George Island, Inian Passage, Icy Strait, Point Adolphus
By most accounts, Georg Wilhelm Steller was an excellent naturalist. He accompanied the Danish captain, Vitus Bering, on his great expedition of discovery, sailing into unknown waters under the Czarist flag of Russia. Steller himself was German, a physician and a keen observer of the natural world. The expedition took ten years to prepare. By the time it finally left Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula that fateful summer of 1741, Bering was old and in poor health. Six weeks out, he spotted land. He sent Steller ashore but gave him only ten hours on land (Kayak Island, 150 miles north of here). It was enough. From what the exuberant German found – birdlife, plantlife and human artifacts unlike anything he’d seen before – he knew the expedition had reached a new continent. The Russians had discovered Alaska and would occupy it for the next 126 years, making a fortune in the sea otter fur trade before selling it to the United States.
On his way home, Bering’s expedition shipwrecked on a remote island halfway between the end of the Aleutian Archipelago and Kamchatka. The old Dane died of scurvy that winter, despite Steller’s best efforts to keep him alive. That spring, the survivors rebuilt their small packet boat from the wreckage and returned to Kamchatka, the hold of their boat filled with sea otter furs, or “soft gold.” After that, the rush was on.
We sailed into the heart of that history today. After a pleasant hike to a WWII gun emplacement on George Island, and before a slate-gray day with humpback whales off Lemesurier Island, we traveled by Zodiacs to a nameless sea-sculpted islet, surrounded by sea otters and Steller sea lions. While one animal was described by Steller, the other was named in his honor. The tide ran fast as fifty-some sea lions leapt about, flaunting their watery acrobatics, their tawny flanks and large eyes drinking in our startled expressions. On the islet, other sea lions bellowed and nipped at each other. The sea otters, peaceable by contrast, rolled in beds of kelp, their pups on their chest as they ate urchins and crabs. High above, in the crowns of weathered spruce, bald eagles called.
We found no words, as I fail to now. Sea lions, otters, eagles and whales. It reminded us that in scenery we see more than we can absorb, but in wildness we absorb more than we can see. It was wild; the earth as it used to be, in Steller’s time and in ours.
By most accounts, Georg Wilhelm Steller was an excellent naturalist. He accompanied the Danish captain, Vitus Bering, on his great expedition of discovery, sailing into unknown waters under the Czarist flag of Russia. Steller himself was German, a physician and a keen observer of the natural world. The expedition took ten years to prepare. By the time it finally left Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula that fateful summer of 1741, Bering was old and in poor health. Six weeks out, he spotted land. He sent Steller ashore but gave him only ten hours on land (Kayak Island, 150 miles north of here). It was enough. From what the exuberant German found – birdlife, plantlife and human artifacts unlike anything he’d seen before – he knew the expedition had reached a new continent. The Russians had discovered Alaska and would occupy it for the next 126 years, making a fortune in the sea otter fur trade before selling it to the United States.
On his way home, Bering’s expedition shipwrecked on a remote island halfway between the end of the Aleutian Archipelago and Kamchatka. The old Dane died of scurvy that winter, despite Steller’s best efforts to keep him alive. That spring, the survivors rebuilt their small packet boat from the wreckage and returned to Kamchatka, the hold of their boat filled with sea otter furs, or “soft gold.” After that, the rush was on.
We sailed into the heart of that history today. After a pleasant hike to a WWII gun emplacement on George Island, and before a slate-gray day with humpback whales off Lemesurier Island, we traveled by Zodiacs to a nameless sea-sculpted islet, surrounded by sea otters and Steller sea lions. While one animal was described by Steller, the other was named in his honor. The tide ran fast as fifty-some sea lions leapt about, flaunting their watery acrobatics, their tawny flanks and large eyes drinking in our startled expressions. On the islet, other sea lions bellowed and nipped at each other. The sea otters, peaceable by contrast, rolled in beds of kelp, their pups on their chest as they ate urchins and crabs. High above, in the crowns of weathered spruce, bald eagles called.
We found no words, as I fail to now. Sea lions, otters, eagles and whales. It reminded us that in scenery we see more than we can absorb, but in wildness we absorb more than we can see. It was wild; the earth as it used to be, in Steller’s time and in ours.
