The sun paints with a magic palette. When the cloudy drape is drawn away we see a portrait unmatched by any artist past or present. A few scant miles from the Canadian border, the Grand Pacific Glacier rests its dark form on a hidden moraine. In stark contrast is its shimmering neighbor, Margerie. Echoes of colors ripple around. The blue of the sky, a welcome sight, is rivaled by glacial azure. Remnants of swirling grey from storms just past wrap around mountain peaks metamorphosing to cottony white. Fragments of charcoal toned rocks, plucked from their bed, slide between layers of long ago snow, carried far in the ice river's seaward journey.

Our day in Glacier Bay National Park was a voyage through the essence of wildness. We drifted from snow-capped mountains cradling infant glaciers to jewel-like bergy bits reflected in calm turquoise seas. Our eyes roamed from creamy mountain goat forms speckling green alpine meadows to pudgy tufted puffins mirrored in a liquid as dark as India ink. A blonde brown bear grazed on berries along a mountain ridge not far from another, a chocolate brown ordained with a whitish lapel. Its preferred diet appeared to be something snatched near to the water's edge. A cacophony of cries and an odor of fish engulfed us at the end of the day. South Marble Island was a distillate of life. A hundred or more Steller sea lions vied for positions on the rounded northern points while kittiwakes called from their nests, precariously perched on steep-sided cliffs.

At the end of the day, Mount Fairweather appeared, tall, white and majestic against a backdrop of pink streaming clouds.