{"id":1489,"date":"2012-07-13T11:33:09","date_gmt":"2012-07-13T19:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=1489"},"modified":"2012-07-13T11:33:09","modified_gmt":"2012-07-13T19:33:09","slug":"the-roar-of-solitude-skagway-07102012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=1489","title":{"rendered":"The Roar of Solitude \u2013 Skagway \u2013 [07\/10\/2012]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I am ever a childe of wind and wave<\/em><\/p>\n

I was supposed to go on a 6 hour round trip hike today to Upper Dewey Lake. Ultimately the voice of sanity won over the desire to socialize and I decided against the endeavor \u2013 a little bit of further research into the trail after the fact proved that this had in fact been a very wise decision on my part. While I\u2019m in good shape (you don\u2019t dance for twenty+ years without being in decent shape) I don\u2019t think I\u2019m really ready to face a three hour trek up the mountain that ends in snow<\/em>. I speak the truth, all the reviews say that the trail is not for the faint hearted, and that if you do<\/em> decide to brave it before August the last quarter of the steep uphill climb will be finished in the snow.<\/p>\n

Nope, not for me.<\/p>\n

But staying cooped up on the ship didn\u2019t seem the greatest option either. Though these days it\u2019s not unusual to find me wrapped in my blanket in my room watching something as mindless as the X-Files<\/em> …but I digress.<\/p>\n

I ended up walking the two and a half hours to the Reid falls with a friend of mine.<\/p>\n

There are few areas in Alaska that are away from the jabbering jostling crowd of ever-present tourists and the stores that cater to them. Especially a tiny town like Skagway where most people don\u2019t venture beyond the main street \u2013 but fortunately the friend I was with knew her way around enough that she could steer us well clear of the worst of the crowds. So it was that we followed the train tracks around the far side of the town, and wandered up to the much less crowded trail to the waterfall.<\/p>\n

The way to the falls cuts through the gold rush cemetery, something I didn\u2019t know, and was therefore unprepared for. But the thing about the cemetery is that it isn\u2019t a real<\/em> cemetery at all. It\u2019s a movie set. Or rather the equivalent of one. Most of the graves aren\u2019t even occupied \u2013 the headstones have been built and set up in recent years solely for the benefit of the tourist trade. There are perhaps two or three real graves on the sight. Something that those of you who know me well will understand that I was grateful for. Since there\u2019s no real history in the cemetery there was nothing keeping me there, so we just walked onwards, pausing only to comment on the local hero\u2019s grave \u2013 a monument to the man that saved the town from the con-artist \u201cSoapy\u201d Smith and gave his life in the process. You could hear the falls from the cemetery and they only get louder as you get closer.<\/p>\n

For a water-girl, there is nothing like that first sight of a waterfall. I\u2019ve been ill the last few days, and I still am, but for the moment that I stood on the bank of those falls and listened to the roar in my ears and felt the coolness of the spray on my skin I felt like I could have jumped mountains.<\/p>\n

You can climb out to the very centre if you want a really good picture but I\u2019m not that\u00a0 brave<\/em><\/p>\n

Before the words had even fully cleared my friend\u2019s lips I was looking hungrily at the rocks that hop-scotched out to the centre of the rapids. To a girl who grew up clambering over rocks in the ocean as a child, and who has never had any fear of the sea \u2013 or of water in any form \u2013 those rocks were an easy climb. You could almost walk out on them without having to worry about your balance, as long as you have good shoes.<\/p>\n

This is then, how I managed to get the picture. Being me, I also scrambled like a monkey as far up the side of the falls as I could before I realized that any higher would be a waste if I didn\u2019t have more battery power on my camera. But I\u2019m sure at some point in the season I\u2019ll go back with an empty memory card and a full camera battery and see just how high I can scale.<\/p>\n

I spend a lot of time being a human battery for other people; it\u2019s nice to be able to recharge myself once in a while. After all, I\u2019m of no use to anyone if I can\u2019t keep my own mental balance…<\/p>\n

Waterfalls…nature\u2019s battery chargers…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am ever a childe of wind and wave I was supposed to go on a 6 hour round trip hike today to Upper Dewey Lake. Ultimately the voice of sanity won over the desire to socialize and I decided … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,4,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alaska","category-below-the-waterline","category-ports-of-call"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-o1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}