What Do You Tell Yourself in the Bay of Disenchantment?

Two men looked at the same Alaskan coastline.  They were two men from a non-ending stream of travelers, fortune seekers and adventurers. One came as an explorer and the other a naturalist, both scientists, in a way, on a quest of discovery.Spaniard Alesandro Malaspina came to the Alaska coastline looking for passage, a travel route over the top of the world to join trade routes from Europe.He came seeking the fabled Northwest Passage.Malaspina came with two ships - the Desubierta and the Atrevida - ships designed for performing scientific inspections and for mapping the coast. His officers, all volunteers, were navy men, but had also specialized in scientific studies. They joined him on a five-year trip, an exploration that began in 1789 and lasted until 1794. 

According to ship logs, when they came upon one section of the Alaskan coastline, Malaspina loaded two small boats with supplies for 15 days. He led a mapping party that poled and skirted around a precarious field of floating icebergs, being watchful not to be tossed into the freezing waters by a calving newborn. The expedition came to a halt when the party came face to face with a solid wall of ice several hundred feet high.

Discouraged and resigned, Malaspina named the bay Desengano - a word for "deceit, or a sudden, disappointing revelation. English cartographers subsequently softened Malaspina's apparent bitterness, translating the name into the milder Disenchantment Bay." *

 

Along came the second man about 100 years later. John Muir.

 

The Scottish born Californian traveled the inside passage of the Alaska coastline in October 1879 in a dugout canoe paddled by four Tlingit men. Already known for his love of Yosemite, Muir came to see glaciers first-hand, to find out the part they played in the shaping of a landscape. With him was a Presbyterian missionary, Samuel Hall Young.

 

The icy wilderness fascinated Muir and while others made camp, he was often drawn to do his own exploring.

 

"Why does Muir climb mountains in the middle of a storm," the Tlingits asked while warming themselves around a fire one evening.

 

"To seek knowledge," answered Young. **

 

After one such adventure, Muir returned to exclaim, "Man, man, you ought to have been with me. You'll never make up for what you have lost today. I've been wandering through a thousand rooms of God's crystal temple. I've been a thousand feet down in the crevasses, with matchless domes and sculpted figures and carved ice-work all about me. Solomon's marble-and-ivory palaces are nothing to it. Such purity, such color, such delicate beauty." **

 

One coastline. Two men. Two reactions.

One man saw a blockade. The other saw a thousand rooms.

One man saw the end of a dream. The other saw an endless opportunity.

One man labeled the day, Disappointing Revelation.

One man named the day, Matchless Beauty.

What do you do when you find yourself gazing at the Bay of Disenchantment?

What do you name your own disappointments?

Do you find yourself saying at the end of the day, "You should have been with me. You'll never make up for what you lost today."

 

* from the Blue Bear By Lynn Schooler.

** from Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve By Kim Heacox.

I am looking for some survivors and caregivers who are interested in answering some questions for a series on Life After Cancer. If you would like more information, please email me at lynnehartke@aol.com.