Yikes! I'm in Alaska (part 3)

Kodiak, Alaska, on Kodiak Island, Alaska’s largest, is one of the key places where Russian fur-trappers came in the mid-18th century and started to destroy the indigenous Inuit, who had been in residence for 8,000 years, with pandemic disease and enslavement. Today it’s an industrial fishing village with a Russian Orthodox cathedral.

The night before our ship docked there, Susan and I suffered through an exhausting hour or two of seasickness, as the boat was really rocking in a wavy sea, so we spent much of the morning recovering before disembarking to stroll in Kodiak for a couple of miles.

Our stroll (the weather a balmy 58º) led us into a very mossy forest of Sitka spruce. As soon as we entered, I was on the alert for moose and/or grizzlies, but we saw no scat from either (moose pellets and Sitka spruce pinecones do look similar). Sitting on a bench to enjoy a panoramic view of the fishing boats, we were thrilled by a bald eagle that kept swooping near and checking us out. I’ve seen eagles close by at home in the Mid-Hudson Valley, but any sighting of one on the wing within a couple of hundred yards is a huge moment.

(Susan just read to me that eagles are now avoiding Ukrainian airspace.)

And that was it for Kodiak and us. Our ship has since been on a steady cruise with no stops, headed towards the Hubbard Glacier (70 miles long, 7 miles across). Starting tomorrow we will be disembarking for four straight adventurous days: helicopter flight, dog-mushing, sea canoeing, etc. (Given that the age range of guests on this ship is predominantly 65-80, I don’t think these adventures will be particularly physically challenging.)

Nu, let me tell you a little about our ship, and then I will sign out for several days to give my Alte comrades a chance to write in this Substack space.

The food’s the main thing — with five restaurants serving 650 guests and a service staff, predominantly from India and the Philippines, who are wonderfully friendly and efficient and soft-spoken. I’ve really had to employ the “I-can-always-try-that-tomorrow” proverb of self-restraint so as not to overstuff.

There’s ample opportunity to get drunk, too, and regular meetings of “Friends of Bill W,” that is, Alcoholics Anonymous, to help people with drinking problems keep the faith as they cruise. There’s also a LGBTQ get-together every other day. (The on-board “tumler,” the entertainment emcee, makes a lot of gay-themed jokes that few people seem to catch, and wears sparkly shoes that match the evening dresses of the women entertainers.)

We’ve had our own get-togethers: Twice we’ve sat for dinner with other passengers, randomly assigned, at tables set for four. Both times, our tablemates turned out to be Jewish, and we all started talking and laughing a little bit louder.

The ship also offers a daily lecture about whales, or glaciers, or indigenous cultures, or climate change; a daily tea-time with a string quartet; an evening concert featuring six singers and dancers and a five-piece jazz band (they’re pretty good; the pianist has a Dave Brubeck percussive style); and various other entertainments (magic show tonight!). The entertainers are all trained, I’ve learned, by a Norwegian company that sends troupes out to various cruise companies. (One mark of being old is that I’m always surprised at how every talent, every field of work has been taken over by conglomerates. Everything has grown from cubbies to shipping containers, from neighborhoods to international trade routes.)

The entire ship has ten decks, with the staff of 330+, I’m guessing, quartered on decks 1-3, along with offices, engines, and so forth. If that sounds big to you, you’re not up-to-date on cruise ships, which range up to six or seven times as many guests and are propeller-driven Disney Worlds. By contrast, ours is a modest ship, built more than 40 years ago.

There’s a putting green on Deck 10, alongside two corn hole setups (Susan and I tied one game apiece this morning) and a shuffleboard court. One deck down there’s a small swimming pool and two hot tubs. Places that I’ve been ignoring entirely include the small casino, two gift shops, and the spa and fitness center.

The library has a wide assortment of political books and novels and a wonderful Atlas opened to a very large map of Alaska. During the past two or three years I’ve gone to my globe at home numerous times to fix in my mind the locations of Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, etc. in relation to each other. Now I’m fixing in my mind the relative locations of Alaska, the Aleutians, Canada’s Yukon and Northwest Territory, and the Arctic Circle.

But my main activity is ocean-gazing. I wrote a song some months ago, “What a World,” with a verse that says: What a world, a giant ball, big to us but O so small. Looking out at the endless ocean here in the Gulf of Alaska, “big to us” becomes the operative line. The sea is so vast, so much in motion, so fundamental to our planet yet alien/spooky/unfathomable to me — and it is so difficult to imagine all the creatures actually living beneath that surface.

But I do hope to see a few at the surface before our cruise is through.

Here’s a photo of a the bones within a grey whale’s fin: