the falls to Punchbowl Lake. After a day in the cockpit, the steep hike up the falls enticed, and so scouting transformed to hiking. We walked over rotting log walkways across small ravines, through rock-bordered trenches within the moss-covered forest floor, between dense moss-coated trees and in thirty minutes arrived at the glacial lake. We scanned the lake and then scrambled down the trail through the darkening dense canopy to get to the beach while still light. We carried the dingy over rocks exposed by falling tide to motor back to Rapport and eat dinner at dusk, at 9:30.
 
Without cell service, and simply sitting, I am completely present to the place. On shore a rock moves, and so reveals itself to be a brown bear eating grass. We kayak in to watch. Behind us, Rapport within this fjord looks so small, but it’s hard to capture the scale of the place. To have it stripped down the land itself, and to feel the scale of it so starkly, we lose all proportion. Cruise ships have not yet resumed. We were alone in this fjord; we had left civilization and entered a wilderness.
 
Leaving my job and animals and adult children doesn’t feel quite natural. I am out of my element. I can feel the wind blow and change direction; I can see the tide rise and feel the current shift. But I don’t know what to do with this information. I grab my book and tell Kent I am going to sit on the uphill side. “Windward,” he says. I watch the bow rotate and pivot. “Look at how the bow rolls,” I say. “Yaw,” he replies. There is a language for everything, and I know none of it.
 
Kent goes below and tells me to stay the course. The water has a light ripple. The sun shines, and a few wispy clouds scatter the sky. The walls climb away from me. The pine boughs hanging over on the water’s edge are shorn even by the sea tide. An eagle flies over head. We leave behind the bear digging in the sand. Sitting behind the helm and Kent below deck, I am glad the ocean is 946 feet deep, the walls are steep, and the sea is flat. I’ll manage.
 
In four days, I have read Ordinary Wolves, and Rock Water Wild, and If you Lived Here, I would Know your Name, and From the Bright Edge of the World.  All Alaskan stories, all touching on white imperialism.  When I left Vermont, the legislature had just passed the bill apologizing for the Eugenics law. This place so big and wild and holds the same tragedies of our white invasion on native land. A year after the pandemic and social protests, I see this place differently than I might have a year ago when I would have been only focused on the land and not the people, like us, moving over it. Scanning the rocky horizon, I think of our impact on climate, on race, on the wild, and contemplate our role within a diversity of race and wildlife. I consider the uncertainty of how to right our course.
 
Leaving the fjords, we bypass an impenetrable ice field, and enter the straits on a course to Wrangell. There’s a good wind from the east so Kent unfurls the jib. Rapport tips, and so do I. Nausea creeps in, catching me like cell phone service and civilization gone, unaware. After several days on the boat, I didn’t anticipate a slight heel would accelerate my heart rate. It’s mild, and with ginger tea, I manage. Dall porpoises cross our bow and pop around us like popcorn. Because of their distinctive coloring we see them below and anticipate their surfacing.
 
As we pull into a slip in Wrangell, Kent tells me the tide is coming in, and therefore he is going to change his angle of approach. He tells me all this information as if I can learn this. He comes in steeply, and I stand with a fender and monitor our distance to the big yacht with potted flowers in their windows. We glide into the spot between the yacht and the corner of the dock. No fender required.
 
The next day we pull out of the slip, and we have to swing the bow around to get out of the corner of the dock we are in. I am at the helm, the tide is coming in. “It will catch the bow and help us swing,” he says. Kent walks the dock with the bow line. I turn the helm, using a slight bow thruster. The bow begins her swing 180 degrees away from the dock and into the channel. Still on the dock, Kent puts one foot on the deck and to push as Rapport separates from land. His other foot planted on the dock, he strains across the increasing divide. In our twenties, I would have no doubt of him leaping on deck, but now thirty years later my heart races and my breath tight in my chest and I hope his on-board foot doesn’t slip, or his pushing leg doesn’t cramp, that he doesn’t fall into the water, and I would be alone on Rapport and trying to figure out how to jam the boat back into that spot on the dock without hitting the giant yacht with potted plants. I have, of course, retained nothing from his lessons. I exhale. Afterall, while the water is cold at 55 degrees, he could swim. Or I can throw him a line.
 

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