Letter from Larry Parks Daloz

Letter from Larry Parks Daloz, written to his children the day after completing a trip with Inside Passages in August of 1998, and graceously shared with his permission.

Dear All,
I am writing this smartly, both to snag it from my memory before the images fade into the ethers and to catch Todd before he flies off for adventures of his own. I arrived back last night from some other world–a place green with deep, soft moss and tattered spruce, blue with crackling water and crisp wind, gray with morning fog and ragged, distant peaks, white with foam and high glaciers, alive with Raven andf Eagle, Whale and Salmon, Bear and Mink, Chickadee and Wren–filled throughf and through with magic. Trying to write about it, even to think about it, I feel like that snake in Le Petit Prince–the one, I mean, that had swallowed an elephant–filled with something extraordinary and waiting for it to digest. I have no idea where to begin.

Here, then: at mid-morning under blue sky and fresh breeze, water snapping across the deck between me and my partner, Gary, in the bow, stroking in tandem as the kayak slices through two-foot chop. Beside us, eight miles across Chatham Strait, the entire horizon is jagged with the saw teeth of the snow-crested peaks of Baranoff Island; ahead, Mt. Ada thrusts a huge shaft–a volcano plug–into its own cloud; behind us the strait opens to the sea. Behind that, Japan. Our band of eight, spread weed, ragged with barnacles and mussels. In the calmer water to leeward, a sea otter floats on its back cracking a clam with a stone, when suddenly a huge sea lion explodes from the water barely 20 feet away, discovering us with as much shock as we him. Then, inside the protection of the island, the water grows smoother. In the silence we hear a powerful WHUFF and a deep boom from far off. We scan the low fringe of green islands two miles off on the other side of Explorer Bay, and shortly see a puff of steam. Through our binoculars we can make out a fluke as the whale sounds. It’s a humpback, maybe two of them, working the far shoreline. We paddle over to a nearby tiny island, pull up on a sandy spit, and disperse each in our own directions–some lie on the shore in the sun, some explore the tidal pools for anemo-nes, stars, and the amazing 20-pointed purple sun-stars. I slip through the thimbleberries and Sitka spruce into the green, mossy interior, dark under the canopy of hemlock and spruce. The outer islands of this designated wilderness of the Tongass National Forest have never been logged. This is climax forest, old growth, as primal as it comes. I feel utterly at home.

Or this. Heading across Tebenkoff Bay, I keep a small rock island just to the left of Gary’s shoulder as we paddle past curious harbor seals and indifferent otters. Far ahead, a spout appears. A moment later, it appears again, directly in our path, closer. We paddle faster, feeling the chase. After a long pause, the whale surfaces, this time only a hundred yards before us, its back glistening, peeling the water apart. Then it is gone and we sit wordless, waiting. Nothing happens. Nothing. All at once, behind us, perhaps fifty feet off, a burst of blown spray. A huge, gleaming, black bulk surges out of the water, rolling forward, water cascading off the low dorsal fin, a giant fluke blocking the sky, then shoots back under the water and is gone.

Or try this. After morning Qi Gong exercises, green tea, group meditation, and breakfast, we head off across a glassy surface, paddling and breathing in rhythm, silent. In the quiet, sounds suddenly appear like subliminal images grown visible–a distant raven hoots, Bonaparte’s gulls wheel and call, water drips from the paddle, Gary’s life preserver rustles, a loon laughs. We move silently into an estuary. Gradually it narrows to a river mouth. Ahead an eagle drops from a high branch and glides into the forest. Ravens yelp and hoot and gurgle. Another eagle flaps up from a half-finished salmon by the river’s edge. As we beach, more eagles appear and disappear. One perches on a snag watching us imperiously. On either side of the river, bears have worn a path, trampling a whole field between us and the forest. Salmon spawning season has begun and this meeting place of sea and watershed is where It All happens. Just as we begin to follow the bear path upstream, a long, lone howl snakes through the trees. Kurt, our guide, throws his head back and howls a reply. Silence. Then a howl, and another, and another until a whole pack is yipping and howling from somewhere off beyond the sedges and alders rimming the riverbank, from deep inside the dark hemlock forest. After the goosebumps subside, we continue up the river, now on the bank, now wading, to a point where it is only a few inches deep. With fierce determination, the salmon, their backs hugely humped from spawning time, twitch and thrust their way upstream by the dozens, hundreds, thousands. As we watch, a juvenile eagle breaks out of a shrub upstream and shoots past our heads. On a branch, rests a single white feather.

Beneath these days was a blend of deep and peaceful meditation and silent times, close, often wordless companionship, long walks in solitude, rich conversation about what it all meant for our own lives, and an abiding sense of awe in being so close to, so much a part of Wildness–a feeling so subtle, so deep that it is almost not a feeling at all but rather a kind of resonance that is working at some elemental level beneath any naming. I know that even long after the elephant is digested and the snake back to his former self, some essence will remain, some ghost shape of the Wildness on my soul. I will never be the same again.

In the mean time, here’s love to all, and bon voyage on each of your adventures, every, every day!

Love, Larry