This narritive is about a trip I took many years ago while living among the Tlingit of south east Alaska. By the way the island is pronounced Koots -nah -whoo. Bob Kootznoowoo, Fortress Of The Bear A cold morning rain fell gently as I carried load after load of gear across the large tidal flat. Carefully I stepped between an amazing array of sea stars patiently awaiting the incoming tide. Just before carrying my last load, I kissed my wife goodbye. It would be the first time in 5 years of marriage we would be apart for more than a few days. I settled in my boat, laden with two weeks worth of gear, and began to paddle. Fog shrouded both the land and sea. My destination lay hidden in the midst. The Tlingit call this island Kootznoowoo, meaning "Fortress of the Bear". Kootznoowoo is located in southeast Alaska and holds the largest population of brown bears in the world. An estimated 2500 bears live on the island, far outnumbering the 700 people. Though most maps name the island Admiralty, in respect to the Tlingit people I choose to use their name. I began from my home in the Tlingit village of Angoon and set out for Juneau, 150 miles away. I was paddling alone. Though I had done a couple of short solo trips before, this would be my first long solo trip. Admittedly the first couple miles I questioned myself: "why solo?" The simplest answer was that there was no one else to go with me. I owned the only kayak in the village. The Tlingit traditionally traveled by war canoes, carved out of giant cedar trees, not kayaks. Perhaps though, the real answer lies in answering other questions: "why do we paddle?" and "why we take long journeys in little boats?" The old gold prospectors talked of a thing called wanderlust. The need to explore, the want to see the world from yonder mountain top. The desire to see what^Òs around the river bend. The driving urgency to see new lands and new waters. The call of the wild drawing us ever forward. Onward I paddled, my heart filled with this strange wanderlust. The fog began to lift as I headed toward Hood Bay. I had often taken day trips into Hood Bay, and every time had seen bears. I had chosen early June for this trip because it is the time of year when bear graze the beach for goose tongue and beach asparagus. Today would be no exception. I rounded a small point to see a mother bear munching away, while her twin cubs wrestled and romped close by. I drifted slowly by, quietly watching. Suddenly the sow pointed her nose to the sky. She sniffed back and forth, then let out a grunt and hurried off into the woods with her cubs close behind. She never saw me, but her nose told her I was there. Later I would see two young bears, twins now for the first time out on their own. A dangerous time for man or beast. Locals called young bears such as these "Hoodlums," due to the fact that they are the ones most likely to raid a camp. I chose to camp on a small island where Hood Bay forks. Would the waters around protect me from the bears? As I crawled into my sleeping bag, I remembered a friend of mine who came to visit us in Angoon. He had made the mistake of reading the book Bear Attacks In Alaska on the ferry ride up. One evening he nervously asked an elder of the village, "If I camp on an island, am I safe from the bears?" "Kootznoowoo is an island" was the elder^Òs wise reply. I lay in my sleeping bag thinking, "Why did I have to remember that!" At home in bed I am a sound sleeper, but when camping out I have always awakened at the slightest noise. Tonight was no exception. Some time in the night I heard a growl outside my tent, then another and another. I grabbed my gun and looked out of the tent, expecting to be surrounded by a herd of bear! Instead I came face to face with a bunch of sea lions. It seems I was camped in the middle of their nightly haul-out. They exploded into the water and spent the next several minutes grunting in protest. It was a long time before I got back to sleep. Why do we paddle? Maybe to become one with the wind, the waves, the sea and the creatures therein. Floating with the rise and fall of the tide. Dancing to the rhythm of the waves. Feeling on your cheek the first breeze of a coming storm. Hearing whales breath deep before a dive. Watching the eagles watch you. Paddling in a fog that covers you in silence like a shroud. Hearing the raven call out to the morning sun. No words of a book, no pictures on a page or screen can create in us the mystical sense of being at sea in a kayak. Only being there will do. The next day I paddled out of Hood Bay and headed south. Somewhere in the distance I heard the powerful exhale of whales. Eventually I spotted their spouts far away in Chatham Strait. I was surprised how far the sound had traveled. I paddled into Chaik Bay looking for a camping spot. Chaik is Tlingit for eagle. Kootznoowoo also has the largest population of nesting bald eagles in the world. I quite literally paddled the entire trip under their watchful eyes. I spotted what looked like a promising flat space for a camp. As I paddled toward it, however, a brown bear walked out of the woods. My gosh he was big, by far the biggest bear I had ever seen! So much for camping there! I paddled several miles and found another island and slept with my shotgun loaded and ready. It was a restless sleep. The next day I paddled past Whitewater Bay. The big storms of winter come from the north and churn the placid waters of the bay into a white-capped froth, hence the name. I paddled on to a little place called Wilson Cove. I had hoped to camp on the flats at the head of the bay, however, once again, a bear beat me to the best camping spot. I settled for a rocky outcrop, where no matter where I set my tent I lay down with a rock in my back! Before turning in, I searched the high tide line, curious at what I might find. I was just about to turn around and head back when a bit of green caught my eye. A glass ball! Prized by collectors, glass balls are spheres of blown glass used in olden days as floats for Japanese fishing nets. Although now replaced with foam floats, the occasional glass ball survives the storms at sea and rolls up on a beach in Alaska. In all my years of paddling, it is the only one I have ever found. I awoke the next morning to the sound of the wind. It had picked up overnight and I would have to paddle into it all day. Why today of all days! This was the day I would paddle around Pt. Gardner, the toughest stretch of water, even without the wind. Pt. Gardner is the southernmost point of Kootznoowoo. Here the mighty tides of Chatham Strait collide with the waters of Fredrick Sound. Add in the swells from the open sea, and you have one of the most dangerous points in all the Alaskan waters. (Later that year, on a stormy night in November, I would receive a frantic call from a friend telling me that her husband^Òs boat the Talia had radioed the Coast Guard that they were sinking off Pt. Gardner. Several of us sat with her that night, until word came that the Coast Guard chopper had plucked them from the waves and that they were safe. The boat however was gone forever beneath the waves.) I approached the Point, trying to round it at slack tide. Just before hitting the Point, I took a wind break behind a small rock outcrop. When I popped out of the wind break, ready to "go for it," the water literally exploded in front of me. "What the hell was that?" was my first thought. Looking back now I can laugh. What had happened was a humpback whale had breached right in front of me. It just took a couple of seconds for my excited brain cells to figure it out. Now I was really running on adrenaline! I sped toward Pt. Gardner, fighting the wind, riding the big waves, bracing in the weird tidal currents, dodging massive kelp beds and hoping the whale didn^Òt land on me. Are we having fun yet? Then I made a big mistake. Trying to shorten the distance, I paddled into a patch of kelp. The nose of my boat dove deep into a wave and came up tangled in the kelp. Just like tag team partners in a wrestling match, the kelp held me while the waves pounded me. At the time I did not carry a deck knife, so I had no choice but to attack the kelp by hand. The kelp was tough, but I was scared so I won. Now free from the clutches of the kelp, I turned for the sheltered water of Surprise Cove. To my surprise this cove that did not look promising for a campsite actually had a lot of flat soft ground. After dinner, as I sipped on a cup of hot tea, I reflected on the day and the question of why do we challenge the sea in our little boats. The answer for me was to learn about myself. I learned this day amid the wind and the waves that I could overcome my fears. That I could hold back the instinct to panic and work my way out of whatever tangle I had gotten myself into. That it is not the size of one^Òs body ( I am rather small in stature), but the size of the heart that matters. When in doubt, paddle hard. Curse not the wind, for it makes you strong. Can a man^Òs life change in but a few minutes in a kayak at sea? Yes. I look back and can truly say that, after rounding Point Gardner, I have approached life in a different way. In the midst of the wind and waves, I was transformed. As I crawled into my sleeping bag I set my alarm for 6:30a.m. With the long hours of daylight during the Alaskan summers, my biological clock gets screwed up and I need a watch to tell me when it is morning . This time, though, nature had a different idea. "Crack!" I went from sound asleep to bolt awake in a heart beat! I grabbed my gun, chambered a shell and leapt out of the tent. There was no bear or deer to be seen, and the only sound was my beating heart. To this day I have no idea what caused that sound. It remains a mystery. It wasn^Òt even 5AM, but I knew that I now had too much adrenaline in my system to sleep, so I ate breakfast, loaded the boat and headed on my way. After a while my stomach signaled lunch, but the shore was mostly jagged rock and cliffs. Finally I found a small stream pouring between a break in the cliffs. This would provide fresh water and a small ledge offered a great lunch time view. I had been seeing and hearing distant whale blows all morning, but nothing up close. That was about to change! As I sat eating my traditional lunch of peanut butter on pilot bread, two large humpback whales breached in unison directly in front of me -- not 50 feet from shore! I sat stunned, not believing what I had just seen! Then the whales calmly swam on, leaving me in awe, joy and thankfulness. What a show! Why do we paddle? Special moments. Unique events. Once in a lifetime encounters with wildlife. Awe-inspiring views of rainbows and sunsets. Times of wonder and mystery, excitement and joy only found deep in the wilderness. As exciting as my wildlife encounters had been the best was yet to come. Two nights later I was camping in Pybus Bay. I had finished dinner and I was sitting reading "The Spell of the Yukon" by Robert Service. "Snap!" I spun around to come face to face with a young bear that had ambled into camp. He was only 25 feet away, and looked as surprised as I must have looked. In truth, if he had wanted to attack, there would be little I could have done. My gun was by the tent. Thankfully, he did not want anything to do with me, so he took off running for the brush. After the adrenaline eventually wore off, I began to remember what the Tlingit elders had tried to teach me about the bears. "The bear is our grandfather, so just talk to him and let him know you are human and he will go his way". After this encounter, where I was at the mercy of a bear and he chose to let me be, I have remained cautious but no longer as afraid of bears. Since then I have ^Ñtalked to grandfather^Ò many times and the bears have let me be. Still though, I catch myself looking behind me whenever I read Robert Service. The next day I paddled past Gambier Bay, one of the biggest bays on the trip. I regretted that I did not have more time to explore this beautiful bay. "If only I had time" was my passing lament. Why do we paddle? What draws us onto the sea? Our modern world is so filled with machines and technologies that promise to do everything for us. Our homes protect us from the heat of day and cold of the night. Lights hide the coming of the night and shades darken the fierce noonday sun. At the touch of our fingers the sound of the songbird is shut out by the sound of the evening news. Through windows of glass we feel no wind. All these luxuries come with a price though; with each we separate ourselves from the earth from which we came. Perhaps we paddle out to sea to shake off our dependence on the machines, technology and the luxuries of life and to meet life with just a boat, a paddle and our skills. We paddle to once again become one with the earth and to remember that we are a part of the sea. A couple of nights later I camped near Pack Creek. Here I explored the old cabin of Stan Price, one of the true characters of Alaska. Stan spent most of his adult life homesteading there at Pack Creek, which has one of the largest concentrations of Brown Bears on the island. Over the years he watched them grow from cubs and knew them each by name. He referred to them as "my bears" and refused to let anyone hunt them. He rarely carried a gun, instead preferring a stout walking stick. If a bear gave him trouble, such as digging up potatoes in his garden, Stan would yell at them by name and whack them on the nose! In all his years there only once did a bear attack. Stan^Òs explanation was simple: "It wasn^Òt one of my bears." As I walked up a small knoll to check out Pack Creek, I saw a big bear beside the creek. Not knowing its^Ò name, I quickly retreated. On the tenth day I paddled to the head of Seymour Canal. At the head of the canal, I encountered a massive tidal flat. I stood in the mud, slowly pulling the boat along with the incoming tide. I had a long wait ahead and I was chilled from an earlier rain. I really wanted a cup of hot tea, so I pulled out my stove and set it up on my minicell foam paddle float strapped to the back of the deck. As the boat floated on the tide I managed to boil a cup of water to make a wonderful cup of tea. Ah, life doesn^Òt get any better than this. Why do we paddle? What is missing in life that we seek it on the sea? For some the answer is spiritual, to seek a closer presence with our Creator. Why here in the wilderness? As someone once said: Though the wilderness is not the only place God chooses to speak, it is here in the intense silence that we are more inclined to listen. To get to Juneau, I had to either paddle 85 miles around the Glass Peninsula or portage one mile over land to Oliver Inlet. Thankfully, years ago, a Juneau sports club built a small railroad tram across the peninsula. I chose the tram because I was running short of time. An aluminum rail cart was made to run the tram, but unfortunately it was at the other end. So I hiked over and found the cart parked on a hill above the water. I enjoyed the ride back, remembering my childhood riding the train my dad ran a coal company in West Virginia. I loaded the boat and began to push. It was a steep climb at first and the cart was heavy. I would push a few feet, then need to rest. The hand brake was broken off, so I tied a loop of rope around the axle to use to anchor to the cross ties. Next time I swore I would bring a small set of wheels and make my own cart! Once I got to the top it was easier, but when I got to Oliver Inlet I discovered the wind had really picked up. I figured I had earned a half day off, so I set up my tent and camped by the side of the rails. That night I dreamed of the trains that used to run by my boyhood home. The last day dawned with a fury. The wind had not subsided, nor had the whitecaps disappeared. It would be a two mile open crossing over to Douglas Island -- and it was going to be fun. (Have you ever noticed that what a paddlers calls ^Ñfun^Ò everyone else calls insane?) The crossing was wet and wild. The wind and waves hit broadside and I found myself leaning into the gusts to keep from flipping over. Still at no point was I pushed to the limit, and I made the crossing in about a half hour. Now I rounded Douglas Island and headed up Gastineau Channel to Juneau. A bit of sadness settled over me as I saw the bridge and the movement of cars. Civilization! Cars, traffic, phones, schedules ... yikes! I wanted to turn back! Back to the bears and the whales, back to the things that go bump in the night. Alas, my family awaited, as did my job and the real world, so onward I paddled into the heart of civilization, leaving behind the "Fortress of the Bear." *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
> This narrative is about a trip I took many years ago while > living among the > Tlingit of south east Alaska. Bob, "FANTASTIC"! I enjoyed this narrative immensely, and will be hanging onto it in a binder of other paddling inspirational narratives. Thank you very much, and keep 'em coming. And the notation of "long post" - sorry, brother, not long enough... it left me wanting more and more! By the way, how do you pronounce "Tlingit". I'm simply doing it "T-ling-it", but think the hard "T" may not be correct. Rick - Poquoson, Va *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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