In Seward, Louise and I took a boat to see the glaciers in Kenai Fjords National Park. They say that tourists in Alaska see so many glaciers that they suffer from "glacier fatigue," but I can't imagine that ever happening to me. I think instead I might be running out of adjectives to describe the wonder of everything I'm seeing here.
For nine hours the boat pitched and tossed on the slate-colored waves as we went through a landscape of mountains, cliffs, and sea-carved islands. Puffins sailed along beside the boat ...
... and sea otters rolled around in the water, looking bemused.
In the fjords, we saw granite cliffs. Lupines grew on their tops, colonies of purple and orange sea stars massed around their feet, and sea lions lazed on the rocks in between.
Whenever a humpback whale swam near the boat, the captain would shout, "Thar she blows!"
This whale was breaking up a bait ball, a school of fish where gulls, kittiwakes, puffins, and murres were feeding. The captain said that he had seen a whale surface with its mouth open and terrified puffins hopping out. They had been caught accidentally as the whale went after the fish they were eating.
This was the closest I have ever been to a whale. Words failed me, and all I could think was that this is what
Longinus meant by the sublime in nature.
Then we arrived at the glacier. The captain turned the engines off. I stood outside on the bow as we floated quietly in the icy sea.
Longinus says, "Nature has appointed us men to be no base or ignoble animals, but when she ushers us into life and into the vast universe as into some great assembly, to be as it were spectators of the mighty whole ... she implants in our souls the unconquerable love of whatever is elevated and more divine than we."
As we watched, the glacier threw off great pieces of ice from itself. They broke with a sound like thunder and splashed into the water.
"I think we found the sublime," I said to Louise.
This weekend I drove down to Cocoa Beach to see Louise, who was there with her family to see the space shuttle launch. I was also excited about seeing this part of Florida, the Atlantic coast near Orlando. It's a place with lots of palm trees and surf shops.
Louise found an amazing vegetarian restaurant, and we ate most of our meals there.
She got us a hotel right on the beach. The beaches in this part of Florida are much longer and flatter than northern Gulf Coast beaches, with larger waves and darker, mineral-rich sand.
In the morning, flocks of laughing gulls and oystercatchers were feasting on mollusks as the tide went out.
A little sandpiper was stalking its prey.
There are lots of red mangroves around Cocoa Beach, and I saw their weird, slug-shaped fruit washed up on the shore.
The most exciting thing I found in the surf, though, was this nine-armed sea star. It was enormous!
And beautiful.
The best part of the trip was getting to see Louise and hang out with her family on Saturday. The shuttle launch that night was not as successful.
It was fascinating to see all the people gathered on the NASA causeway to see the launch -- like a giant, well-behaved tailgate party.
We sat on one side of the Indian River. On the other side was the space shuttle on its launch pad. River swallows flew out of the dark and over our heads, catching the insects that were drawn to all the lights on the causeway. A giant orange slice of moon hung low in the sky. Also low in the sky, though, was a layer of clouds, and it turned out to be too low for the shuttle to launch. We waited for three hours, but around 4:40 am the launch was called off.
Later that morning, the low clouds made for a beautiful walk along the beach.
