In July of 2017 I was privileged to take a week-long cruise up the inside passage to Alaska with almost all of my family. The thing is, this is a much different family than I had, or than I could have predicted when I took my first Alaska cruise 11 years ago. And prior to this trip, many of these "new" family members had never even met each other. In my estimation, though, the trip and the getting-together-for-the-first-time was a grand success, and I am glad for each one who was a part of this epic adventure.
Pictured above are two of my grandsons on our balcony intently watching a sea plane taking off. These two live in Pennsylvania, so we don't get to see them all the time. Each time we do see them, they have changed quite a bit. Most of us understand that, with children, they change so fast you'd better be watching all the time or you will miss something. We all change, though. All things do. It is the normal order of things.
Pictured below is Glacier Bay. It is the crown jewel of any Alaskan cruise. The calm crystalline waters streaked with glacial silt and brimming with aquatic life, the majestic mountains clad with snow, and in places strewn with trees and brush and flowers and wild life, the skies, both cloudy and gray, blue and bright, and the massive glaciers descending from the heights and slipping into the bay. This was, for thousands of years, the home of the Tlingit people. The Tlingit people named these glaciers before any white explorers came. What we now know as the John's Hopkins Glacier was called "Path to the Mountain" by the Tlinglit people.
My first cruise to Alaska was in July of 2006. I went on that trip with my amazing wife of 26 years, Susan, and two good friends, Gary and Sue. I was in my forties then, and young enough and arrogant enough to not be fully cognizant of all the changes my life had already been through. My life then was on an ascendant path with no downward trajectories in sight, or so I believed. Susan and I were on the Path to the Mountain.
But as impressive and seemingly unchangeable as Glacier Bay may be, it is ever-changing, and has changed dramatically in only a short time. 250 years ago Glacier Bay wasn't a bay at all, but an alluvial plain bisected by a river. Extending down the alluvial plain was what we now call the Grand Pacific Glacier. The Tlingit lived on the silted plains by the river below the glacier, as they had for generations. Then, due to massive amounts of snow falling on the mountains above the glaciers, the Grand Pacific Glacier expanded and moved rapidly down the alluvial plain. Some Tlingit stories describe the glacier advancing "as fast as a running dog." The glacier overran the homeland of the Tlingit, and carved the alluvial plain into what we now know as Glacier Bay. Then the glacier retreated, leaving the bay. The glacier has retreated over 65 miles up the bay since the time it was first explored by John Muir.
The Marjorie Glacier, pictured behind Susan and me in the picture above, and the Grand Pacific Glacier in the background in the upper right of the picture, have both retreated further since I first saw them in 2006. We can perhaps point to global warming as a contributing factor in the retreat of these glaciers, but changes in nature have been the normal order of things from the beginning of time. We don't always see change coming, though, nor do we always welcome it. I could not have predicted, in July of 2006, that Susan would get cancer and be gone from this Earth by March of 2010. Like the Grand Pacific Glacier advancing on the Tlingit, her cancer advanced "as fast as a running dog."
Princess cruise ships have also changed in the 11 years since I first sailed the inside passage. Not much, though. They all are centered around a multi-floor atrium and feature multiple nice venues for food and entertainment and quiet reflection. They still have formal dinner nights, but the current trend is for dark suits and dinner jackets, whereas 11 years ago it was tuxes and black ties. I guess that is the result of societal changes more than anything. The thing about change is, it is part of life, and it is inevitable. We have to choose how we will respond to change.
John Muir was a naturalist who celebrated changes in the natural environments he revered. About experiencing his first earthquake in Yosemite, he wrote:
"At half-past two o'clock of a moonlit morning in March, I was awakened by a tremendous earthquake, and though I had never before enjoyed a storm of this sort, the strange thrilling motion could not be mistaken, and I ran out of my cabin, both glad and frightened, shouting, "A noble earthquake!" ... as if Nature were wrecking her Yosemite temple and getting ready to build a still better one. .... and all Nature's wildness tells the same story-the shocks and outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, roaring, thundering waves and floods, the silent uprush of sap in plants, storms of every sort-each and all are the orderly beauty-making love-beats of Nature's heart."
Of course, the Tlingit people were not celebrating when their home of generations was destroyed. Nor was I celebrating when my wife of 29 years succumbed to cancer. But, as the Glacier National Park Ranger who boarded our ship said, we cannot focus on what is past. All we have is the here and now, and we have to focus on what is special in the world as it now exists, and in our relationships as they now exist.
So now it is 11 years since I first cruised to Alaska. I have remarried to a terrific lady named Cheri. I have gained three more grown children, five more sons-and-daughters in law, and four more grandchildren. Many things in life are trivial, but the pursuit of life, and the pursuit of happiness, and the celebration of all that is good in the here and now, are not trivial things. Shown below is the core of the mighty trivial pursuit team that twice blew away the competition on the Coral Princess. This is my new, extended family, and as they will readily tell you, they (and those not pictured) are all winners.
It is said that the Marjorie Glacier is advancing at the rate of about four to seven feet per day. I am advancing at about the rate of one day per day. One thing we have in common with Glaciers is that, the forces that propel us forward are put in place by God and are largely out of our control. One other common thing about glaciers and people is, you have to meet them and spend time with them to get to know them and to appreciate their unique beauty.
And I am pleased to report that all my blended family are inclined to appreciate nature, and to learn about nature and about each other. They all exhibited, as John Muir described, "The earnest, childish wonderment with which this glorious page of Nature's Bible was contemplated. ... All evinced eager desire to learn."
"Look at that now. Why, it looks as if these giants of God's great army had just now marched into their stations; every one placed just right, just right! What landscape gardening! What a scheme of things! And to think that [God] should plan to bring us feckless creatures here at the right moment, and then flash such glories at us! Man, we're not worthy of such honor! Praise God from whom all blessings flow!"
