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By Root 221 0

to be able to distinguish between a marbled and a Kittlitz’s murrelet, dainty birds that floated on the sea on summer days and flew back to their inland nests in the evenings. I wanted to know the difference between pelagic and red-faced cormorants; both species of these large, black seabirds had the same profile and held their wings open like damp raincoats while they perched on rocks to dry off. But I had begun to notice the differences between the types of seaweed that collected at the water’s edge: which ones were lacy, and which were smooth; which had small, turgid air bladders to keep them afloat and which washed in as flaccid as steamed spinach; which were red, mustard, or green; which felt like waterlogged leather between your fingers and which were as delicate as silk. I was learning things about the water—how a retreating tide left a wet lip on the beach; how glacial streams ran milky into the bay. The previous spring I had taken field trips with my students and had seen some of the bay’s microscopic universe: copepods, which looked like helmeted aliens; crab larvae that were large-eyed and leggy; and the larvae of barnacles, which looked like miniature Frisbees with feathery wings.

I had to learn the sea itself, how to navigate it, what to look out for. I was surrounded by capable people and inspired by tough and skillful women. There were women who ran skiffs and who led paddling trips. Others who fished commercially far out in western Alaska while raising children. Some gave birth in remote fish camps, picking nets until labor had undeniably set in. One woman paddled with her husband out of the bay and around the tip of the peninsula on which we lived into the unprotected waters of the Gulf of Alaska. Waves battered this far coastline, and there were stretches of land where rocky cliffs rose straight out of the water, leaving few opportunities to pull ashore.

THE DOUBLE KAYAK was lazy in the water, only inching forward, it seemed, with each stroke. Though more stable, this heavy shell of dinged-up fiberglass was neither agile nor graceful. It was a butter knife compared to the sleek blade of my wooden kayak. Paddling my own boat felt perfect. It was like being on the water in an extension of myself. I would sit with my legs outstretched, the tips of my boots nearly touching the underside of the deck. In my own kayak, if I bent my knees up, I could feel the hull close around me. This tightness made for better maneuverability. The boat would slice neatly through the water and, though it had no rudder, I could turn it easily. With each stroke of my paddle, the nose of my kayak would respond—turning port when I paddled on the right, starboard when I paddled on the left. Gentle rocking of my hips would tip the boat on its keel. The wooden deck would gleam under the sun.

In the double, John leaned on his paddle—dragging it in the water or sweeping the blade around—to turn us. The bow would swing either way, depending on what he did in the stern. My only job was to help keep us going forward, to keep paddling and not stop.

As I turned my head around to see how far we had come, I was glad to have John behind me. “Not too much farther now,” he smiled. We were getting to the halfway mark, the no-turning-back point where, even on the calmest of days, the shore seemed much too far away. Behind us, the charter boats had shrunk in the distance and were indistinguishable from each other. Business continued at the tip of the Spit; I felt worlds away. We had told Cynthia we were paddling across for the night, but no one knew we were out there at that moment. No one was watching out for us. No one would know for a long time if anything happened to us.

EARLIER THAT SUMMER, John had gone out paddling alone. He left in the morning with water and lunch and a plan to paddle across the bay and a few miles up it to a cluster of houses, lodges, and oyster farms called Halibut Cove. He said he’d be gone all day, but by nine that night he hadn’t returned. It was still light out, but I was worried. I walked out to the edge of the