The words of southeastern Alaska: eagles, ice, forests, bogs. Expand them. Where does each lead? Eagles to wildness, ice to glaciers, forests to old growth and bogs to oddball plants. We had it all today. Tiny Zodiacs with colorful red-suited inhabitants felt their way between massive bergs of blue, a gallery of shapes and hues unrivaled by any sculptor in glass. Here an abstract of fluted shelves and there a perfect circular cavern. The king of the fjord, eyes wary and talons spread, perched on the highest of all. Wings stretched out a full seven feet and with effortless grace, it lifted off, in search of solitude or prey. Would the trail of ice led it to a glacier face, where the frozen river tossed her children out to the sea?
We walked through the forest, silent and green, misted by rain. Compare and contrast the old and the new, forests once cut and those touched only by wind and tumbling trees. The former were dark, their carpets brown. The latter splashed in shades of green, multi-layered shrubs and trees and the floor dappled with blooms of white or yellow. The trail led up where the water was trapped. Drenched, yet deficient in usable nourishment, the strangest of plants laid in wait, a haze of red hairs on round minute leaves, the sundew beckoned its insect prey.
