LETTERS FROM ALASKA 3 – By Carole Gibb

Dear Mary,

I’m taking a break at the Steep Cove cabin since there isn’t enough work for me on the boat. It’s a bit lonely at the moment. I wish you were here. 

I know what to do. I’m going to imagine you’re coming for a visit. I’ll describe what you would experience on your way here, and thus conjure myself up some company. The most affordable trip to Alaska, ever!

So, first, you’d check in at the Juneau airport small-planes desk. You would get in a shuttle van, go to a pond and climb into a floatplane. You’d be sitting amidst bags of U.S. mail, and your pilot would be a charming red-haired man with a fake leg. 

The plane, about the size of a VW bus, would taxi to the end of the pond and take off. It would drone along at about five hundred, maybe a thousand feet, carrying its bulbous floats like a bumblebee loaded with pollen. 

This region of Alaska is called the Panhandle. It’s a five-hundred-mile strip of islands dangling off Alaska’s lower right corner. Your floatplane would fly over a bunch of islands and saltwater fjords, bays, and channels. You’d look for signs of humankind but see few. You might, however, see a whale throw its massive self up out of the water, twist sideways, and then crash back down with a big splash. 

People debate why whales breach. I’m convinced they do it for fun. Self-expression, man. To feel their senses tingle. I’d be breaching all the time if I were a whale, since tingling senses are a favorite thing of mine.

After about forty-five minutes you’d catch sight of open ocean, the Gulf of Alaska, glimmering across the entire horizon. Locals refer to this long, wild border between ocean and shore as the Outer Coast, and the words are spoken with a certain reverence. 

The Outer Coast has a peculiar allure. It calls on people to make their living from the water. It calls them for work and also for play, and compels them to seek the places their parents and grandparents have gone before, questing after fish and berries and deer.

But sis, here I’ll diverge from my glossy brochure tone to give you the mean truth: It’s beautiful, but has vicious weather and rock-studded waters. And practically every year somebody dies, or comes close to it. Sorry, but I just needed to throw in that bit of reality. 

Now back to the glossy brochure tone: your pilot would reach an island and would turn and fly between mountains pressing close on either side to follow a saltwater inlet. And there it would be: Pelican. From the air it resembles a stubborn barnacle, a bumpy white dot clinging to the edge of the inlet.

The floatplane would land in the boat harbor. You’d climb out, jump in the skiff with me, and we’d skim down the coast to this cabin.

I’d cook you a dinner of fresh king salmon, mashed potatoes, and canned sweet corn. This meal sounds simple but you would swoon.

I stopped writing to shake the cramp out of my hand and noticed the letter had done its magic; my heart felt at ease. 

I’m sleepy now and not nearly so lonesome, sis. I’ll say good night and thanks. Give your boys a smooch for me. 

xxoo

Carole