Published in Our Alaska: Personal Stories about Life in the North, edited by Mike Doogan, Epicenter Press, 2001
Most people would consider climbing Denali the quintessential Alaskan experience, but here’s a well kept secret: the true Alaskan experience is inhabiting the present and nowhere is it easier to do than in riding the ferry. So few places exist where we can live fully in the present. The Alaskan ferry is one of those places.
From afar, the blue-and-white ferries may look like cruise ships, but they are not. They are a special form of public transportation where all classes of people travel together and most are Alaskans. There is a casual democracy on the ferry: people routinely sleep on the floor and bring food on board and set up tents outside on the decks. As with riding the Greyhound bus in other places, riding the ferry is an essential part of public transportation in Alaska. Like trucks down south, the ferries also transport necessary goods to coastal communities. Operated by the state of Alaska, the ferries run on a marine highway rather than an asphalt one.
The best part about being on the ferry is just that: BEING. It is blissfully easy on the ferry to exist in the present. Point of fact: I have never seen a cell phone used on a ferry. No one has an appointment. No one is rushing off to an important meeting. No one is channel surfing the TV. No one is checking email. No one is running to answer the phone. In fact, no phones ring at all. There is no agenda, no tight schedule, no tasks to complete, and no “to do” list pending. Without the busy nonsense that characterizes our lives, passengers are free to be. The ferries cruise slowly through the green water, barely even leaving a wake. For people who want to get somewhere quickly, this mode of transportation does not work. It’s like life – you are not in control because someone else is at the helm – your job is to enjoy the ride. The greatest gift of the ferry is that it offers the NOW. More than anything, it is an out-of-time experience – bounded only by arrival and departure times.
Most of the trips our family makes are to the north from Juneau to Haines where we have a cabin. The journey takes four-and-a-half hours. Off a road system, Alaskans don’t measure distance by miles, but by time spent travelling. As with an airplane flight, a place is a number of hours away, not a number of miles. I couldn’t tell you how many miles it is to Haines. Four-and-a-half hours is enough time to lounge in the solarium (the outdoor covered area) watching other people, to stand outside on the deck while mountains and water, fishing boats, and the occasional dolphin and whale roll by. I even saw a deer swimming once. It is time enough to sit in the cafeteria and eat greasy French fries with my daughters who love “ferry food.” It is time enough to sleep, write letters, take a shower, and gab with friends and relatives.
However, the contented feeling of being in the now only starts when our family actually is on board the ferry. Before that, we pack our car until it can’t hold anymore and then race out to the ferry terminal in order to line up two hours ahead of time. We hate this part. We don’t know why we have to show up two hours ahead of time, but we are afraid that we will get bumped if we don’t. As the ferry runs 24 hours a day, this means that theoretically, we can be on it at any hour. Although it can’t be true, it seems as though departures and arrivals are always in the wee hours of the morning. The truth is that the ferry runs on eternal time as the rise and fall of the tides dictate much of the schedule.
Arriving at the ferry terminal is actually the first shifting down of gears to SLOW. Ferry terminals are like airports used to be down south. They are small enough so that you can still see everyone who just got off the boat and watch everyone else getting on. Every year, it seems that RVs get bigger. Every year, we wonder why there isn’t a national law restricting the size of a vehicle.
So we sit in our car with the engine off, usually cold, bundled up, drinking out of a thermos, reading, and looking around at the other people in their cars: many of us resemble a scene out of Grapes of Wrath because of the quantities of stuff we’ve tied to the outsides of our cars. We don’t dare go to the bathroom because at any moment there might be a hand wave from the crew signaling our line to get on. Meanwhile, we watch as everybody else gets on before we do – the containers, the huge RVs, plus all of the cars and motorcycles and bicycles. We wonder how they are going to cram all of us in. We practice patience. We eye the RVs. Some of them are the size of buses. Some of them are buses—filled with people from far away. If they get on before us, we gnash our teeth, thinking about the sleeping spaces that are rapidly disappearing. Because we frequently sleep on the ferry, we have a vested interest. Sometimes I wonder why there isn’t one big dorm somewhere on the ship where we can all go to sleep on bunks. As it is, all of the passengers without staterooms sleep together on the floor. I never get on the ferry without my Thermarest, my sleeping bag, a towel, a toothbrush, a deck of cards and a good book.
Once our family moves forward to go down the ramp, we are so grateful to be getting on that we burble happily to the purser, who checks our tickets and asks us how we are. Ferry personnel are usually cheery and friendly and helpful. Except for the ones on the car deck. I think they are much more serious because while they are guiding each vehicle in and making sure that we are squeezed in tighter than spawning salmon in a little creek, they are also getting asphyxiated with the fumes from the engines.
After we park on the dark car deck, and set our brake, we are officially freed from the bonds of time. Our next task is to try to get out of the car, and sometimes it takes the flexibility of a circus contortionist. Then we walk sideways in between the RVs and containers, ducking under the mirrors that stick out. The stairs that lead up to the passenger decks are steep, but we rarely take the elevator, no matter what we’re carrying. I guess it is misplaced pride. Our young adult children remind us that the elevator is only for those who really need it. Upstairs, we head to our favorite hangouts. We hardly ever go into the forward lounge of any of the ships except for the Columbia and the Kennicott. They are just not very cozy. Once we get settled together, we immediately move off to explore our surroundings – we want to see who’s on, what’s for dinner, when the gift shop opens, and if the solarium is packed.
I have a confession to make here. At this point, we are breaking one of the few rules on the ferry. No saving of seats. This is a rule that makes a great deal of sense when the ship is very crowded but it doesn’t at other times. It is a rule that also runs contrary to the typical instinctive behavior of humans. People claim territory that they want to keep for the whole trip and they mark it with their gear. No one wants to find another seat after every bathroom trip. I was on one ship where a territorial claim led to a fistfight – not surprisingly, it was in the middle of the night right after the bar had closed. You can learn a great deal about human behavior on a crowded ferry, especially at night.
Fistfights notwithstanding, Alaskan ferries encourage bonding in a way that other modes of transportation do not. Part of it must be the shape – roundish and big enough to walk around on. The internal design helps too – every ferry harbors homey little nooks. We all become a temporary community while we are on board. It sure doesn’t happen on a train. The only time I felt part of a community on a train was in Spain when I was the only one with a corkscrew. And in Alaska, with a small population, the recognition factor is high: just as you always know someone on Alaska Airlines, you always know someone on the ferry. But it’s big enough to get away if you must.
When taking a stroll on the ferry, the most frequent sight is of people enjoying one another’s company. Families lounge together, classmates read together, couples eat together, teammates talk together and young children play together. The last time we traveled from Haines, our extended family played a cutthroat game of Hearts for hours in the cafeteria, happily keeping score on napkins. People discover the abundant entertainment value of other people when they have the time to do so. To my mind, people discover what is important.
The ferry system has been operating for 37 years. And I have had the privilege of riding for 32 years. I have ridden the ferry dozens of times. I have been on the ferry with my daughter’s third grade class, with the basketball team from Wrangell, with the high school band from Sitka, with my relatives, by myself, with my women friends, with other writers, with my husband, with my daughters, with my neighbors, with countless tourists from all over the world, backpackers, car campers, RVers, and elder hostellers. And the experience has always been a mixture of humdrum and adventure, a sort of floating summer camp with the ferry personnel acting as camp counselors who aren’t too rigid about their campers’ behavior. On one memorable trip with a rowdy bunch of women friends, I remember a very polite purser. We were singing our hearts out late at night on the deck because the stars were actually visible. He asked us to keep it down, as some of the other passengers in the solarium didn’t realize that stars are a rare sight in Southeast Alaska and they wanted to sleep.
What I like most about the ferries – unlike my children, it is definitely not the food – is the timelessness – it is one of the few places left where a person can just be and feel part of eternity. The mountains have been here for eons as have the waters and all of the sea creatures and the birds and as we cruise through, it works its magic and we feel calm and a part of all that is.
