Cross Country #34  Calf is Better than None

Barry: So here we are on deck and it's dry and hot and the air is filled with smoke, since out in the Yukon, forests are on fire and the wind is blowing this way. We are far further north than Goldie's first glacier adventure, we have entered the narrow channel into Glacier Bay National Park.

Goldie: Seconds ago we witnessed an iceberg calving off from a glacier.

Around us brown seals float oblivious to the big moment, they are hitchhiking a ride out on the iceberg formed moments before ours was. Puffins abound, curiously stubby black birds with white heads and short tucanesque beaks of yellow and orange. A brown bear lolls to the left of the glacier beside the first stand of trees to emerge on the newly revealed landscape.

Mark's bar mitzvah bible portion is Noah, he is learning a few lines each day. Much like in that story, here nature's forces are at work, changing the landscape before our very eyes. New life is emerging all around us. Mosses, small wild strawberry bushes and other quick-rooting air-borne arrivals. There are lots of ravens in Alaska, no doves have manifested yet. The bay, Glacier Bay, is so new that it is forming while we rock in it, just another tiny ark-like ship in the cosmic womb.

Barry: This is a national park one can access only by ship, or plane. Two women park rangers come board, climbing a long rope ladder from their tiny skiff up the steep sides of our ship. They live here, one young woman has lived here for 16 years, since finishing college.

We learn of how in 1879 John Muir ventured north with the objective of finding glaciers to prove that California's Yosemite Valley had been shaped by ice (preposterous notion, so it was thought). He proved that theory here.

Joe and Liz Ibok were here for 30 summers, built a cabin at the face of a glacier, garden, staked and registered three gold claims, but made only enough to pay for expenses. One year they made a profit, $13.

James Todd Housecroft, built his home on the outer coast of Glacier Bay, the only resident along the 80 mile rugged coast line. He left once a year to go to Juneau to get groceries and newspapers....read his newspapers, one each morning - one day to the year late.

Goldie: They say he would roast himself a huge goose and bake 14 types of fruit pies, always prepared for anyone who would happen by. A plaque (1939) for him reads: "Near this spot, a pioneer made his home for 20 years, kindness and generosity made him endeared to those who came to this beautiful bay." This has to be the ultimate place for the mitzvah of hachnassat orchim (welcoming of guests.)

Mark has noticed that Noah was "tamim b'dorotav" - simply perfect in his ways because "hithalekh et ha Elohim"....he walked toward God.(Gen. 6:9) Abraham is told to "hithalekh lifanai", to walk in front of God in order to "heyay tamim" to become perfected. (Gen. 17:l) You might say to really be in God's face about what he thought was just, to provide leadership for Godliness is the role humanity is given after the flood disaster. God, humans and the world have changed after what they've been through.

Noah, Mark points out, didn't protest the destruction of humanity ....while Abraham pushed and lobbied for the survival of a whole community. Elderly plant biologist William Skinner Cooper studied and loved this area, and he got President Coolidge to push Congress to make it a National Monument. Mark suggested that Cooper was a leadership type of man like Abraham, pushing for survival of the planet, rather than accepting a limited focus on personal survival like Noah.

Barry: The human ability to take some environmental leadership is very much in evidence. President Clinton has just taken the American Eagle off of the endangered species list, thousands now populate Alaska, enough to restore their numbers with time.

Goldie: Eagles are everywhere....treetops, telephone poles, their huge nests dramatic additions to the horizon. Yesterday, on Haines Island we visit an eagle preservation and research center. The farthest reaches of the earth are filled with mitzvah-centered beings who preserve everything imaginable, with increasing success. "A lot of good things are happening environmentally" is the watch word from each researcher who has greeted us on this trip and also during our recent stay in South Africa. In previous years travels the environmental news was always depressing....what a joy it is to hear so many tales of progress.

The Noah portion also gives a reason for destruction of the earth: "Hamas" - rampant violence. At breakfast today I'm sitting with couples from Ireland and England who are going at it with religious politics. A third couple begins to reflect on their lobbying efforts during the McCarthy era, how frightening it was to help open their congressman's mail and see all the hate and support for the narrow views. The congressman was opposed to McCarthy but couldn't say so in his own office, some of the staff might be in cahoots with McCarthy. I find this bit of personal history fascinating....one of the many advantages of traveling amongst elders, but the religious factions at the table keep warring. My coping strategy is to zoom out and imagine myself swinging from the Hubble telescope - filled with awe at the great unfolding, uttering a blessing under my breath.

"Sorry, what did you say?" Inquires the English woman. I reply: "From out here on the ship all our claims to truth seem so improbable. We can all travel together here, paying a fortune to witness the Tlingit and Athabascan peoples, marvel at their traditions, applaud their fierce commitment to continuity, while celebrating their differences. Can we begin to accept that our own Protestant, Catholic or Jewish customs are a simple cultural comfort to us in our limited humanness and stop claiming to own the truth?"

The couples look at each other in silence. "I'm sorry," whispers one woman. "Me too," responds her counterpart. Out the window waves upon waves carry our ark even further north. The violence begins again not so long after the Noah story....can we notice it is given to us to do better?