Dreaming of
The pristine wilderness enchants Yvonne van Dongen as she revels in the advantages of a small cruise in a cold climate.
When the cruise is almost over, the youngest guest asks each of us to name our high, our low and our silly. She raises three fingers to spell out exactly what she’s asking for. Right there you know she’s got to be the best early childhood teacher in North Carolina because responding seems like a fun idea. Either that or you’ve been infantilised after 11 days at sea having all your needs met on this Alaskan Dream Cruise around the southeast coast of the 49th state of the United States.
‘‘C’mon Yvonne. Now you.’’
My high? Seeing, hearing and feeling bits of Marjorie Glacier fall into the sea. The boom, the splash, the big wave that followed. And then do it again, over and over. So epic and primal.
My low? Constipation. Well, you asked, and we’ve all been together so long that such confessions are nothing. So much fabulous food refusing to budge, despite activities such as kayaking, swimming and hikes.
My silly? Jumping into the 8 degrees Celsius ocean for the polar swim and then being hauled out and running to the salt room to warm up. The salt room consists of blocks of apricot-coloured Tibetan salt lining the walls, and it’s said to exude magical properties. The whole thing felt silly and giggly and great.
The early childhood teacher is satisfied and moves on to the next guest. There are only 43 of us so it’s no problem playing this game. But later it occurs to me that I could have said three totally different things and still been right.
My high? Eating wild salmon every day. Visiting a Native Alaskan community. Riding the narrow gauge train to the Canadian border. Seeing mink on the beach. Devouring crab legs fat as a baby’s arm. Watching humpback whales engage in bubble net feeding. No, wait, that has to be my high. Of course it does. Not all humpback whales do this and I’ve seen it happen, seen them blow bubbles in a big circle to confuse a school of fish after which they dive low and rush up with open mouths to suck in all the dazed fish.
My low? Still constipation. Or it could be not seeing any bears close up, but there are only 30 or so in this great big part of the world so what do I expect?
And my silly? Getting worked up about speed scrabble, card games such as golf and dice games such as Farkle. Honestly, what am I, 5? Practically. After all, I’m a Junior Ranger. I completed the booklet and was awarded a medal at a ceremony run by the onboard senior ranger who is as devoted and rhapsodic as a nun. She makes us write haiku and quotes writers such as Rachel Carlson (author of Silent Spring). ‘‘Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.’’ Captain Michael Bennett is less impressed. ‘‘She reamed me out for letting you lot walk so close to the glacier,’’ he grumbles. He’s an informal sort. We can visit the captain’s room any time, not just on an official tour. He’s also pretty literary himself, having written a book called Devil Dolphins of Silver Lagoon and Other Stories.
Such informality is just one of the beauties of a small cruise. The other is stopping at sites not permitted for larger vessels. Only five per cent of people who come here get to walk on the shores of Glacier Bay.
Another is not being part of what one guest calls ‘‘the moo crew’’, the passengers from huge cruise liners we see herded from one place to another and eagerly awaited by foreign gentlemen lurking in shop doorways like moray eels ready to pounce with promises of special discounts or trinkets for people from the Princess Line.
And yet another bonus is the high cultural quotient of the cruise, thanks to the parentage of this third-generation company founded by Bob and Betty Allen almost 50 years ago. Betty was Tlingit, the native people of Glacier Bay, and also the greatgreat-granddaughter of one of the first Russians to set foot in Sitka, once the capital of Russian America, where our cruise began. The couple built a successful boat-building and tourist operation, and the company has maintained strong links with the indigenous community.
Onboard is a young Tlingit woman with a spectacularly lusty laugh, eager to share her culture. She impresses on us the importance of their food, such as dried seaweed and fermented fish eggs. ‘‘Our food is our way of life. It’s not subsistence living, it’s who we are.’’
We learn to drum our feet in appreciation instead of clap because that’s what her people do and we attend a Tlingit ceremonial dance. In Petersburg, a community with Norwegian roots, we eat sweet treats called scorpa and lefse, and watch braided girls in embroidered skirts skip around young men in blue knickerbockers and long red socks.
And later in Skagway, the tiny town that formed part of the setting of Jack London’s The Call of The Wild, we go on a brothel tour just to mix things up.
Other crew are specialists in marine life, flora and fauna, and deliver talks like ‘‘Taking a lichen to algae’’.
Of course, the central character of this whole production is Alaska itself, a place almost too big to comprehend. The largest and least populated US state has so few roads even the capital Juneau can only be reached by ferry. Otherwise everything is on a monster scale.