for my friends who are moms

I listen to this song about once a day at the moment.

The sound of little waves gently crashing on the shore is usually a relaxing feeling. When you set up camp at low tide and thought, “yeah the water probably gets up here, but only at really high tides,” and you were just woken up by their gentle padder at 1:30 am, that sound is not as soothing. Thankfully, I was in my hammock and only my feet were wet when I got up. Deciding if we were going to pack up and find another place to camp or move to the swap which was probably only under water at REALLY high tides, is really hard at that time of night. We were in Alaska on Willard Island in the Prince William Sound in July, so at least it was at least light out!

Opting to stick it out at the slightly higher ground, Tara and I tried to catch a few zs in the swamp. Needless to say, sleep was hard to be had. I eventually gave up around 7 AM and went to grab the bear bag. Do to the lack of sleep, it took a minute to realize the bear bag was not where I had left it. I was standing about 5 feet away from it when I realized there were teeth marks all over it. About that time, I also realized my bear spray was back at my sleeping bag. 

Leaving the bag behind, I went back to our campsite and started packing up. I started thinking, “how do I wake up Tara and tell her what’s going on without freaking her out?” And then I saw some bushes moving behind our camp site. “HEY BEAR!” I yelled. Well, I guess that’s how she’s going to find out. 

Whatever was in the bushes decided not to stick around, and we really didn’t want to either. Unfortunately, it had switched back to low tide. Hiking a very heavy double kayak and all of our gear out to the shoreline at low tide is not my favorite thing to do, but when there may be a bear around, I’ll do just about anything to get away. 

After packing up, it took us a couple of hours to paddle to the glacier. We mostly enjoyed the view from a distance, since the kayak rental place had sufficiently scared us into thinking most ice chunks were going to flip over and kill us. About the time we stopped for a snack and assessed the contents of the bear bag, I told Tara, “Coming to Alaska is good for me. It keeps me humble.”