Inside Passage- Grass Is Greener Where You Water It
Grass Is Greener Where You Water It
One man's wilderness is another man's theme park. Somewhere between North Face fleece, glacier mist, and the heated pool on the Golden Princess, Alaska asks whether we are really seeing the landscape—or merely consuming it.
One man's wilderness is another man's theme park.
Inside the Passage
A moving view of the landscape behind the story—water, weather, scale, and the wilderness beyond the ship.
On a Cruise Ship, Nothing Fails Like Excess
You do not buy clothes. You wear them—North Face, Columbia, Patagonia—in roughly that order.
Same Shirt, Different Day
North Face gear is on almost everyone aboard. It takes me back to Scrabster, Scotland, when I wore the same gear every day—and somehow managed to lose the jacket.
Read ScrabsterGlacier Mist at the Speed of Trust
As I swim laps in the Golden Princess' heated pool, 250-year-old glacier mist hits my face at the speed of trust.
I have to reconsider an old assertion: if Hollywood is loneliness beside the swimming pool, then Norway is solitude by the fjords.
Read Norway's Western FjordsI am safe in the solitude of being a tourist. It plays more like a Disney animated feature than a true Alaskan adventure.
Everyone Has a Photographic Memory
Not everyone develops it.
For Real
At this point, all you need is Google and a holy instant to retrieve the image. But retrieval is not the same as memory, and memory is not the same as presence.
What you resist persists. Around here, that means rain.
Glacier Bay in Sepia
Glacier Bay draws closer and begins to read like a Hemingway story: spare, elemental, and bristling with subtext.
Mystery, Power, Vulnerability
Everything appears sepia-toned. The scale is immense, but the feeling is intimate. Nature is not background. It is the main character—mysterious, powerful, and vulnerable at the same time.
I love watching the sun on the water, but I do not have to go to the sun. I just love knowing it is there.
The same goes for Alaska. I may never return after this season, but I can imagine it. I am content knowing this vast wilderness is still there.
Grass Is Greener Where You Water It
Even after all this time, the sun and the mountains never say to the earth, “You owe me.” Look what happens with a love like that. It lights up the whole sky.
The Inside Passage is not asking whether Alaska is more beautiful than somewhere else. It is asking whether we are willing to give attention to the place we are already standing.