FROM THE TIME I CROSSED FROM ALASKA INTO CANADA, across wide Dixon Entrance, I was in the “Great Bear Rainforest.” The name, a public relations masterstroke, was coined in a San Francisco restaurant one night in the late 1990s by environmentalists working to protect one of the world’s last great temperate rainforests. “We wanted people…

MARLA AND I WERE HONORED TO HAVE DINNER, twice this week, with renowned Alaska Native artist Nathan Jackson and his wife, master weaver and textile artist Dorica Jackson. After our second dinner with the Jacksons, at their home near Ketchikan, we helped them put up a mess of sockeye salmon Nathan caught earlier in the…

ONE OF THE BIGGEST MISTAKES I MADE in preparing for this trip was neglecting to ask my outboard motor dealer if I would be able to get service on my way north for the new Tohatsu 50s I was considering buying. Outboards require service every 100 hours, and I figured the trip would put at…

DAVE POINTED TO THE DARK MASS OF CLOUDS over Anan Lagoon to the south and said in classic meteorological understatement, “It’s going to rain in about an hour.” I hadn’t been been paying attention to the weather. Osprey was snugged into a little cove in front of the Anan Bay cabin, tied to a Forest…

IN HIS EPIC BOOK SAILING ALONE AROUND THE WORLD, Joshua Slocum recounts “the greatest sea adventure of my life” — finding himself at night in “the Milky Way of the sea,” northwest of Cape Horn, amidst huge breakers over sunken rocks in every direction. “What a panorama was before me and all around,” wrote the…

WE WERE ENTERTAINED LAVISHLY last night at the home of Rocky and Sue Flint, whose new home has a spectacular 180-degree view of Frederick Sound. After dinner Sue’s sister, former Petersburg First Lady (FFL) Sally Dwyer drove us around this friendly, hard-working burg. Sally has deep roots in this community, which takes tremendous pride in…

  GLACIER BAY WAS FILLED WITH SMOKE from dozens of forest fires in the Yukon Territory and interior Alaska, and the sun was a weird shade of orange for much of the time we were in the national park. And It really didn’t matter. We were too busy watching beautiful things—whales, sea otters, bears and…

MY WIFE MARLA AND I MET AT A MURDER-SUICIDE in Anchorage, and a few months later we moved to Juneau. We were both reporters. Mar covered Alaska government for a statewide radio network; I wrote for the Anchorage Times. We moved to Miami in 1985 for work. That was almost 35 years ago, and I…

ALASKA’S FAUNA WERE ON FULL DISPLAY as the Osprey made her way to Juneau from Wrangell. Brown bears, seals, eagles and ice animals practically posed as we went by, a photographer’s dream. We stocked up in Petersburg, a scenic, orderly fishing town proud of its founders’ Norwegian and Native heritage. Sally Dwyer, a longtime civic…

BEHIND US ON THE WRANGELL DOCK this afternoon was the 26-foot hand troller Mij. Her owner, 29-year-old Brittaney Schunzel was replacing a damaged rub rail. Trollers pull long fishing lines behind them, attached to “troll poles”—outriggers—extending from either side of the boat. Power trollers, which pay more for their licenses, get to put out four…