Pandemic Diaries - Year 2, August Part IV

18 August, Day 5 – Sitka

 

I think Sitka was my favorite port call on our Alaskan trip.  Not so much that Sitka was fabulous, though it is an interesting town, with an interesting history. 

 

But in Sitka, I went on an art excursion offered by the cruise ship.  They don’t have very many art-making trips, so I was really excited to do this.  And my art event was glass making, one of those art forms I’ve never worked with, but always wanted to try!

 

Sitka, located on the outer side (ocean side) of Baranof Island, was originally inhabited by the Tlingit people.  Then the Russians came across the Bering Sea and settled in various coastal parts of what is now Alaska.  Sitka was a really important port and became the headquarters of the Russian-American Trading Company in the early 1800s.  The big industries at the time were furs (sea otters and seals) as well as fishing.  (Sitka is the 6^th largest fishing production site in the US to this day.)

 

In 1867, the Alaska Territory was purchased by the US, and the transfer ceremony took place in Sitka.  The Russians left after that, but much of their culture remains, including the Cathedral of St. Michael, which can be seen in the center of Sitka.  (The original church burned down in 1996, but the current re-built church is supposed to be an exact replica.  The artwork and icons were saved from the fire, and are now housed in the new church.)

 

Sitka, the center of this cultural confluence, became a center for visual arts and crafts.  One of the art forms that is big here is glass work.  Our tour guide and instructor, Michelle, met our group at the dock, introduced herself, and herded us over to a van to take us to her glass studio.  On the way, she gave us an abbreviated history of Sitka, and a little about her background.  Her mother is Tlingit and her father European, and she’s been working in glass ever since she was a pre-teen!

 

We got to her studio, sat around a table, and were given protective goggles to wear.  She talked about some of the science of glass making, which was fascinating.  (Some of this I already knew from working in clay – the glazes we make are essentially powdered glass mixed with chemicals that create the colors when fired in the kiln.)

 

So, like glaze, glass is based in silica (also known as silicon dioxide, which is basically tiny particles of quartz crystals).  Colored glass is made by adding chemicals – and the chemicals form different colors depending on the heat at which the glass is melted.  Some chemicals mix to make other colors, other chemicals don’t mix and that is how designs can be made in glass.  That’s a simplified explanation, but it covers the basics. 

 

The important thing to remember is that we would be working with molten glass, meaning it is heated to a liquid state.  Again, more science:  liquids bead up – it’s the whole surface tension thing, the liquid molecules stack together to a certain thickness.  That’s why you can fill a glass of water to the top and see the water kind of bulge above the top.  Each liquid will always bead up to its own thickness, depending on how fluid or viscous the liquid is.  Glass beads up to a thickness of 6 mm, which is pretty thick for a liquid. 

 

Why is this important?  Because we were going to make glass canes, long thin sticks made from two colors of molten glass that we would twist together.  And the molten glass would try to keep from being pulled and twisted into a cane.  That molten glass would try to pull back on itself and remain in a liquid blob inside the furnace.  So we’d need to use steady strength to pull and twist to form our canes.

 

Interesting, right?  Who knew that glass took strength to pull?  It breaks so easily and seems so fragile, but it turns out to be pretty tough!

 

Canes are used in Venetian glass, especially in Murano glass.  That’s how those little flowers, millefiori, and made and put inside objects.  So we were participating in part of the history of fine glass making!

 

The melted glass was in three furnaces high on the wall, inside the furnaces in terra cotta flowerpots.  That surface tension keeps the molten glass from flowing out the hole in the bottom, and a plug is put in while the glass is melting.  We had our choice of three different color combinations:  glacier blue and red, creamy white and green, or clear and black. 

 

With three furnaces, each at a different temperature for the colors within, that meant three people could pull a cane at the same time.  Each person was suited up with their goggles on, heavy leather apron, and leather gloves.  And each “student” had a professional glass person to assist, mostly to remind us what to do and make sure we didn’t hurt ourselves

 

Michelle made glass wands with a bubble, and we were to hold the bubble – the glass conducts heat, but the air in that bubble would dissipate the heat, so as long as we held the bubble with our gloved hands we wouldn’t burn ourselves.   And the temperatures of our furnaces were all in the 1800 to 2000 F range, depending on the colors.

 

Michelle would take a torch (presumably oxyacetalene) and use that to heat the glass wand.  Then she’d reach overhead and attach the wand to the molten glass, making sure it was liquid glass stuck to the wand.  She'd leave the wand attached and let the wand and glass kind of set, prior to our group having a chance to pull the cane of glass.  It was odd to see the wand just hanging there!  And after pulling the cane, we'd again just leave it hanging a bit, I guess so the glass cane could cool prior to have it cut from the molten glass still in the furnace.

It was fascinating!  Some people twisted quickly, some more slowly, all the while pulling gently but firmly on the wand.  One person experimented with turning for a while in one direction, then turning in the other, making a unique design in her cane.

 

My turn came, and I opted for the glacier blue and red.  This really was harder than it looked – the glass would pull the wand and cane back up into the furnace if I didn’t keep enough pressure pulling it down while twisting.  And when it pulls up, it makes a thinner section of cane when you pull it back down.  It really is kind of like a moderate tug of war with the glass to get it to form a cane!

 

I made an extra long cane.  We had the option of having our cane cut to maybe 8 or 10 inch sections, and Michelle explained how to use a sanding block under water to round the ends to make stir sticks.

 

But I decided I wanted my canes made into coasters – I talked to Michelle, and said I’d like a darker version of the glacier blue (which is a very pale aqua, and transparent) for the base, with lines of the cane melted into them.  And that I liked the uneven thicker ends of the cane that form where it attaches to the wand, and then where it ends before it’s cut off.  She said she could cut those ends into murrine, the little bits of cane cut into short lengths like beads and then embedded in glass objects vertically, so you can look down and see the design inside the glass cane.  (Millefiori paperweights are made with various colored murrines.). We talked a bit, and she said she can make it look like beach glass – I think she totally saw my vision.  SO EXCITING!  She’ll work on this when the season ends in October, so I should be getting my package in December or January.

 

When we all finished, we walked over to an art cooperative, and looked around.  I ended up wandering a bit around Sitka, taking photos of the cathedral, looking into a few shops.

 

If you want to see samples of Michelle’s glass work, here’s her facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/wildartsgallery.  And here is her website:  https://wildartsgallery.square.site/about-the-artist

 

One of the things about cruising is that the food is included in the price.  When I lived in the Virgin Islands, we always laughed at the cruise ship passengers who would rush back to the ship for lunch, rather than staying in town and trying local food.  I decided to not be that kind of passenger, so I went to a variety of different eating spots while in Alaska.  And in Sitka, it seemed reasonable to eat something Russian.

 

I passed a little pelmeni café – pelmeni are similar to pirogi and piroshki, but the filling is usually not precooked before being wrapped in dough, and never a sweet filling.  And yes, they are similar to tortellini, or wontons, or kreplach, depending on your ethnic heritage.  These pelmeni were stuffed either with beef, or potato.  I asked for a mix, meaning some of each.  Toppings included hot sauce, cilantro, curry sauce – I went with my Russian/Polish heritage and asked for just sour cream.  Mmmm, delicious and great to warm me back up after my wandering!

 

That was my day in Sitka!  It was cold and drizzly, as were all our days in Alaska – but we were warm and cozy with those furnaces going.  And the artistic side of my soul was so happy to have learned how to make something new and different in the world of art!

 

 

Pandemic Diaries - Year 2, August Part III

17 August, Day 4 – Glacier Bay and Icy Point Strait

 

Much of Day 4 was spent cruising Glacier Bay, looking at (you guessed it!) glaciers.  Old glaciers.  Ancient glaciers.  Beautiful snowy white and icy blue glaciers.  One glacier so old, it’s almost black with accumulated gravel, dirt, and debris it has picked up over the millennia as it has slowly moved downhill. 

Glacier Bay is currently about 65 miles long (105 km).  I say currently because Glacier Bay has been changing size for tens of thousands of years, if not more.  Geological evidence shows that ice sheets covering entire continents came and went for about seven million years.  Yes, 7,000,000 years or so.  Eventually the Greater Ice Age stopped, but there have been various lesser ice ages since that time.  The Little Ice Age is the name given to the more recent advance of glaciers in the northern regions of the Earth, culminating roughly in the year 1750, when the entire Glacier Bay area was under ice.

 

When the Tlingit nation, the first people to live around the bay, arrived some 9000 or 10,000 years ago, they were able to settle on the shores of Glacier Bay.  Then the glaciers moved closer to the waters of the bay in that Little Ice Age, driving the people further south among the islands of the Alaskan panhandle. 

 

I personally find that fact mind-boggling.  Somehow ice ages seem like a thing of the far away past, ancient history like dinosaurs.  The fact that there are people living today whose oral history includes a recent ice age is just amazing!

 

The ice receded enough that Captain George Vancouver was able to sail a bit in Glacier Bay in 1794, though he described it as “a sheet of ice as far as the eye could distinguish.”  That ice has continued to recede, and when we saw Glacier Bay, most of the shoreline was visible.

 

The National Park Service manages Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, and one of the park rangers joined our cruise for the day.  She talked about the glaciers, the animals we might see, and the history of the bay and its glaciers.

 

Also designated a UNESCO World Heritage site, Glacier Bay National Park covers over 3.2 million acres of forest, water, and shoreline.  It includes mountain peaks towering over 15,000 feet (almost 3 miles, or 4.6 km), and currently seven active glaciers.  These are tidewater glaciers, meaning these huge rivers of compacted snow and ice flow down to the shoreline, where the ice periodically breaks off (calves) to creating small icebergs floating out to the ocean.

 

We arrived in the morning, when the bay and its islands were covered in fog and mist.  It looked like the dawn of the world, somehow, mysterious half-seen mountains rising behind the islands, and broken bits of ice floating in the water.  The colors were almost leached out, making a world of greys with a hint of blue.  Definitely other-worldly, as if the ghosts of the bay were still living here.

 

Flocks of birds flew by, white gulls or terns, dark geese.  We slowly sailed on, barely leaving a wake, watching the water turn from grey to an icy glacier blue.  Icy white waterfalls cascaded down the hills and mountains, and we were close enough to hear the thundering waters!

 

We passed three or four glaciers, two that had the usual layers of white snow and grey rubble, looking like the striations of rock and sediments, indicating changing climate, weather, even volcanic activity.  

 

And then we arrived at Margerie Glacier, a pristine white glacier that somehow looks like a brand new baby glacier.  She isn’t, of course, but somehow she doesn’t have much of the usual debris layered in with her compacted snow and ice.  And yes, the park ranger referred to Margerie Glacier as a she – she was named for French geologist and geographer Emmanuel de Margerie, but to English speakers, the name sounds like Marjory, so people just refer to this glacier as female.  Margerie Glacier is about 21 miles long (34 km), and is one of the most photographed places in all of Alaska.  She also is one of the northernmost glaciers in Glacier Bay, being barely a mile or just over a kilometer from the Canadian border.  We could see the glacier winding back like a long flowing river, up into the foothills and presumably up into the mountains beyond.

 

The Margerie Glacier flows in from the west, and just east of where she reaches the bay is the Grand Pacific Glacier.  He actually originates in the Elias Mountains of Canada, and flows into Alaska, reaching the bay.  The Grand Pacific Glacier is so encrusted with rocky debris from landslides and also picked up as the glacier slides along, the exterior is almost black.  In fact, that exterior layer helps insulate the ice, slowing the melting and creating a thicker ice mass! 

 

Margerie and Grand Pacific are so close, they appear to touch.  I don’t know if they really do, but from our viewpoint it looked like they might.

 

Our ship stayed in place for a while, as we all stood on the decks or balconies, amazed by these marvels of nature and history.  How often do we get to see relics of the Great Ice Age, or even the Little Ice Age?  In fact, given the current climate change, many of the glaciers in the mountainous regions of North America are beginning to melt and disappear.  These glaciers of Glacier Bay may eventually be the only glaciers left in the northern hemisphere.

 

After a while, the captain turned the ship so people could have a view from the starboard side of the ship.  We stayed so long, we had a great of the two glaciers from the dining room at lunch.  (Other than in Antarctica, I don’t think I’ve ever had lunch while gazing at a glacier or two!)

 

We had to stay to our schedule, which meant leaving the north end of Glacier Bay and heading south.  The day brightened up a bit, though it never did clear up nor did the sun ever come out.  But the scenery was still mystical, mountains and islands veiled in mist and fog.

 

 

 

Sometimes humpback whales or seals can be seen in the bay, but we didn’t see any.  We saw something that may have been a sea otter, or possibly a young seal or sea lion.  It was just a glimpse of a small dark animal playing in the water.  It must have been freezing cold in that water, but, well, some animals have adapted to those conditions.

 

We headed south to Icy Strait Point, a tiny community across the strait from the town of Hoonah.  Hoonah is the largest Tlingit community in Alaska, and Icy Strait Point is also Tlingit.  We spent the evening there, mostly so people could take an excursion and see some of the wildlife.  I had dinner with a couple who were going out riding ATVs, looking for bears.  I signed up for a less adventurous excursion, going out on a whale watching trip.  

 

Our group filled pretty much filled up this boat, and we headed out to Cross Sound and the open ocean, despite the mist that turned into rain.  We saw humpback whales, mostly sighting their telltale spouts of mist as they breathed out through their blowholes.  Some would dive a bit, showing their backs and that small dorsal fin that gave them their name.

 

We went a bit further out to sea, and finally some whales decided to give us a more impressive show – one or two would lift up what seemed like the lower half of its body, and then slam that giant tail onto the surface of the ocean!  Huge splashes, over and over!  Our guide said that humpbacks do this to stun the small fish they eat.  It really was an amazing sight, that huge tail and body rising out of the water and slamming down, over and over again!

 

Of course, we all oohed and aahed, and tried to get photos.  I managed to get several photos of the waves just after the whales finished, but I did get a few spouts lingering against the islands in the distance.  Hard to see in the photos, but they were really exciting to see when we were right there!!!  (If you look really closely, you can see the spouts, just faint white-ish splotches against the dark islands beyond.)

 

The rain got heavier as it approached 9 PM, and the sun was setting behind the thick clouds.  Our boat, a catamaran really, headed back to the port so we could reboard our ship.  I was chilly, despite my many layers of clothing, but the tea and coffee area was open so I could warm up. 

 

Whales and glaciers – what an exciting day!