Ketchikan in Mist

Between Ketchikan and Wrangell, on the M/V Matanuska

Today we made our first stop: Ketchican. I’d woken in thick mist, the ghost of mountains to either side, water as glass. I stayed in my nest enjoying the contrasting warmth against the freezing breezes reaching the back wall of the solarium where I was holed-up. I watched Damion exit his fluttering tent further out on the deck and commence the morning. At six-thirty an adult roused the sleeping teenagers who would be disembarking on arrival in port. As they packed up I was pleased to note the donning of gumboots – an item of clothing I have read in the guidebook as being common attire in Alaska’s South East. I love gumboots. I am unsure why they are necessary in Alaska’s South Eastern towns, but will enjoy the unfolding of this little story.

After sharing breakfast with Damion (destination: Whittier) and Robin (destination: Haines), we dock, still in impenetrable mist. The three of us caught a taxi into town with the Big Man – an enormous hulk who, according to my companions, had an odour to match his size. He did his home town proud in our five minute cab ride, offering the fullest rendition of town history, trivia, and intrigue that time would allow.



We were deposited near a picturesque creek that was deeply embedded into the rock upon which wooden trellis on trellis of quaint housing had been built up the steep hillside. Ketchikan is a very steep island. Vertival wooden staircases lead to horizontal wooden footpaths, jutting out from the sheer hillside, and leading to doorways of charming wooden houses. We ventured up one such staircase and down the path to find ourselves upon someone’s doorstop. Poor locals, I thought. We felt intrusive, and I had to resist the strong desire to follow the horizontal wooden pathway in the opposite direction, and instead descend once more to street level, and discrete tourism.

From everything the mist rose. The wood that composed most of the visible built world in Ketchican – railings, houses, paths, exhaled warm, white breath. We were snap happy. From the shorefront small domestic and large commercial boats delighted us with color and titles, ‘Hootchi Cootchi, and the old battler, ‘Edith H Grayce’. There were no seals frollicking where fresh water met the salty, as the Big Man had suggested there might be, but we didn’t mind. A brisk and much needed walk back to the ferry gave us enough time for a stretch, a beer donated from the weird-around-women man, and to scurry back on as the fog horn sounded.