Tide, Feather, Snow_ A Life in Alaska - Miranda Weiss [43]
During winter’s coldest weather, ice formed on the Inlet. There might be a greasy-looking layer of slush that undulated with the surface of the sea. Sometimes pancakes of ice floated on the Inlet’s surface and then collided and froze together in floes that could be a quarter-mile wide. These dynamic conditions and the presence of sandbars that shifted invisibly under the cloudy water made Cook Inlet’s shipways some of the most dangerous in the world. Law required that boat pilots knowledgeable in local conditions navigate container ships and tankers entering and leaving the Inlet. Helicopters brought pilots out to ships waiting near the mouth of the bay; tugboats ferried other pilots, who lived in Homer and other nearby towns, from the tip of the Spit to ships anchored in the bay. From shore, we’d watch the tugs approach, stop along the starboard or port side momentarily, and then return to the harbor. Soon after, the large ship would exit the bay.
Even with these precautions, accidents still happened. Oil tankers had been ripped repeatedly from fueling docks by ice rushing out the Inlet on receding tides. Ice tore pilings out from under an oil dock and sealed a freighter’s water intake valve, causing it to lose power and drift. Some people thought that the conditions were ripe for the next devastating oil spill.
It wasn’t just the sea that was volatile. At the base of the Spit, a blue sign with the white silhouette of a wave pointed east along a road that led out of town to higher elevation: the tsunami evacuation route. And every Thursday at noon, the tsunami siren wailed out its test. We knew it could happen. Here, along the Ring of Fire, where a string of volcanoes puffed away across Cook Inlet, and the oceanic plate was being forced beneath a restless and fragmented continental plate, almost anything could.
The Earth. The sea. The very things we depended on could slap us and take us down. It was unnerving. What made this area geologically rich also made it volatile. What made the sea beautiful and productive also made it deadly.
“YES. LET’S GO,” I said to John. Those words set us both into wordless action. We heaved the double kayak off the roof of the car and carried it in two goes to the water’s edge. We unpacked the gear from the back of the car and toted it down to the boat. Sleeping bags and pads, tent, stove, food, warm clothes—everything had been packed in waterproof bags. We lowered them, piece by piece, into the kayak’s bow and stern. John had already put on his life vest and spray skirt, which kept water from getting into the cockpit, by the time I reached for my purple vest. I pressed my hand against a zipped pocket on the vest: The lighter was there. John was looking out on the water. He was always like that—looking, observing, noting every bird, watching the movement of the tide, and scanning for skiffs he recognized. The wind had picked up slightly. After I pulled on my spray skirt, we dragged the bow of the boat into the water and I waded in. John sat on the stern to balance it while I lowered myself into the forward cockpit. Small waves lapped the sides of the boat. John lifted the stern and carried the boat further into the water. Then he stepped in and shoved us off.
After we snapped the elastic-edged spray skirts around the rims of the cockpits, we set out from the tip of the Spit. John was a stronger paddler than I; but from the stern, he matched my pace. Wind blew gently from the southwest, into the mouth of the bay. I focused on paddling. Right, left. Right, left. It wouldn’t take that long, I reminded myself. In a little over an hour, we’d be at the south shore.
As we paddled from the tip of the Spit, a few charter boats crossed in front of us on their way