Saturday August 25 Feeling melancholy this evening -- although whether from missing home or the sheer challenge of this trip and the desolate beauty of Alaska I don’t know-- I put my ipod on, troop up to the foredeck and dance around in front of the webcam as arranged for seven pm with my extended family.
I don’t know if they see me, but as I’m dancing, feeling sad and trying to look happy, I notice a small fat sparrow on the deck. I kneel down and it goes still and then we both start moving together down the deck, me walking, it hopping. It hops near the open door of a room where some ropes and other gear is hanging and, worried, it might hop inside and get trapped, I make big gestures to scare it away from there. Then I run to the sick bay.
Clive, our doctor and the most fervent birder on board, rushes out in his trademark leather boots, green pants and flannel shirt and as we step back on deck we discover the wee visitor sheltering under the boat cradle that holds one of our five zodiacs. I notice yellow feathers on it’s back and think oh, maybe it’s not a sparrow but it is, Clive says, it’s called "Savannah sparrow". It doesn’t look hurt or sick and the thinks it will be just fine.
After he goes inside I decide to dance around on the heli-deck at the stern of the boat, hoping a good long session may cure my blues. There’s no-one around and I let my body sway like seaweed with the rhythmn of the boat. Soon I’m tripping around this great big empty space, dancing in the middle of the Bering Sea to Van Morrison, the Beach Boys, Jann Arden and other sweet and melancholy singers.
At one point I look up and there, above the stern, are five birds, at least two of which have a larger wing-span than any bird I’d ever seen before today. Just hours ago George and I saw one of these dark birds, it's wings curved like a subtle scythe, from the bridge, and identified it…with Clive’s help…as likely an immature short-tailed Albatross. of which there happen to be only five hundred in the world.
"Clive!" I rush to the sick bay again, pound on the door. "Clive! Albatrosses, AlbaTROSSES!" (emphasis on the plural, we both know how rare it is to see even ONE) and he comes flying out, but by the time we race back to the helideck the birds are gone.
I wonder if maybe they saw me, dancing with my arms outstretched like wings, and flew over to see what this strange bird was doing.
The gift of the Albatrosses has lifted my spirits, but sadness surges back as Green Day starts singing Time of Your Life. "Another turning point a fork stuck in the road…time grabs you by the wrist directs you where to go…" I try to keep dancing, find myself stumbling forward instead, right to the edge of the deck, grabbing the net that surrounds the heli-pad, tears welling up in my eyes. "So make the best of this test and don’t ask why…its not a question but a lesson learned in time"…All the emotion I’ve been holding back in the past ten days of this emotional journey starts to tumble out of me in salty splashes. "Its something unpredictable but in the end there’s right… I hope you had the time of your life".
It’s been a long time since I’ve cried. The Savannah Sparrow, the albatrosses, the sheer privilege of having all this space to myself, the peace and quiet and the water dancing us about at every moment floods me with awe. My mind flashes through thoughts of the life I’ve left behind, the life I’m coming back to in ten days, no job, no routine, everything familiar overturned and a space opening up for something new to grow, all this rife with possibility but the chance of failure too…"It’s something unpredictable but in the end there’s right…I hope you had the time of your life".
No question, Green Day. We're sailing to a desolate and lovely wildlife refuge blasted by three nuclear bomb tests, tests that provoked the founding of Greenpeace and its first action. And as we sail I think of the sea otters washed up dead on the shores of Amchitka Island in the late sixties and early seventies, their eardrums split by the atomic blasts, and I wonder if there are any otters left, and whether we’ll see them, feasting and frolicking in the kelp beds that are said to be so thick around Amchitka Island.
And I think of my man at home, and all the people on the boat, and the people we’ve met, and the beauty of the green mountains rising out of the rolling quilted fog, and I sink onto the top step of the staircase leading down to the main deck and cry as hard as I ever have in my whole life..
So take the photographs and still frames in your mind…for what it’s worth it was worth all the while", and I give thanks for the trip of my life. NEXT: On a different note, what about my mother (a founder of Greenpeace) who I promised, in my bio, to tell you about? What about Chuck Berry and Pink Floyd? See what my mother, Chuck Berry, Pink Floyd and Bono all have in common.