My Country Tis of Spruce Island

My anticipation of the extended July 4th weekend was so eager, several people corrected me when I sputtered about plans to go kayak camping - on Thanksgiving Day. My mind thought that this holiday I was so thankful for couldn't be named anything else. Thursday night packing became Friday morning packing, but the boat was geared up and paddling north by noon thirty.

Seagulls standing off a rock in Ouzinkie harbor, the dome of the
village's Orthodox Church peeking out in the distance. 

Out in the Narrow Strait, a brisk quartering wind rattled the stern and picked up the waves, forcing caddywompus paddling to compensate. Out towards the middle, pointed up the strait, the wind was directly on my back and surfed down the waves rolling beneath the keel, lapping at the sprayskirt. After 7.5 rapid miles, a calm was known within Ouzinkie bay. Glaucous seagulls stood off their rock cliff home, performing a studied hovering in the wind, bobbing up and down on its flow over them and against the rock just as this kayak was fluctuating with the bothways flow of the water's surface.

Can you guess what these are?

Around the corner, on the lee side of Spruce Island, four Oystercatchers were gathered, the most I've ever seen together. Typically, these egg-hiders are creatures of isolated couples. Here was something special, an Oystercatcher social event, a regular ol' red-billed long-legged hootenanny. They eyed the conveyance and occupant, casting aspersions in their own way, but quietly, as they were unsure of my taste for them and their beloved unhatched.

Mountains separating this inner body of water from Shelikof Strait

Another 7+ miles more of dip and pull, and then up and out I tipped on the gravelly beach of Trip Cove. After hauling boat, boy and bounty up and over the beach, driftwood, grass, and wooded hillock, camp was easily spread out near the lagoon spanning the width of this narrow portion of the island. 

Wind blows fog across the land like a wildfire

The plan was to spend the night here, float through the lagoon at high tide on the morrow, out a tidal creek into the ocean across the way. Then I'd paddle on down to Icon Bay and hike on up to Mount Herman, named for the monk whose monastery and religious trappings fill the area, from the flatland, on up to the enormous metal orthodox cross that replaces his antique wooden one, now moldering back into the earth where it fell.

Purse seiner passes in front of the Triplets
(only two are visible here, the other is just behind the boat, to the right)

Great plan. But the weather cared less for my Independence and thought I should spend more than one Day right where I was. Next morning, the rain drummed my humble hovel, blowing across from the SE side of the island in a raging cycle, washing through the hundred-foot spruce ringing the lagoon, waffling in the wetting, wandering air. 

Just right

Rain ceased late morning, breakfast washed down, and out went the tourist to the beach. What a fine expanse of ocean, crowned by the Triplets, three miniature islands offshore about 2 miles, craggy kingdoms of emerald meadows overtopping bulwarks of greying cliffs. 

Triplets!

Wandering eyes led to wandering feet, and kicking through curiosities strange in their variety and similarity. Ruddy-rust-red driftwood, bleach-blond logs. Intertidal and subtidal critters - diminutive hermit crabs scuttling with their homes all aboard, barnacle colonies displaying generations of crusty salt spitters. And then the plastic - fishing gear of all types, bottlecaps, fuel tanks, five-gallon buckets, flyswatters, soap bottles, styrofoam spread about like an overturned popcorn bucket, even plastic slippers with characters of some far-off Asian nation's language. Geiger giggity.

While tripping over this detritus, it dawned on me like the sun just then peeking through fading clouds, that here was "the ground-floor of plastics" George Bailey was once offered to get in on and ran from, thinking it couldn't be part of A Wonderful Life, here it was, ground-down and washed up, eternally present, a memorial to ingenuity and hubris, made in man's molded image.

A cube of styrofoam stood out from the rest - 5" x 5" square and 2" deep - antenna and ratcheted spool set with tangled twine poked out from within. This went with the comber, a new buoyant trinket to dismantle (no picture, sorry).

Green life sprouts from the suns captured energy
released in the decaying cells of this drifted stump

Thanks to the low tide, this route led along otherwise submerged rocks, through a keyhole in the cliff, onto an adjoining beach - replete with it's own layered pebbles, craggy rocks, and black sand; pickup-sticks driftwood; ubiquitous plastic flotsam.

Into the woods, all overgrown with lichen, stubby lower branches of trees covered in moss like velvet on antlers. After crossing a few creeks and thicket upon thicket of ravaging spiny devils club, the path led to a small clearing, 10' x 10', encircling a large spruce, a portion of it thick with a cloud of feathers, wings and all. Beside this prize lay a large 10" x 20" moss pillow, which hid more bones and what looked like rotted meat, looking for all the world like a bear's food storage technology. I scurried onward, not wanting to increase the bruin's larder.

Out around the lagoon, to scout for this foretold tidal creek that would let me out the other side on Sunday, a day late, if the weather was mild in the morning. Having rounded the cape and passing on up towards the ridge, I crested - and a fox came into view. We both halted instantly, giving each other our full attention. Moments hung in suspension - then fox turned and dove out of sight. 

Soon found the sought-after channel, danced across it with its salty brine mixing in a nostril-roiling mist, around the lagoon's southerly end and back to home-sweet-camp. The styrofoam bauble of earlier soon dismantled to find a Trimble GPS chip, and a Lockheed-Martin stamp. A radiosonde! Though hoping I had discovered a priceless black box filled with critical data, it turns out all data had long been transmitted from heights of 100,000 feet above the earth and I held only a set of useless components.

Full circle led back to the campside beach. Spied on three purse-seiners taking turns setting nets off North Cape. Two sea-otters floated into view, tossing each other over for a stolen urchin treat it seemed, till one shoved off and back-paddled with its flipper-like feet, then rolled and porpoised, returning again to back-paddle, and back and forth in this manner all the way out to the Triplets.

A loon rose from the marbled surface, then speared into the water with a grace so smooth it disappeared below without any rippling evidence of its recent presence.  A seal showed its pup-like head, then burped into the deep, leaving the water shimmering like an oil spill in its sudden absence. The ships rolled up their nets, motored back and forth, one end attached each to ship and tender, then reeled it back again to retrieve its prey.

A tiny songbird settled itself nearby, twittering until I tweedled back. Silence, then a companion bird flitted over and tweeted its contribution. Again the first, then me, then the newcomer. These rounds continued without end, for who knows what time is when you are a tweedling bird in the woods? Conclusion came in avian cavorting, as the newcomer reedily expressed what sounded like exasperation and dove across at its feathered friend. Off they went, diving through the woods, rapid wings up, then zoom into a dive, cutting between trees at breakneck pace, until they were gone from sight.

Thumb-twiddlin' delightful time-passin' techniques

Back at camp, a squirrel makes itself known to me and me known to all the other critters, with rapid-fire chatter and subsequent series of squeaks. Its home is the largest tree in these parts, seemingly held in place by the mounds of cone and cone debris, tamped and tunneled at its base. This tree-top trapeze artist has come down the tree each morning to make small talk, hurling insults or offering welcomes, I'm not sure which.

Sunday dawned with weather even more worrisome than the day before, blowing away any hopes I had of circumnavigating the island or hiking Mt. Herman. Instead, after packing and hauling everything back to the beach, I shoved off to sneak back the way I had come. Head down, fiddling with the bow-bag at my feet, a wave quickly washed me back on shore and splashed into my lap with a load of saltwater. The fog over the Triplets rose a bit as they chuckled at my foolishness; the purse-seiners hee-hawed as I awkwardly readied to launch again. 

Oh the wind was wearisome - cutting across Spruce Island's low-profile, swirling water and boat around. Kids on a beach near the village of Ouzinkie fired a small rifle. I waved and hoped they had gun training and more interesting targets than a yellow boat and boy floating out on the sea. Around the corner now into Narrow Strait - skipping across to the "mainland" side, hugging the coast for wind shadow but staying out far enough that the big washing waves couldn't suddenly float me and my ark up on a sea-weed strewn Mt. Ararat.

These last 7.5 miles were a hard slog, against a strong head wind. The fog cover hung low, like curtains ringing a smeared window. Floatplanes roared down the strait beneath the fog cover. One tipped its wings at the madman shoveling water in a little kayak down below. At times all that was visible was fog and waves. At long last, the hoped for shoreline hove in to view and all was soon stowed in and on the wheeled conveyance.

Leaned against the car, smiled into the befogged Monashka Bay, elated to have had this time solidified in the solitude of the wild, thrilled to have been the lucky recipient of both the ability and the desire to be here in the awesome thralls of nature.