Salt & Ice
by Glo Chitwood
Upside down, underwater, eyes open. Silt, mud, glacial darkness. The Pacific proves incompatible with my hardware, but I let it wash over me in awe of this rapidly changing place. Sputtering. Juxtaposed. Terrestrial ears where once I had gills. Appendages tread water and are tired in minutes. Objectively mediocre, when placed next to a harbor seal, a humpback, a sockeye. Somehow still, in the cold water, in the deep sea, a sense of belonging.
I left the zipper of my drysuit open.
When you do, you know it鈥搃mmediately. The walk of shame means dragging a water-filled kayak up the beach in sloshing booties and soaked base layers. Water pours out of the open zipper. It鈥檚 a rite of passage. The seasons come and go, and I can鈥檛 quite remember which one holds this memory, but guide training is full of moments like this, dubbed 鈥済ood learning鈥 by my fellow guides.
The summer season in Alaska ends with a distinct thud. We have the end date circled on our calendars all season long, but it feels far away until it doesn鈥檛. In this finite place, for this finite amount of time each season, we wake every morning at 5:30 AM, write down the tides, check the sea conditions, and shove our cold feet into Xtratufs with the intention of connecting people to this place via sea kayak.
I have trouble finding the words that align with the feeling that exists here. It鈥檚 possible that the words don鈥檛 exist in English or don鈥檛 exist as words. Gratitude will be my placeholder for now.
In Seward, Resurrection Bay stretches into the distance, connected to the Gulf of Alaska and its rage. But this recently deglaciated fjord teaches us more about gentleness, connection, belonging, and love than I ever thought a cold, harsh ocean would. Here, the glaciers are gods that stretch themselves out on hillsides and pour ice into the fjords in thunderous sobs. I often find myself whispering in the presence of glaciers.
Alaska is alive. Earthquakes give way to tsunamis as the subduction zone binding the North American and Pacific Plates releases pressure. Ice has flowed through landscapes creating entire mountain ranges and ecosystems and carefully sculpting the intentional living relationships included in that: true ecology. Systems of chaos and order.
In southcentral Alaska in mid summer, the sun sets long after I do and rises before. In Aialik Bay, I wake buried in synthetic down and poke my head out of the dewy tent to boil water and pour coffee in the quiet morning light. In an hour, camp will be a cacophonous array of laughter, sleeping pads deflating, night owls staring into swirling, steaming cups, oily pancakes tucked neatly into mess kits. There is a rhythm when kayaking and when camping and when guiding, and it can feel like playing jazz and it can also feel like playing Tetris. This place humbles us every single day of the summer in every wonderful way.
Paddle strokes feel like a heartbeat. Our paddle blades connect us to the water. Everything here is shared. When we see harbor seals hauled out on ice, we quiet our voices and paddle away, acknowledging our impact by respecting rest, home, safety. We are connected here through our impact. This season, the yearling harbor seals were extra wary. In 2020, human presence in Aialik Bay was minimal. Reintroduce, realign, rebalance.
Privilege in the fjords follows me like a halo. My sea kayak is plastic, and when I land on rocky beaches, the hull scrapes along the barnacles, often leaving curly red microplastics behind. I leave traces of impact wherever I go.
The changes we see in the fjords are bold. In Pedersen Lagoon, the ice has retreated so rapidly that a harbor seal sanctuary born of floating ice has given way to exposed, bare rock; cliffs feel the cool air on their faces for the first time in millennia. Pedersen Glacier鈥檚 head and shoulders have pulled back into the mountains now, but her heart remains visible between peaks. Spend time listening to glaciers. Their backs are turned; they are walking up and over the horizon; we are watching them go.
In three weeks, Seward will be a ghost town. Mount Marathon鈥檚 long shadow will stretch out across the bay, leaving a perfect silhouette of ice on windows sealed shut for the winter. The locals will slowly stick their heads out of their shells鈥 鈥渁re they gone?鈥濃揳nd spend full days not seeing another soul, turning up the radio to hear the static over studded tires on concrete. Secretly, it鈥檚 the best part. But seasonal cities mean someone is always saying goodbye, always turning their back and walking away. There is always someone I will never see again. I don鈥檛 want it to harden my heart, but salt and ice seep in everyone鈥檚 veins here.
Post-season blues wash over my head in waves months apart. There is a universal instinct when standing on beaches to stare into the breaking waves. An eternal present tense. Permanence. We have very few certainties on Earth. 鈥淒eath and taxes鈥 and all that. Many of our truths have to do with the finite nature of our universe. Love and death, birth and recession, change beyond recognition inevitably. To stand on shore and let our hearts sync with the rhythm of moving water is comfort and gratitude and acknowledgement of the contradictions we live in.
There is so much to be hopeful about. The ice teaches us this. The ice has connected us in ways we will never understand. There was a night this spring we were awakened in our tents to the sound of breathing a few feet away from us, just offshore. After several moments of the collective warm grip of our sleeping bags holding us in, we unzipped our tents to investigate, and a family of killer whales quietly spy hopped, holding eye contact with us as they ate salmon under the moon. In the darkness, between their breaths, all I could hear was my own heartbeat.