Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve
With a strong spirit of exploration travel in comfort, the Harriman Alaska Expedition stopped at Glacier Bay a century ago. Aboard were two famous “Johnnies” of diametrically differing philosophies of experiencing natural places. Muir of mountain believed in rugged exploration of wide tracts of wilderness, while Burroughs of book believed in introspection of local known places. Today we tested both philosophies and were rewarded equally.
Since George Vancouver’s visit to Glacier Bay two hundred years ago, an unprecedented retreat of ice has resulted. We must travel most of the day in order to reach the face of extant tidewater glaciers and to return our visiting National Park Service ranger to park headquarters by nightfall. To this end we are following John Muir’s model of exploration, viewing great expanses of landscape as they reveal themselves to us.
Along our journeys to the ice, we detour in hope of encountering wildlife. In the narrow elbow of Tidal Inlet where we have previously had luck finding bears, the only inhabitants today are harlequins, scoters and eagles. We spied down the gravel riverbed, scanned shorelines, our eyes in scopes and binoculars, becoming saturated with the scene. Patience and extended imprinting of the panorama pay off -- a group of animals moving in the meadow are spotted by an observant soul.
A remarkable sighting would not have been discovered had we not taken the Burroughsian approach to sit and saturate. Natural history writer John Burroughs examined and re-examined his backwoods and wrote philosophically of it. We watched and waited and we discovered.
For nearly an hour we observed a mother wolf and her five rollicking pups. The dark chocolate offspring romped in the grass and intertidal, dragging strands of seaweed in their mouths and mock-tackling each other. The mottle-coated she-wolf sat patiently on her haunches as her young played and explored. The new wolves jumped about in tall beach grass, heads bobbing up and down. The canid mom joined her litter in the grass, romping herself like an exuberant child.
With the vision of this privileged encounter lingering, we approached the blue and black swirling tandy face of the scenery-dominating Johns Hopkins Glacier. This icy mass of the Fairweather Range collapsed explosively over and over into the sea, dispatching icebergs and propagating waves that rocked us as we pondered its wonder.
We have voyaged far today through icy mountain landscapes and have taken in the expansive majesty of Glacier Bay National Park. We have stopped and discovered wolves and watched their antics. We have looked at both the near and far of things in discovery of the world about us.
With a strong spirit of exploration travel in comfort, the Harriman Alaska Expedition stopped at Glacier Bay a century ago. Aboard were two famous “Johnnies” of diametrically differing philosophies of experiencing natural places. Muir of mountain believed in rugged exploration of wide tracts of wilderness, while Burroughs of book believed in introspection of local known places. Today we tested both philosophies and were rewarded equally.
Since George Vancouver’s visit to Glacier Bay two hundred years ago, an unprecedented retreat of ice has resulted. We must travel most of the day in order to reach the face of extant tidewater glaciers and to return our visiting National Park Service ranger to park headquarters by nightfall. To this end we are following John Muir’s model of exploration, viewing great expanses of landscape as they reveal themselves to us.
Along our journeys to the ice, we detour in hope of encountering wildlife. In the narrow elbow of Tidal Inlet where we have previously had luck finding bears, the only inhabitants today are harlequins, scoters and eagles. We spied down the gravel riverbed, scanned shorelines, our eyes in scopes and binoculars, becoming saturated with the scene. Patience and extended imprinting of the panorama pay off -- a group of animals moving in the meadow are spotted by an observant soul.
A remarkable sighting would not have been discovered had we not taken the Burroughsian approach to sit and saturate. Natural history writer John Burroughs examined and re-examined his backwoods and wrote philosophically of it. We watched and waited and we discovered.
For nearly an hour we observed a mother wolf and her five rollicking pups. The dark chocolate offspring romped in the grass and intertidal, dragging strands of seaweed in their mouths and mock-tackling each other. The mottle-coated she-wolf sat patiently on her haunches as her young played and explored. The new wolves jumped about in tall beach grass, heads bobbing up and down. The canid mom joined her litter in the grass, romping herself like an exuberant child.
With the vision of this privileged encounter lingering, we approached the blue and black swirling tandy face of the scenery-dominating Johns Hopkins Glacier. This icy mass of the Fairweather Range collapsed explosively over and over into the sea, dispatching icebergs and propagating waves that rocked us as we pondered its wonder.
We have voyaged far today through icy mountain landscapes and have taken in the expansive majesty of Glacier Bay National Park. We have stopped and discovered wolves and watched their antics. We have looked at both the near and far of things in discovery of the world about us.
