Around Hinchinbrook

July 13, 2006

With a little practice one can accept the rhythm of the wilderness easily. I have had a good deal of practice lately. Why not watch the sky molt or the grandkids become moles in the sand? Why not feel the air caress the hair on my arm? Why not swing? Why not lie in the hammock? Why not bathe in the little pool below the falls? Why not listen to gulls and eagles talk about food? Why not laugh at the silly plover dancing and scolding my approach? Why not marvel at the brown bear tracks next to mine in the sand?

David and I went clamming. We looked for little pock marks in the wet sand and dug deep under the pock with a clamming spade. Mr. Sunshine and I had watched an old man in Ninilchk clean clams. I told David what I could remember and David figured out the rest. We had fabulous clam chowder for lunch.

The whole family hiked North along the beach. We walked past the gull swimming hole where our creek made its own immature delta and dumped into the Gulf of Alaska and eavesdropped on gull gossip. We trudged next to the sand cliff where swallows dug their nests. We climbed over the log bone yard where the sand trapped a bleached forest; tangled, twisted, piled and scattered like tinker toys after the masterpiece is crashed. We hiked north all the way to the whale colored rocks stacked like a string of dominos the size of ships that had fallen, each domino leaning on the other. One end of the string splashed in the waves and squeezed shoots of spray into the air. The other end balanced great spruce above the beach like circus trees on a high wire.

The rock, exposed to the full fury of the Gulf of Alaska, flaunted miracles. Hair bells in full bloom, grew in tiny clumps on baby ledges. Queens crown clung to a chip of rock above the hair bell; higher still a yellow blooming flower and a white blooming flower. And why, I wonder, can’t I be like those flowers; that strong, that tenacious, that gentle, that accepting, that beautiful.

Next day we hiked south along the beach around Hook Point. The beach around the point is a boulder beach. Rounded boulders like giant gravel covered the beach. I felt like an ant traversing a pile of rocks. My mind was full of questions. How did all these boulders get here? Why this beach and not the one around the point where the sand is like face powder? Why so many different kinds of rock? Why can’t I remember how to identify the different kinds of rock? Where is Reid (my geologist neighbor) when you need him?

We were looking for an old ship wreck. Boulder beach was a series of points. I am sure that I turned back one point too soon. The wreck would have been around the next point; but the tide was calling me. “I’m coming, Tim. I’m running for the rocks at Hook Point.”

I think I was hearing things. By the time we got back to Hook Point the tide was still far below the rocks, so Birch (grandson) and I sat on the rocks next to tide pools and watched the fascinating universe of tiny fish, hermit crabs in borrowed shells the size of peas, miniature jellies and slimy green sea weed waiving and shimmering. The tide did come. We moved back to the beach for a picnic, and Burch and Cole skinny-dipped in big tide pool.

Earlier that day when we left the campsite, David noticed movement far down beach toward Hook Point. Binoculars revealed bears, brown bears. Brown bears are Alaskan grizzlies. David at first thought there were three bears, a sow and two cubs. They smelled us or heard us (we were not a quiet clan) and rumbled off the beach into the forest.

When we got to their tracks, we found the outline of a sea lion in the sand and bloody drag marks where the sow had dragged the carcass into the high grass. David studied the marks and told us the story. “The sea lion probably died in the ocean and washed up on the beach. The bears found the carcass and we interrupted their breakfast. What I thought was three bears was really two with the sow dragging the carcass. She is unbelievably powerful. That carcass could have weighed 400 pounds and she was running.”

I walked along the trail studying the tracks and taking pictures. “I wouldn’t go too far that way, dad,” David said.