Rain

Our boat is quiet and seems a bit bigger now that it is just Tim and me again. Morning comes early. It never gets completely dark in the summer here.  I awake and arise at 3:30 and already the harbor is alive with the fishing fleet.  Rain is falling in steady small drops.  Yesterday was a misty day, tomorrow it may be big ol’ fat rain. This is a watery world where it is typical for it to rain up to 225 inches a year.  Without this rain, there would be no snow fields, icebergs, glaciers, waterfalls, rivers, lakes, nor would the Tongass* be what it is, the last great rain forest of sitka spruce and hemlock. More than 75% of Southeast Alaska lies within the Tongass National Forest.  If I were home, it’s possible I would be grumpy but here, I am in love with the rain, the mist and fog, the natural beauty that would not exist without it. 

Yesterday, Tim and I changed the oil in the boat, discovered and repaired a leaky engine hose, provisioned up, showered up, cleaned the boat and retrieved our clean, folded laundry.  I wish we could stay one more day here to capture images but Tim wants to head south asap.  We need to time our passage through Peril Strait with the current.  I hope we see the whales again.

*I have seen it spelled both ways, with one s and with two.

"One day it started raining, and it didn't quit for four months.  We been through every kind of rain there is.  Little bitty stinging' rain and big ol' fat rain, rain that flew in sideways, and sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath." (Forrest Gump)