by Aleria Jensen, Juneau, adult category

We motor the skiff toward the rocky shore and cut the engine, drifting in the sun. Chunks of quartz shine white along a shell-covered berm, lupines wave their indigo spires from the forest’s edge. We ease ourselves over the aluminum bow, water meeting our Xtra-Tufs at ankle height. The island is small, less than the size of a city block. Despite years of living just a few miles away, we’ve never explored it.

There’s nothing like landing on a new shore in southeast Alaska. Something heady about the rise from the sea, the lean of a cliff face, the crunch underfoot. Twists of driftwood tangle among boulders. Goosetongue pokes out of gravel. The breath of a humpback hangs on the horizon. A feeling of discovery follows us up the beach.

Wandering the high tide line, we suddenly stop short. A depression in the mussel and clam shards. Two perfect olive-colored eggs, speckled in black. Oystercatcher. An intake of breath. One egg is shaking. For a few seconds, we crouch transfixed. Cracks appear. A hole. Then the curl of a small wet wing.

Hunched on the beach, spellbound, we are knocked back to our senses by the high-pitched alarm call of a nearby parent. Guilty for disturbing these birds, but gripped by this moment of witness, we back off and turn for the boat, leaving the new family to tend to one another.

It’s these intimate and unexpected moments that lodge the Tongass in my heart. You’d think you’d become complacent, living in a place day in and day out. It would feel like an old flannel shirt, comfortably settling against your skin. Which it does—the Tongass is familiar, an old friend. But we can never know it. The longer we live here, the more mystery unfolds.

In this archipelago of land and sea, there are so many opportunities for awe. The first time you see herring eggs blanketing a beach, mounds of them cemented to seaweed and rock. The nagoonberry patch in a meadow where you weren’t expecting it, red berries winking at you to savor their flavor. Your first owl. An underwater tentacled forest of white plumed anemones.

I find myself drawn to the nuances, the subtleties, the details of this place. Like most people, I love the bear sighting, the whale sighting, the glaciers, the view from a peak. This is a big, wild land and there is much to be humbled by. But the small things carry the greatest delight. Give me oystercatchers, calypso orchids, chitons. Give me sundews in muskeg, like tiny red earmuffs. Give me jackpine, stunted and old. Fireweed leaves crimson with fall. A pair of marbled murrelets on the wing. Hemlock seedlings on a nurse log, rising from a crochet of moss. Sunflower stars at low tide, the color of alpenglow. That’s what gets me deep down under the ribcage. So many little lives to love.

The Tongass has a way of weaving itself into our senses. Any of us can close our eyes, or look out the window, and it comes alive. The texture of rockweed. Cold mist against your skin. The sound of rain in alders. The silver faces of cottonwood leaves swinging in wind. The way sunlight falls through a canopy of devil’s club. The scent of wet fern and false hellebore when you enter the subalpine. The first taste of king salmon on your tongue every spring.

And we, in turn, become a part of this landscape. Our voices mingle with scoter, raven, thrush. Our sweat soaks the earth as we near the summit of a peak. Our breath taken in by every green thing. Our gratitude—for every detail.