I’m in serious bear country, camped on a small floating platform in the middle of a narrow saltwater channel where fishermen sometimes come to sort their nets. Of course, bears do swim, but I feel a bit safer not being on terra firma tonight. Prudence, my eighteen-foot-long purple sea kayak, sits beside my tent. Today, my forty-fifth day at …

The ocean -the open stuff -is alive, bounding, rebounding, crashing, rolling, breaking, sucking back, roaring, hissing, thundering, and ominously quiet.                                      ~ Sea diary, June 2010, Dixon Entrance, Alaska   It’s been said that a person doesn’t take a trip, but rather a trip takes a person. The Inside Passage took me – in a kayak – from Anacortes, Washington, …