Tag Archives: MV David B

My morning watch began the way it had all summer. At 03:56 a.m., I stepped into the wheelhouse of the MV David B and wrote in the logbook: August 10, wind calm, depth 110 feet, barometer 1012.  Comments: rain and fog. Then I walked back to the galley, turned off all the lights, save one dim lamp under a cabinet. …

I cross the tidal mud flat that leads to Pack Creek in late afternoon, mid-way through a week-long excursion in the Tongass National Forest of Southeast Alaska. Our small group is alone, greatly outnumbered by the bears. Brown (grizzly) bears line the undulating watercourse of the creek on Admiralty Island, seven or eight of these incredible creatures fishing for salmon …

I had been thinking about Glacier Bay for a long time. I’d done my fair share of poking around on— and in— glaciers in the North Cascades, Canadian Rockies and Alaska. The sensuous forms and sculptural grace of icescapes had always captured my imagination. For me, glacial landscapes offered up a visceral sense of nature’s drama laid bare, the shifting …