Upcoming events in Anchorage. I’d love to see you there!
October 4th. REI First Friday “Iconic Alaska” presentation and reading. Sign up here . Anchorage REI, 6 pm. (NOTE CORRECTED TIME).
October 10th. BP Energy Center. Alaska Book Week. Alaskans Writing Adventure with Roman Dial, Nancy Pfeifer, and Mike Gordon. BP Energy Center, 7 pm.
For anyone in Seattle or Bellingham, I have several events coming soon and I’d love to see you there! I’ll be sharing video, photos, and readings at some of my favorite venues. Please help me spread the word!
Friday, September 27th, Village Books
Monday, September 30th, Elliott Bay Bookstore
Tuesday, October 1st, Patagonia Ballard
I’m thrilled to have been selected as a finalist in the Banff Mountain Book Competition alongside Barry Lopez and many other incredible authors! I’ll be presenting at the Banff Festival in early November and can’t wait. Thanks for all your support of The Sun is a Compass!
Happy summer! For anyone in the Bay Area, I’ll be presenting slides, video, and a short reading from The Sun is a Compass at Book Passage in Corte Madera next Monday, August 12th. I’d love to see you there! If you have friends or family who live in the area and are interested in birds, wildlife, adventure, or Alaska, please share!
Event details: https://www.bookpassage.com/event/caroline-van-hemert-sun-compass-corte-madera-store
Swimming with dolphins, lounging with apes, or otherwise integrating myself into another species’ social folds has never been on my bucket list. I don’t feel the need to be physically close to wildlife to appreciate the amazing facts of their lives. In fact, when I’m watching animals, I’m often wearing my scientist’s cap, attempting to answer particular questions about their behavior while trying to avoid assigning my own human values to what I observe. But several days ago, as Chaika sailed with a pod of orca whales, the nearness of a magic underwater world nearly bowled me over.
When we first spotted black fins silhouetted against the shore of Baranof Island, the whales were distant off our port and I was content simply knowing they were there. But as we traveled north up Chatham Strait, they paralleled us, moving closer and closer. Soon we had fifteen orcas swimming around our boat, their movements purposeful and smooth. This was obviously not a chance encounter, but an inquisitive visit. Two other groups stayed much farther offshore, their blows appearing each time we scanned the water. Among the whales surfacing nearby, cows and their calves drew my attention most as they moved through the water synchronously, typically within a body’s length of each other and sometimes touching. The calves were many times my size, and clearly more powerful, but the way they clung so closely to their mothers’ sides made them appear as small and vulnerable as my own children had been as infants. One large male made a dramatic appearance as he surfaced in slow motion, his shiny black dorsal fin rising grandly like he owned the sea. And, in that moment, he did. Soon after, he spy-hopped—raising his head vertically from the water—and looked right at us. What might he have thought about a boat roughly the same size as himself, with a flapping white sail and several two-legged creatures dangling above his water world? I’ll never know, but I swear I saw curiosity staring back at me.
Our boys—aged 2 and 4—sat on deck in their rain gear and exclaimed, jumping with each noisy blow. “Wooooow!” “Orca whales!” “Are they diving to the very bottom of the ocean?” “There’s a mommy!” “There’s a daddy!” “There’s a baby!” “Where do they sleep without a bed?” Even in the midst of their excitement, they didn’t experience this whale sighting as an event to catalog in their minds as “the time I saw orcas up close,” but instead as a day, like every other, when whales happened to visit us. For this fact, I am grateful. I want my kids to grow up in a world in which the existence of whales and other wild creatures is not rare or imagined—to be read about in a book describing faraway places or distant times—but real, and every bit as necessary as our own lives.
Orcas are incredibly social animals, a fact I knew but didn’t fully appreciate until this encounter. They live in matrilineal family groups that together make up pods, which can consist of 40 animals or more. The whales we watched were piled upon themselves, their bodies often touching, or nearly so, as they rose to the surface. I won’t pretend to know enough about whale behavior to understand why they were in such frequent physical contact—play, feeding strategy, communication, bonding? Or, dare I say it, a cetacean expression of love?
The boys watched the whales for thirty minutes, then went down below to play a game of “surfing,” by jumping from cushion to mat on our tiny galley floor. In brightly-colored swim hats and shorts, their game was both hilarious and adorable. And it kept them occupied long enough for Pat and I to continue watching the whales as they swam nearby, gracing us with their presence for another hour or more. Pat climbed the mast for an elevated vantage and I stood in the bowsprit, as close to an orca as I likely ever will be. Until this encounter, I hadn’t noticed the gradations of color on orcas’ backs and necks—from jet black to ochre to a nearly translucent gray. Each one looked not like a generic whale but an individual with every bit of the distinctiveness of a human form. As they circled around our boat, I was anointed by whale breath.
We spent the last four weeks on Chaika, once again reminding ourselves of the pleasures of boat life—time to observe, the company of wildlife, the intimacy of small spaces. Of course there are also the challenges—managing frustrations when there’s nowhere else to go; soggy, smelly gear that dangles from every available hook; inefficiencies of work in a tiny, chaotic “office.” We traveled through Glacier Bay, meeting with another boat family (Lindsay and Graham on Sika) with their smiley 5-month-old daughter (“baby Mira”) and getting in a few days of boat-based skiing. We felt the fury of the Gulf of Alaska as we ventured outside Yakobi Island. We visited hot springs in one of the most magical places on earth. We saw dozens of humpback whales, hundreds of sea lions, and thousands of migratory birds on their spring migration. We were, once again, so very blessed to share in these experiences of the wilder sort.
Our dear friends, Jill Fredston and Doug Fesler, made the passage across the Gulf of Alaska to join us for our last days north up Lynn Canal. The boys were thrilled to once again have company besides their parents, particularly since it came with all-you-can-drink lemonade, tales from the sea, a sweet dog, and a collection of treasures that would inspire wonder in a kid of any age. The usually-fierce winds of Lynn Canal eased enough for us to anchor off the beach in front of our cabin, and we stayed here before returning Chaika to Haines. Until our next journey on the water, this will be her home. We will be at the cabin for several weeks, enjoying land-based adventures, catching up on projects, and stretching our sea legs.
Thanks to everyone for following along. I’ve been a bit behind in my posts, but please stay tuned for more photos, notes, and updates about cabin life and book events. I look forward to seeing many of you later this summer.
An article about sailing the Inside Passage with kids came out online this week in the New York Times travel section and is available in print this Sunday, May 19th. I hope you enjoy it!
I’m a bit behind on updates as these have been a busy couple of months—book launch, travel, skiing, and sailing. Thanks to everyone for the amazing support and, most of all, for reading! If you’re interested, you can find links to other recent interviews, podcasts, and book reviews here.
Pat’s view from the top of the mast!
Glacier Bay in springtime.
Audubon published an excerpt from The Sun is a Compass! Read about our journey through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge here: Wildlife Biologist Brings us on an Odyssey. Among bird-lovers, there is no greater compliment!
Feeling a bit of spring fever? You’re not alone! Check out a short piece about birds, spring, and migration I published in the LA Times Op-Ed section this morning: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-van-hemert-migration-birds-spring-20190310-htmlstory.html
I have a short piece coming out in the current issue of Sidetracked. For anyone who isn’t familiar with this adventure/travel outlet, it’s a beautifully designed magazine full of photographs and stories sure to inspire wanderlust. You can find more information here: https://sidetracked.bigcartel.com/product/sidetracked-volume-14
Sneak preview:
A travel van the size of an American suburban. Two boys with joie de vivre that never stops coming, and with it a steady stream of shouting, tears, laughter, and chaos. Four sets of toes touching in the night. A Christmas spent hiking over a remote mountain pass, my two-year on my back, my four-year-old discovering how far his legs can carry him. A front seat office crammed with duffel bags, Legos, water bottles, and the clothes we’d recently shed. Eight hour trail runs that took Pat and me (on alternate days) into the mountains and forests, where we could think, and feel, and sweat in the privacy of our own company. The Bar-tailed Godwits that flew from Alaska in the ultimate test of endurance. The lakes that were impossibly blue, even without rose-tinted sunglasses. The backcountry huts where we hushed our boys to sleep and I bivvied when a mountain run turned epic. The Morepork owl that chased moths in the dim porch light of a neighboring cabin. Days spent mostly outdoors in an island nation with so much to see. This was our New Zealand.
Perhaps I could write a guide on how to travel with children if you care little for personal space, quiet time, or locating a pair of clean socks on any given day. Ironically, I care a lot about all of these things, and yet I’m learning, little by little, to let them go. Our year of travel as a family has been less one of indulgence than restraint. Don’t yell, once again, about the fact that our clean spoons are being used as earth movers. Don’t groan when Huxley says he needs to use the toilet five minutes after we’ve stopped for a bathroom break. Try to ignore the messes and noise while typing a professional email from inside of a cluttered van or a tiny sailboat. In exchange, I’ve been offered the gift of watching my boys create imaginary worlds with sticks and mud. I’ve been humbled when Huxley notices birds before I do, and instructs me on how to avoid a slippery root in the trail. I’ve been privy to Dawson’s running commentary about trees and sheep and the dried figs he loves as he chats happily on my back. These are rare moments, I know. All too often, I’m guilty of forgetting the fact that childhood is short, and our time as parents to young children even shorter. On our multi-day backpacking trips in New Zealand, we met few families but many parents whose children are now grown. In those encounters, nothing and everything was said at once. The eyes of a mother lighting up at the sight of our chubby, towheaded toddler told me that I was fortunate, indeed. The grandpa who smiled at Huxley’s shyness, much like his own son two decades earlier, reminded me of the virtues of patience. The parents who said, again and again, “You will never regret this. Time passes much too quickly.”
Our trip to New Zealand is over, but our year is not. We’ve spent a couple of weeks in the Methow Valley of eastern Washington, staying in a lovely cabin that has allowed us to get our feet on the ground again, play in the snow with friends, and enjoy the fact of not packing up the van each day. Soon, we’ll head back to our cabin in southeast Alaska to see what winter on Lynn Canal might bring. We also have more travel in store this spring, in part due to my forthcoming book.
For anyone who doesn’t know, The Sun is a Compass will be released in late March and I’m looking forward to celebrating, in Anchorage and elsewhere. I have an event at the Anchorage Museum on March 20th: Book launch. I hope you can join me, and, if you’re interested, please consider pre-ordering: The Sun is a Compass. (I apologize for this shameless plug, but pre-ordering really does help authors as the strange algorithms that control the buying and selling of everything these days apparently do much of their work before a book has even been released into the world.) Thanks so much for the support and I look forward to seeing many of you soon!
