Aug 20, 8:00 p.m.

Well, here I am tucked safely away inside Williams Cove in Holcombe Bay sitting on my yellow camera bucket/camp stool, watching the tide roll away with a 30.07 rifle and my machete by my side. I pitched my tent on the highest piece of flatland I could find. It sits next to a small stream that drains a marshy area in back of me. Looking out across the cove, I can see various sized hunks of deep blue glacial ice drifting with the tide (which around here can vary 20 feet between high and low water levels). Across the cover an evergreen-covered point separates me from Tracy Arm. Huge glacier-capped mountains loom in the distance. The partly cloudy sky, which hugs the highest peak, is reflecting back traces of pink from the setting sun, but clouds seem to be on the increase from the south which may not bode well for tomorrow’s weather.

This is why I came here; to see the bald eagle, which just landed on the beach 50 feet from my camp, to worry about some lumbering bear tripping over my tent in the middle of the night, to experience the solitude and beauty of this place, to find out if I can fit comfortably into it for the next nine days, to stare deep into the blue glacier ice and realize that the surreal colors Church used to paint his icebergs were no exaggeration, to yell periodically into the forest behind me to alert any bears that might be there of my presence, to ponder the strange blend of feelings running through me, fear, joy, anticipation and an awakening of the senses.

Entrance to Tracy Arm