It’s almost 11 at night and I’m standing on the dock and there’s a seal.
He poked his head up about thirty feet out, looked at me with the expression of someone who had not been expecting company, and went back under. I waited. He came up again closer. Then thought better of it and disappeared. I’m going to tell myself he was curious about the vlogging and not just annoyed by it.
The light is still going. It will be going until sometime around 11:30. I came to Seward expecting a cute little Alaskan town and that’s exactly what I got, except better than that. The AI image I generated of this place months ago to get excited about coming here looked nothing like this. The actual place is ten times that image. The harbor, the fishing boats, the mountains coming straight down to the water, the little alley with the charter offices and the coffee shops. I’m not sure I have the right words for it and I’ve been talking into cameras all year.
The Boat Day
Six hours on the water in Resurrection Bay. We went out looking for wildlife and glaciers and found both. Humpback whales. Sea otters. Puffins. Stellar sea lions. Horned puffins. The bay delivers everything the brochure promises and a few things it doesn’t mention.
The glacier is something I don’t know how to describe without sounding like I’m overselling it, so I’ll just say it was blue in a way that doesn’t translate to photographs and leave it there. I did not come face to face with it the way I’d imagined — there’s a point where the boat can only get so close — but I got close enough to understand what all the fuss is about, and close enough to watch them fish chunks of ice out of the water for a very specific purpose.
The glacier ice margarita. Virgin, in my case, with pineapple. They chip the glacier ice, it goes into the drink, you stand on the deck of a boat in Resurrection Bay with a cold drink made from ice that’s been there since before anyone currently alive was born. That’s a thing I did. I have no complaints.
Lamar and the Sockeye
Late afternoon, back at the harbor, I spotted a fisherman coming up from the tidal flats with more fish than I would want to carry. His name was Lamar. He had a basket full of sockeye salmon — he called them Sockeye, I had been calling them reds, same fish — and he was tired in the way you get tired when you’ve been out in the tidal flats for hours working for your dinner.
I asked if I could video him for a minute. He said sure. The salmon were heavy and he was glad to set them down. We talked briefly about the fish, the tides, what it takes to know when to go out and when to get back. You have to know the tide, he said, because you don’t want to get stuck out there.
It was a quick conversation. I didn’t turn the camera on until we were already a few minutes in, which is still my recurring problem. But I got him on video with the fish and I got a few sentences. That’s more than I usually manage and I want to acknowledge the small progress.
One of the reasons I wanted to travel this year was to better understand how other people in this country actually live. Lamar with his salmon at the Seward harbor at the end of Memorial Day weekend is exactly the kind of life I don’t encounter in South Florida. That gap is worth closing, even if I close it one short harbor conversation at a time.
The End of the Alaska Leg
Washington, Oregon, Alaska. The first three states, done. Tomorrow I fly south. The harbor is quiet now, just the sound of the water and whatever that thing was that surfaced and blew near the dock — too big for an otter, too close for a whale, possibly a harbor porpoise, possibly my imagination.
Alaska is like no place I have ever been. I will come back.
In Episode #19 of my 50 at 60 journey, I spend an unforgettable day in Seward, Alaska. The video begins the night before, as I arrive at the Seward Harbor and am greeted by a playful otter swimming in the frigid water. The next day, I prepare my camera gear for a thrilling wildlife and glacier boat ride into Kenai Fjords National Park. Join me as I share a captivating video and image montage from this incredible boat trip. Later, I explore the Exit Glacier area, humorously cutting my hike short due to my fear of bears. The day wraps up with a visit to observe salmon fishermen on the other side of town before returning to the harbor, ending the day where it began almost 24 hours earlier. Experience the stunning beauty and unique charm of Seward with me.
