Mountains and lakes were my backyard. Snow and ice found us on snow machines, sledding off of hillsides onto frozen lakes, ice skating, or taking moonlight walks as the snow crunched beneath our boots. Northern lights lit up the skies. Winds howled like a lonely wolf blowing us down the roads if we would open up our coats and use them as sails. The cold would bite the nose and sting the cheeks but would not prevent us from having the time of our lives. Hikes to the tops of mountains to see the sunset and sunrise in a matter of five minutes or less was glorious on the longest day of the year. Protecting ourselves from the size of mosquitos that only Alaska could grow became second nature, especially in May and June during the snowmelt. Sunsets of brilliant colors in summer and pastels in winter left a person breathless as their beauty was magnified by the mountains that towered into the heavens, and the lakes shining the reflections of colors God painted in the skies. Encounters with moose were not uncommon and you might surprse a bear while picking the largest, juciest, and best tasting blueberries during the month of August. To this day blueberries happen to be my favorite berry in the whole world. I can still taste the sweetness of the mouthful of berries warmed by the sun that we would eat by the handfulls. This was Alaska, the land in which I lived for twelve years.
Below is an excerpt from "A Reader's Companion to Alaska" written by John Muir on one of his expeditions to Glacier Bay in 1879. Glacier Bay is part of the Inside Passage that so many have come to love.
"In the evening, after witnessing the unveiling of the majestic peaks and glaciers and their baptism in the down-pouring sunbeams, it seemed inconceivable that nature could have anything finer to show us. Nevertheless, compared with what was to come the next morning, all that was as nothing. The calm dawn gave no promise of anything uncommon. Its most impressive features were the frosty clearness of the sky and a deep, brooding stillness made all the more striking by the thunder of the newborn bergs. The sunrise we did not see at all, for we were beneath the shadows of the fiord cliffs; but in the midst of our studies, while the Indians were getting ready to sail, we were startled by the sudden appearance of a red light burning with a strange unearthly splendor on the topmost peak of the Fairweather Mountains. Instead of vanishing as suddenly as it had appeared, it spread and spread until the whole range down to the level of the glaciers was filled with the celestial fire. In color it was at first a vivid crimson, with a thick, furred appearance, as fine as the alpenglow, yet indescribably rich and deep - not in the least like a garment or mere external flush or bloom through which one might expect to see the rocks or snow, but every mountain apparently was glowing from th heart like molten metal fresh from a furnace. Beneath the frosty shadows of the fiord we stood hushed and awe-stricken, gazing at the holy vision; and had we seen the heavens opened and God made manifest, our attention could not have been more tremendously strained. When the highest peak began to burn, it did not seem to be steeped in sunshine, however glorious, but rather as if it had been thrust into the body of the sun itself. Then the supernal fire slowly descended, with a sharp line of demarkation separating it from the cold, shaded region beneath; peak after peak, with their spires and ridges and cascading glaciers, caught the heavenly glow, until all the mighty host stood transfigured, hushed, and thoughtful, as if awaiting the coming of the Lord. The white, rayless light of morning, seen when I was alone amid the peaks of the California Sierra, had always seemed to me the most telling of all the terrestrail manifestations of God. But here the mountains themselves were made divine, and declared His glory in terms still more impressive. How long we gazed I never knew. The glorious vision passed away in a gradual, fading change through a thousand tones of color to pale yellow and white, and then the work of the ice-world went on again in everyday beauty. The green waters of the fiord were filled with sun-spangles; the fleet of icebergs set forth on their voyages with the upspringing breeze; and on the innumerable mirrors and prisms of these bergs, and on those of the shattered crystal walls of the glaciers, common white light and rainbow light began to burn, while the mountains shone in their frosty jewelry, and loomed again in the thin azure in serene terrestrial majesty. We turned and sailed away, joining the outgoing bergs, while "Gloria in excelsis" still seemed to be sounding over all the white landscape, and our burning hearts were ready for any fate, feeling that, whatever the future might have in store, the treasures we had gained this glorious morning would enrich our lives forever."
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