kayaks were stuffed to the gills with camping gear: a tent, three sleeping bags, foam mattresses, a camp stove and cooking gear, food for four or five days (because you never know how long you will need to stay), and a first aid kit, plus fishing rods and cameras. Sitting in the kayaks, we were completely covered by spray skirts that hung over our shoulders and snugged up around the edge of the cockpit. We all wore life vests, each one of which carried a whistle and strobe light. In addition, I carried a VHF radio and an emergency position indicating locator beacon, or EPIRB, strapped to the outside of my kayak.
Paddling at about 2 miles per hour, our journey should take us two to three hours to cross the open channel between Kodiak and Spruce Island, depending on winds and currents. The day was partly overcast and there was a light wind from the southeast. Although there was little surface chop, a gentle 2- to 3-foot swell rolled underneath us. We paddled with a steady rhythm, stroking on one side then the other, rotating the paddle in our wrists to get the correct angle and keeping the blades close to the water so they would not drip onto us. With little to focus on except the waves, you could drift into a zenlike state and forget all about regular life, work, and all its associated stresses.
Ten years earlier, I had made this trip with a group of friends. Humpback whales were feeding in the channel then, so we had paddled over for a closer look. For a few minutes the whales were all underwater, so we stopped paddling to see where they would surface. Suddenly, one came up about 100 feet from me, heading straight in my direction, like a freight train bearing down on my kayak. I paddled as fast as I could to get out of the way. But the whale also changed course too and came up again, this time closer to me. I tried paddling away, but it was too late. About 30 feet from my kayak the whale dove, turning his body vertically in the water and raising his flukes up in the air before sinking beneath the waves. The flukes were as wide as my kayak was long, and I felt the water splashing off them. Before I knew it, the whale sounded and glided beneath me. I was stunned. It was an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime encounter, and few would have believed it if it hadn’t been photographed by another kayaker downwind from me, who later gave me a copy of the photo.
Getting “fluked” as a humpback whale dives beneath my kayak.
I thought about that experience now as I paddled and wondered if we would see more whales. I didn’t really want to get that close to them again, especially with my family in tow. For most of the trip we kept the kayaks within a few yards of each other, but sometimes we would separate a little farther if one of us took a break from paddling. Occasionally, a swell came up between us, and all I could see was Meri’s head above the water as her kayak settled into the trough on the other side of the wave. But it didn’t worry me because the water and wind were fair. The middle of the channel was over 600 feet deep. I know, because I had spent a week cruising the bottom of it in the Delta back in 1991. As we got closer to Spruce Island and the water shallowed, the swells died down and a light chop arose. About a mile from Spruce Island, Meri woke me out of my paddling rhythm.
“What’s a rock doing out here in the middle of the channel?” she asked. “And why is it moving?” I looked to my left where she was pointing and saw a gray pyramid rising from the water. It was indeed moving at the same speed we were.
“That’s no rock,” I said. “That’s a shark.”
A second later both Meri and Cailey were holding their paddles over their heads and shrieking.
“Stop screaming,” I shouted, adding to the din. “It’s not going to attack us. Put your paddles in the water and start paddling.”
They took off so fast I could almost see a rooster tail rising from the back of their kayak. I stifled a laugh. Then the shark began circling closer and cruised by just 6 feet away from my kayak, or at least it seemed that close. I could see that it was a salmon shark, her deep black eye looking right at me. It was a female, I knew, because only females come to Kodiak in order to feed on salmon returning to the streams to spawn. The males all stayed down in Washington or California somewhere, hanging around an offshore bar, the lazy bums. Salmon sharks came every summer and were commonly seen in Monashka Bay, near where we started our journey, because a small stream that empties into it has a strong run of pink and silver salmon. There weren’t many salmon in the middle of the channel though, so the shark must have been attracted by the noise of our paddles. Deciding that I wasn’t on her menu, she soon disappeared.
Meri and Cailey had entered the maze of little islets protecting Icon Bay from the ocean swells and were hunkered down in a cove, waiting for me. Happy to see that I was still in one piece, they paddled up to me as we excitedly discussed our amazing encounter for a few minutes before continuing our journey, meandering among the islets and coves until we reached the beach in Monk’s Lagoon. There, we set up camp, made dinner, and built a fire on the beach to roast marshmallows before climbing into our sleeping bags for a well-earned rest.
The land around Monk’s Lagoon is owned by the Ouzinkie Native Corporation and is part of the village of Ouzinkie, about 5 miles up the channel from Icon Bay. The word Ouzinkie is Russian for “narrow,” because the channel is narrow, and the village sits at its narrowest point. Although there were several no-trespassing signs around, we had visited Monk’s Lagoon before; it was a common destination for adventurous sightseers, so we didn’t think anyone would mind us camping there as long as we were respectful of the property.
That night, Meri and I both had disturbing dreams. I dreamed that some monks and Natives came to hold a church service, and we were camping right in the middle of their church. Meri dreamed that some local people came to kick us out. Still in the clutches of my dream, I heard a high-pitched droning sound, like that of an outboard engine. A minute later, I realized it was an outboard engine. I jumped out of my sleeping bag, threw on some clothes, and climbed out of the tent. Soon a small skiff pulled up on the beach, and out climbed a local Native and a man dressed like a monk. The latter we had met before; he was part of a group of self-styled monks who had settled in Monk’s Lagoon several years previously. I say self-styled because they were not part of the Alaskan Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church, to which all the local Natives belonged. Most of the new monks were from California, and we had become friends with several of them. The new monks had built a very nice church or monastery in the woods just behind the beach and had begun to live there. But they had done so without permission from the Ouzinkie Native Corporation and eventually were told to leave. Nonetheless, they had remained on speaking terms with the Natives.
On this day, one of the Natives and one of the monks came to examine the church of Saint Herman, a mile back in the woods. They quizzed us briefly. Did we know what this place was? That it was holy to them? That it was private property? Yes, we answered, of course we knew, and that’s why we had come to see it. We assured them we would respect the place and leave no trace of our visit, and that seemed to reassure them. After all, we were not the first visitors, and more would surely come. In fact, their visit was in preparation for the pilgrimage that would take place in August, a few weeks later. Expecting the arrival of up to a hundred people, they were preparing the church to receive the visitors.
Father (now Saint) Herman had lived and died in a small hut in the woods, several hundred yards up from the beach. One hundred years after his death, in the 1930s, a new church was built farther back in the woods, and Saint Herman’s body was buried beneath it. That church was now over seventy years old and was starting to decay. Its foundation was rotting due to its location in the middle of a rainforest. Because of the condition of the church, Saint Herman’s remains had been moved to Kodiak several years earlier and reburied under a replica of his original church. Over the summer, carpenters and volunteers had come to work on the church in the forest at Monk’s Lagoon. Slowly, they replaced the foundation, the roof, and the siding, and even built a large deck that was able to hold the crowd that would come for the pilgrimage.
After breakfast, we followed the path back into the woods toward the church. Every few yards, we found small wooden plaques with a painting of a saint nailed to a tree by the path. During the pilgrimage, the faithful would stop at each icon for a short prayer. Today we just looked and remarked at the beautiful setting, surrounded by stately spruce