Welcome to Glacier Bay folks, you privileged witnesses.
So, time to rug up (we had four layers on outside) as we witnessed majestic landscape, serene waters, inspiring nature, good company and a spiritual ambience, if you could be so vulnerable and humble.
In other words, as we can displace our differences, it is amazing how humanity connects via the wonder of nature. Today was one of those special days. So as a vicarious traveller, please enjoy the view.
The day starts, and nature starts its inspirational exercise.
First glimpse of Margerie glacier. A meditative experience as we slowly cruised forward, with a privileged ‘best seat in the house’.
Margerie glacier – 43 km (27 miles) long.
Margerie, close up.
Stunning adjacent views.
The vast background beyond Margerie glacier. So much beauty yet rugged scenery abounds.
And so as our first collective experiences of the inside passage of south-eastern Alaska culminate, I feel a sense of wholeness, as the first fragments of this Alaskan visit being to coalesce. For me at least. The misty fiords and rain-soaked waterfalls. The barren landscape yet teeming with nature and mystery, just like the elusive whales that occasionally surface for humans to bear witness, yet caring less if they do not.
The Alaskan tundra stretching into the Yukon and into the vast reaches of Canada, reminding us that nature holds no respect for arbitrary borders, just territory that observes its own cycles regardless of consequence. So adapt, or be displaced. And then the glacial bay joy ride. How can you not be moved? Can we package this gratitude and inspiration, and pay it forward with tolerance and humility? Here is hoping so.
As we hear from the local indigenous man, how he and his forebears are adapting to tradition and the changing pressures of the modern world. As best they can, with compassion, good humour and mutual respect. A very timely salve for this (previously) stressed transient visitor from another ‘world’, who knows that it is our relationships, our willingness to collaborate and share, that is so far superior to our supposed need to dominate or win. Thanks for the day, as it will be long cherished.
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