Scenes from Sitka

Our day in Sitka started out with a long bus ride out to a fish hatchery, where a young woman named Angie gave us a tour of her world. We started out in a big room full of small drawers. Angie told us more than two million salmon eggs get hatched in here at once. Sometimes the staff will speed up the eggs' development by raising the water temperature, so they can get the fish out into the ocean sooner.

After they hatch, the fish go into these long tanks. Angie let us throw in scoops of food pellets and watch the little fish swarm! When they're a little bigger, they get a little electronic chip in their foreheads -- so the hatchery can track the contribution they're making to the fishery.

Then the fish go into pens in Silver Bay so they can put on a little more weight before they get released. Angie showed us a row of freight pallets piled chest-high with bags of fish food. "They go through about three pallets a day. We have a machine that flings it into the water -- our arms would get too tired if we had to scoop it by hand." I would have taken a picture of this remarkable device, but my camera battery chose this moment to die. I was also unable to capture any footage of the silvery fish splashing around in the pens, nor of Angie shooing our swarming adolescents along the floating docks so they wouldn't all congregate in one place (as is their wont) and sink.

After the hatchery we hit the raptor center (where I had an oddly satisfying experience while waiting in line for the bathroom: a girl in one of the stalls -- obviously unaware that there were adults within earshot -- playfully told her friend to "suck my dick!" I exchanged raised eyebrows with the white-haired lady next to me; then we both went deadpan as the girl walked out of her stall. The expression on her face when she saw us standing there was absolutely priceless. As was the happy realization that (for once!) it wasn't one of our Orca kids). 

By the time we had walked back to town through the woods, I was ready for a little time away from the crowd. I climbed to the top of Castle Hill with my friend Doug and his boys and we all looked down at the harbor. All those little islands reminded me a bit of the view from Mt. Desert Island in Maine -- only these were all covered with tall trees. Doug told me he'd always wanted to live in Sitka someday. "See the lighthouse out there on the end of that big island?" he asked me. "It's for sale!"

Sitka has an interesting history: the plaque in this picture describes the 1804 battle during which the Russians drove the Tlingit off Castle Hill in retaliation for an attack on the Russian outpost two years before (which was in retaliation for all kinds of misdeeds, no doubt). The Russians then built a fort of their own on the hill, and made Sitka the capital of Russian America. In 1867, when Alaska was turned over to the U.S., the ceremony also took place atop Castle Hill.

I left Doug gazing out to sea at his future lighthouse home and hunted down a few more historic sites before it was time to head back to the ship. I had a look at the Russian Block House (see Zeke's photo, right), because the guidebook said I'd regret it if I didn't -- and who wants to go through life with a regret like that? The Russian Bishop's House had some cool stuff in it, but with everything displayed in dark glass cases, it was hard to get a feel for the story of the place... except in one room, where they'd stripped back the walls and floor so you could see how the structure had been built, back in 1843.

There in a glass case were some sticks of Devil's Club that they'd found in the walls when they were restoring the building -- it turns out this prickly, hardy plant -- Latin name Oplopanax horridus -- is known by the local Tlingit people to have protective powers, and they often put sticks of it in the corners of their own houses to keep the occupants from harm. I liked to think of the Tlingit workers -- probably the sons of the folks who were driven off Castle Hill by Alexandr Baranov back in 1804 -- building this house for the Russian Bishop, slipping a little of their own spiritual magic into the walls.

The Russians also built St. Michael's Cathedral, a building whose unprepossessing exterior (only slightly more ornate than the Block House, honestly) hides a spacious sunlit sanctuary. The walls are covered with gilded icons, paintings, and other relics. It's clearly a real church with a priest and a congregation: there are prayer candles burning and notices about upcoming potlucks, and -- oh, I don't know, just a lovely, hushed sense that people come here to worship God.

I overheard a docent tell a story about the brass chandelier hanging from the domed ceiling: in 1966 the church caught fire, and members of the congregation rushed to save the icons and relics before the building burned to the ground. One man leaped up onto a stack of benches, yanked the brass chandelier off its chain, and handed it to two men down below, who ran out of the church with it just ahead of the flames. All three men suffered severe burns to their hands as a result of this heroic act, but the chandelier was saved. The next day it took six men to lift the thing, which weighs some 350 lbs. "Now," said the docent, "Some call that a miracle. And some call it adrenalin. I say adrenalin is a miracle."Amen.

Back on board the ship we had time for a little swim before dinner. First there was a spirited game of Who Can Stay Under the Longest:

Then a round of Splash Each Other Wildly With Every Limb You Can:

And finally a little time in the hot tub.

Looking at this picture now, I regret not asking Angie back at the fish hatchery if she thought raising the temperature of a developing human might speed things along.