Chapter 1
The hour’s boat trip from Ketchikan harbor to ‘Somewhere Further Down the Alaskan Coast’ was uneventful, apart from Grandmum’s objection to being asked her weight when boarding the small vessel.
“What do you need to know that for?” she asked indignantly. “Think I’m going to sink the boat?”
Used to such reactions, the lady recording our respective poundage replied, “It’s for the seaplanes, ma’am.” We were rendezvousing with nautical aircraft for a return flight to Ketchikan. “We need to ensure we balance them properly.”
There was no arguing with that. Glancing back to make sure no one was listening, Grandmum leaned forward and confided the awful truth. The lady promptly wrote it down where the passengers behind my mother-in-law could view it when divulging their own statistics.
Grandmum sighed at her wasted effort, whereupon my husband Grant said loudly, “Mom, you need a seaplane all to yourself!”
She twisted around and whacked him on the arm with her large purse. I punched him in the ribs. My eleven year old son, Max, shouted “Be niceto Grandmum!”
Thus began our family vacation.
* * * *
The weather was glorious. As we set out to sea, our guide informed us Ketchikan’s rainfall was a horrendous 220 days a year and we were lucky today was sunny.
She mentioned the local town’s high ratio of men to women, repeating the warning she’d made to her daughter, “The odds are good, but the goods are odd.” I envisaged weather-beaten Aleut males fishing through a hole in the ice during winter and fighting off groggy bears in the spring, neither of which allowed much time for the social graces of courtship.
She pointed out an albatross and a pair of bald eagles sitting high along the rocky shore as the boat chugged its way through the calm waters of the Inside Passage.
We stood on deck in the stiff salt breeze, enjoying the scenery, the wildlife, and—as we now appreciated—precious warmth from the Alaskan sun’s rare appearance.
This idyll was shattered when, for the millionth time that morning, Grandmum asked, “When we get back to town, will there be enough time to shop for my ulu?”
Over breakfast we’d explained patiently that we needed to be careful to catch the last tender back to the Taku Wind, our cruise ship, and time would be tight even if we went straight to the dock after this excursion.
“Mother,” Grant replied, “I’ve warned you there may not be time. Just enjoy the trip—look, there’re the seaplanes landing ahead.”
Grandmum’s face screwed up in disappointment.
Grant caught her expression and added in exasperation, “What do you want a stupid ulu for, anyway?”
“Carol said they were typical of Alaska and I want one to take back to my sister. Anything wrong with that?” Her chin jutted out in defiance.
Carol was the Taku Wind’scruise director. She’d achieved instant notoriety the morning before by announcing to the entire ship that there were dolphins playing on the port side of the vessel. Everyone had rushed to the left, except those who were already on the starboard side and could see perfectly well that the dolphins were on the right of the boat. When her mistake was discovered, it was too late. By the time the misled voyagers made their way over to the other deck, the dolphins had disappeared. There was much miffed muttering among the passengers after that concerning the cruise director’s unimpressive ignorance of basic nautical terms.
But she had skillfully used our ‘sea day’ yesterday to lay on the hype about the wonderfulstores in Ketchikan, our first port of call. “These sell absolutely the bestwares in the whole state of Alaska and if you don’t shop there, well, you’ll have missed the boat (ha, ha).”
This clever saleswoman waxed lyrical about the ulu, a fan-shaped chopping knife with a handle resting above the blade. Its hilt is wedged onto two flat ‘legs’ extending up from either end of the knife. The instrument is rocked perpendicularly back and forth across whatever it is cutting, and stored upright for safety with its sharp end in a piece of wood. It’s used by native Alaskan women.
Grandmum was consequently desperate to get back to town and shop. However, her son had paid a fortune for excursions at each of our four stops along the Alaskan coast, andwe were all going. Too late, we discovered our total available onshore time would be filled with activities away from any stores. Grandmum was horrified. As Carol had pointed out, what was the use of coming to Alaska if we weren’t going to shop? Who wanted to see the rain forest, whales, bears, and beastly bald eagles? Who cared about glaciers and fjords and ice floes?
* * * *
Having already fumed during the morning’s breakfast buffet because of her family’s inability to prioritize properly, Grandmum now seethed all over again while we watched from the boat’s deck as three tiny aircraft descended toward us from the direct sunlight. Their outlines expanded and the droning engines grew louder. Soon their floats took shape at the bottom of thin steel legs. One by one the planes landed, huge blue, green, and red ducks disturbing the quiet water with flat-footed splashes. Their propellers wound to a lazy halt while angry waves rolled from the planes to slap the wooden planks serving as a makeshift deck by the shoreline.