The End of the Road

A glass-like Lynn Canal.

Because I was so busy the first two weeks of April, I managed to miss noting spring’s arrival to Juneau. While I love the warmer temperatures, the disappearing snow, and the appearance of so many beautiful creatures, I do hate one thing that spring welcomes – mosquitos.

These first mosquitos to show themselves in Juneau are giant and slow. They hover in the air and are easy to avoid, except if you’re sleeping. Work had officially ended and I spent some of this past Monday outside on the deck socking in the warm sun. Unfortunately, I fell asleep, and one of these lumbering mosquitoes found its way to my lip.

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A couple weekends ago, on a bright Sunday, Scott and I drove out the road in Juneau as far as one possibly can. Neither of us like to waste gas, but there’s something amazing about driving to the end of a road, not turning around until one must. In Juneau, that translates into more than 40 miles of road, the last section of which is extremely pot-holed. We weren’t the only ones doing it. We passed several cars and followed one that had the exact same idea. When it’s sunny out people love the sheer notion of driving, driving for driving’s sake.

But getting to the end of the road wasn’t our only goal for the day. After we turned around, we stopped at the trail head for Point Bridget State Park. As I’ve tried to chronicle in this blog, Scott and I have been exploring various trails and spots in Juneau. Maybe it’s because Juneau is still very new and seemingly so much bigger than Wrangell, but each destination feels totally unique and different than the others – and it hardly feels like we’re even in Juneau. When we were walking along the trail to Point Bridget, or sitting on a rock overlooking the ocean, or later in the day at Eagle Beach, the town of Juneau seemed like such a distant thought, a faraway place, a very separate world from where we were at the time. It gives one the sense of traveling a great distance, of taking a trip, of escaping. That’s what it is(!) – the sense that one can escape on any given day only to return.

I won’t go into how beautiful and calm it was that day at Point Bridget, even though it was (Scott said he’d never seen Lynn Canal so glass-like and still). Or how warm the sun felt as we sat on the rock – the temperature seeming to exceed 70 making my layers silly and unwanted – looking across the water at a chain of snow-peaked mountains. Or how wondrous it felt to see those swans perched upon and eating from a mostly-frozen pond, another couple having already staked out the best look-out spot from which to observe (we saw more swans later at Eagle Beach). Or how perfectly textured Eagle Beach was, the undulating sandy ground. And the reason I won’t go into those things is because I will never be able to capture those moments or feelings or vistas in my own words. For describing nature, words have always failed me. It’s like I don’t speak that language.

Instead, here are some photos:

Our lunch spot at Point Bridget

Devil's club. Can you imagine taking a clumsy step and grabbing hold of one of these for balance?

A view of Herbert Glacier from Eagle Beach.

 

What I can write about is how I didn’t want this day out the road to end. The sense of freedom and escape combined with the warm ocean air and light, playful conversation made every element seem just right. It was the perfect spring day.