Chapter Thirty-Seven
Victoria secured her blue pup tent with sand bags to the back deck of the Marine Vessel Kennicott. Then she tied a guy line to a navigation light post. She crawled inside with her pack, roll-up mattress, and sleeping bag. When she looked through the tent flap a few minutes later, she saw a float plane rock against the whitecaps and break loose to the north. A white-hooded eagle soared against the dark green shoreline with a large fish in its talons. Mount Baker and the North Cascade Mountains backdropped the harbor to the east. Victoria took a deep breath and smelled the salt air; finally, she was on her way to Dutch Harbor.
After her long car trip from Michigan, she relaxed at the thought of floating the Alaska Marine Highway. Her epiphany in New Mexico and her two-day stopover in Santa Cruz set her in a new frame of mind, a new appreciation for present experience, and a loosening of her tight steering wheel grip on living. Even though the Kennicott could hold cars, she decided to leave the Honda in Bellingham, because there was really no place to drive along her route. She would travel 3500 miles by water to Dutch Harbor through the Inside Passage, across the Gulf of Alaska and along the Aleutian Chain. No more driving for a long while. Her first stop would be Ketchikan--38 hours away. She missed Scratchy. Victoria had given Nick a two-page list of instructions for taking care of Scratchy: regular brushing, trips to the groomer, intervals for changing the litter box, and the phone number of a local veterinarian. She bought a magnet, and posted the instructions on her father’s refrigerator.
Just a few feet to her left, another tent, a bright orange one, had just been placed, and Victoria could hear someone rummaging around inside, zipping sounds, mumbling, and a loud, “Ouch!” A few minutes later, a young man popped his windburned head out of the tent fly, and raised his nose like an animal reading the wind. He looked over at her, and gave her an enthusiastic and reassuring smile. “My name’s, Chris Caldwell. What’s yours?”
Astounded at his directness, Victoria just said, “Victoria.”
“Well glad to meet you, Victoria. You have a very proper name. Is that what you go by or do people call you ‘Vicky’ or ‘Tory’ or something less formal?”
“No, people call me Victoria,” and she added, “I drove out here from Michigan in my car.”
“Never owned a car. I have a bicycle below. I’m into bicycles. Bicycles saved my butt--moved from an all-night crowd to a keep-fit crowd. I design and manufacture custom bicycle wheels in Portland--humming perfect wheels. I ride every day, except when I’m on boats, of course, and I fly float planes for a hobby. What do you do?”
“I used to work in quality control at a paperboard mill, but I’ve been laid off...so now I’m not quite sure what to do next. I like to create things like you do...I make hand-crafted paper.”
“Craft papermaking...sounds like fun.” Chris proceeded to ask her to explain the processes she used, and kept asking more questions. He seemed sincerely interested in her hobby, and looked right at her when she talked. His intensity struck Victoria as genuine, but she wasn’t used to this kind of attention--a new experience, having someone wrapped around her interests.
She looked him over. Chris looked about five foot eleven and 160 pounds with a long torso and muscular legs, about her age. He was lean, and when he stood up, he looked as straight as a redwood tree. He had short, sandy hair, ice blue eyes, and an angular jaw, a more handsome and much leaner version of a Route 66 giant. He wore a light blue rain jacket with a hood and canvas khaki cargo pants. He seemed to have a permanent smile and animated face.
Victoria liked Chris, and Chris liked Victoria. Victoria knew Chris was special after only a few minutes of conversation--he was likable, looked just right to her, and spoke in respectful tones beyond the words; she could see herself forgiving all his unknown flaws, giving him the benefit of any doubts. They became friends effortlessly, especially since Victoria’s habitual guards were down, and Chris never really had any--he seemed to be free of hang-ups or expectations, just there: calm, warm, unassuming. He stunned Victoria; she felt he made sense.
When he talked about his bicycle wheel business, she understood his language--building quality into the design, sourcing for the best, most durable components, overcoming bottlenecks in the assembly process, creating marketing and distribution channels. His enthusiasm for what he called his life work inspired Victoria. Chris lived in his own way, he worked hard and had fun at the same time. Like Victoria, he loved detail. He could talk for an hour about bicycle construction in his relaxed manner, and he used his expressive face and large hands for emphasis. To listen to Chris, you had to believe bicycles had souls. He described himself as a wheel builder--a craft manufacturer of bespoke wheels.
Both of them were headed for the same destination: Dutch Harbor. Chris wanted to go for much the same reason as Victoria: because it was there, and he was also a big Deadliest Catch fan. From Bellingham, the MV Kennicott plowed northwest through the Inside Passage to Ketchikan. Their itinerary would take them from Ketchikan to Juneau to Yakutat to Whittier to Chenega Bay to Homer to Kodiak Island. Once they arrived in Kodiak, they would switch ferries to the MV Tustumena (“Rusty Tusty”), then travel two days further to Dutch Harbor on Amaknak Island, and the neighboring Unalaska Island. Located where the currents of the North Pacific meet the Bering Sea, Dutch Harbor was the largest fisheries port in the United States.
Chris also viewed Dutch Harbor as an exciting place to visit, but for different reasons. In addition to cycling, Chris loved to fly, and he had scheduled some air time at the seaplane base. He belonged to a flying club in Portland, and flew a Piper seaplane once a week. Victoria told him how she wanted to see the Dutch Harbor crabbing fleet featured on the Deadliest Catch; how she hoped to see the wheelhouses of one of the featured vessels--Cornelia Marie, Wizard, Northwestern, or Time Bandit, and imagine the crew ducking the heavy crab pots with the gale-force winds of October lashing over the decks. Chris thought this was a fine idea, although he had never watched a single episode.
The first morning, Chris and Victoria went below decks for coffee, and then returned on deck with Chris’ thermos. From the open deck, they watched for whales, porpoise, seals, otters, and eagles; when it rained they would go to the forward lounge. About nine o’clock, they walked through the self-serve food court for breakfast. Later in the day, passengers provided musical entertainment on their guitars or harmonicas. They attended a talk by the Forest Service. Before dinner, they used the showers on board. Passengers thought they were a couple, and this amused them. She felt so comfortable around Chris. He seemed kind and harmless, and so relaxed.
The second day was cold, foggy, and rainy, so Chris invited Victoria into his tent. Compared to the inside of her tent, Chris’ tent was a picture of order: all his gear was neatly stacked, a pile of cycling magazines lay in a corner, a small battery-lit lantern hung from a loop in the ceiling; he even had a draw-string laundry bag for his dirty clothes. They talked about what they might do on their overnight stop in Ketchikan. When the wheelhouse announced a whale sighting, they pulled on their rain jackets and went out to the rail. As Victoria tried to focus her binoculars, Chris spotted a spout off the stern, pointed his long arms for her to follow, and she turned in time to see huge flukes splash the water.
They were floating through a fairyland where each new scene was even more beautiful than the last. If it were not for the briny smell in the air, they would not know they were sailing on a salt ocean. There were thousands of islands with lush evergreens disappearing into the mist. With the rain, the view from the deck was an ethereal blend of light and shade, making every feature look fine and tender. Victoria looked at all of what she saw in wonderment, very different from Route 66; everything so new and different to her wide eyes. Even though Chris had never been in this part of the world, he seemed to grasp everything in advance, like he was her personal guide. The former Victoria would have questioned how much the novelty and excitement of the voyage was affecting her judgment of Chris, but at the moment, she had no doubts: he was decent, funny, down-to-earth, and attractive--period.
The boat glided into a narrow channel with trees lining the shores. With distant views blocked by weather, Chris and Victoria looked at what was directly before their eyes. With the steep slopes, every tree seemed to be rising above the one below like people sitting in a theater--blue-green and yellow-green spruces with the brown-green cedars blending harmoniously with mosses and lichens on their branches, then dropping to bushes at the water’s edge. They passed so close, they could see the purple cones on the spruces. Every once in while, they could see patches of paler green dogwood and alder; sometimes fringing cascading streams emerging white into the blue waters of the channel.
Every once in a while, ducks would fly over them, or they would hear the cry of a loon in the distance. From a pine spar, an eagle dressed its feathers, as if it had nothing else in the world to do. As the two travelers sat or stood on the deck hour after hour, a certain unspoken intimacy developed, and one evening before dark, Chris placed his arm around Victoria’s shoulder and pulled her closer, and Victoria found herself leaning against him comfortably, feeling his warmth against the night air.
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