Five weeks into our 1987 voyage from Puget Sound to Juneau, Cindy and I were well into the daily rhythm of life aboard ROWENA, the 21′ Gokstad faering I’d built for the trip. After traveling the Inside Passage through British Columbia we were leaner and stronger, our hands and our butts had toughened up, and we could row long hours, often covering over 30 miles in a day.

Our first landing in Alaska was on Tongass Island, the site of a U.S. Army fort in the late 1800s and a native village after that. The only remains of eh settlement we saw were fragments of brick scattered on the beach. A heavy rain had soaked our tent the previous night and we spread it out to dry.Photographs by the author and from his collection

Our first landing in Alaska was on Tongass Island, the site of a U.S. Army fort in the late 1800s and a native village after that. The only remains of the settlement we saw were fragments of brick scattered on the beach. A heavy rain had soaked our tent the previous night and we spread it out to dry.

Our first camp in Alaska was on Tongass Island, just 6 miles north of the US/Canada border and the site of an Army fort established in 1868, a year after Alaska had been purchased by the U.S. from Russia. The only remnants of the fort and the native settlement that later took its place were fragments of brick scattered among the white-quartz cobbles along the beach. With ROWENA anchored, we took a walk around the island. Cindy found a large yellowed tooth, perhaps from a bear and we saw in the dirt paw prints as big as my hands. I picked up a weathered beer can and filled it with a few pebbles to make a rattle to announce our presence to whatever company we might have on the island. Back at the beach I spread our tent out to dry on the driftwood at the top of the beach—it had rained hard during our last night in British Columbia—while Cindy cooked potatoes, carrots, cabbage and beans for dinner.

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