Inside the Inside Passage

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Night two aboard the Alaskan ferry Taku. Last night, sleeping out on the deck, the frigid air knifed through my pathetic sleeping bag, so I've decided to sleep on the observation lounge floor tonight. Anyone else on board who is my age (and white) is sleeping in a bed in a state room. At 61 I'm trying to live the adventures I should have lived when I was 21. Back then, when I had my head buried in a book, I had friends who came to Alaska. They earned big money working 36 hour shifts gutting fish. Some stayed and became the crusty windbags I see sitting in corner of the bar in Sitka, swapping fish stories and complaining about Democrats. Some now own the fishing operations they once worked for and would scoff at my professor's salary.

What attracts people to a place like this, I wonder. A place where livelihoods must be mined, chopped, hunted, or fished; where dinner must be wrestled from Indians and bears; where winters are long, dark, and harsh. Romanticizing nature, I realize, is a luxury enjoyed in cities, not the frontier.

The Taku threads its way through the narrow maze of channels that is Alaska's Inside Passage. It is overwhelming. Who first charted these waterways? It seems impossible. Did they use Google Maps? I look out the window and feel small and lost. Far beyond the mountains at the water's edge I see pale blue peaks suggesting infinite wilderness. To me they say go home explorers, go home to your heated apartments, cable TVs, and espresso makers. This place is vast, harsh, and hopeless.

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