inside water passageways where tidal currents ran strong and winds could whip up the waters in minutes. As on my ill-fated attempt at crossing Dixon Entrance, I required a long period of good weather to complete the fifteen-hour crossing of Frederick Sound. This sound also had cross-currents compounding kayak navigation difficulties, so once again I set off at dawn and once again I encountered rough weather midway across. My destination that day was Admiralty Island. Tlingit elders back in Kate had cautioned me again and again, “Whatever you do, don’t camp at Tyee.” Tyee is the name for the southern end of Admiralty Island where three rivers converge to meet the sea. It was late August, prime salmon-spawning season, and huge brown bears were converging here to put on winter fat. Admiralty Island boasts the world’s highest concentrations of Alaska brown bears; they outnumber people living on the island three to one. The Tlingit’s name for the island is Kutznahoo (Fortress of the Bears), and one requires but a single encounter with these eight- to twelve-hundred-pound carnivores to understand the local reverence.
It was nearly dark before I reached the shores of Admiralty; the tide was ebbing south down Chatham Strait and I didn’t have enough strength left in my arms to buck the current. Against my better judgment, and the more than ample warning from others, I found myself landing on the beach of my worst nightmare, Tyee. Half a dozen brown bears were fishing for salmon in the shallow channels spreading out across the broad, muddy tidal flat. I had to haul my kayak and all my gear through ankle-deep mud to get above the tide line, all the while trying to not attract the attention of or provoke the extremely territorial bears. I was utterly exhausted and long past any boost adrenalin could give, having battled threatening seas all day. An old abandoned trapper’s cabin perched on the edge of the forest became my all-consuming goal. If I could make it inside I’d be safe, I reassured myself. A huge bruin caught my movement and started to follow me across the tidal flats at a slow but determined pace. I rushed for the cabin, threw my gear inside and bolted the door. I was famished and exhausted and just about to pull out some trail mix and spread my bedroll when I heard clawing and biting on the wooden door. I must have passed out, because I awoke the next morning beside my backpack fully dressed and wearing muddy gumboots. Fear, exhaustion, or both, had taken their toll.
Paddling the west coast of Admiralty over the next week was exhilarating and more than a little unnerving. The snow-capped mountains of Baranof and Chichagof Islands across Chatham Strait glistened in the sun, but they also created williwaws—strong blasts of wind that rebounded off the high mountainsides and struck the strait with a vengeance. Tidal currents were especially pronounced and it just wasn’t worth the effort to buck tide. Pulling ashore to wait out the tidal change or to make camp for the night usually involved a brown bear encounter. You feel very small indeed when both of your feet fit easily into an Alaska brown bear footprint on the beach where you pull ashore, or when one of these beasts rises up from its grazing in tall shore grass and lets you know with teeth-chomping certainty that it was there first.
Angoon, the only community on Admiralty Island, is an ancient Tlingit site and a delightful living community today. I enjoyed many hours during a rest layover there listening to the elders’ tales over bannock and Labrador tea.
I happened upon another opportunity for income when I arrived by kayak in Hoonah, a small Tlingit village on the north end of Chichagof Island where I was offered a job aboard a salmon packer operating in Icy Strait. My job was simple: to weigh and determine the species of salmon being sold to the packer boat, then to poke ice into the body cavities as I packed the fish into ice bins, belly side up, in the ship’s hold. It was not a bad job; the pay was good and the scenery in Icy Strait was sublime with humpback whales breaching, eagles circling the fleet and sea otters bobbing in the kelp beds. Still, I longed to continue my journey.
It was already mid-September when I finished the packer job and set off again in my kayak for Glacier Bay. Not long after departing Hoonah, I stopped to wait out the tide on a small island at the entrance of Icy Strait that was overgrown in berry bushes. While working my way inland through the thick salal, munching ripe berries by the mouthful, I suddenly came face to face with Kushtaka, the legendary Tlingit Land Otter Man who can transform himself from animal to human and back again. I remembered having seen a photo of him in a book somewhere. The Haida recognize this same animal/spirit being, whom they call Slugu, and it is always an uncertain encounter. I was completely taken aback to suddenly come upon this lifelike face carved in stone and standing at my height in the bushes. It was a mortuary carving on a gravesite island, I came to realize, and quickly departed the isle.
I camped on the south side of Icy Strait the night before the long crossing to guarantee an early start. Shortly after I pushed off from the small beach a heavy fog rolled in, and I spent the entire day trying to navigate the strait without a compass. It was evening before I spotted land again and, as luck would have it, a perfect little landing beach appeared before me through the parting fog. I was thrilled. I had made it safely across the strait—or so I thought. Something was strangely familiar about this beach, and my morning footprints in the sand, crossed over by land otter tracks, confirmed it. I had paddled all day through the dense fog in a huge circle and arrived right back where I’d set off twelve hours earlier. Somewhere there was a lesson in that, or Kushtaka just has a mischievous streak.
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