A Kodiak Hurricane & Winter Safari!
The hurricane comes first. It blew crazy yesterday. Here’s the channel into the harbor.
But our hurricane force winds in Alaska are never named. They’re too many of them . ..
Just before the blow I went on a Kodiak winter Safari. I’ve been on Safari before: in Kenya, South Africa, and driving across Rwanda and Burundi years ago. (Not the fancy glamping kind, just the drive-around-in-a-truck kind. NOTHING beats giraffes!)
BUT this weekend safari came close. Even though it’s winter, and we’re iced down in a Narnia world . . .
But look at the life going on!
Do you see? Throngs of silver salmon, returning late to the river to spawn. (I’ve never seen them spawn among the ice before . ..) And if there are salmon, there are also . …. these. We counted nearly 100 of them around the lake.
And in the next few minutes, these creatures all showed up!
And then the tundra swans . …about 50 of them.
We sat and watched from our car as the eagles fished, the salmon spawned, the dipper dipped, the swans swam, the ermine snuck, and the kingfisher churred. Such feasting! So much life! So much death, yes, and ——-Love. I received it all as a gift . …
In the midst of my winter blues, all that ice—-
is life. More life than I could imagine in such cold.
Who brought me here? How did He know
how tired I was, how weary,
how famished my soul?
And there, a creature among creatures
I sat and drank in their drinking,
I sat and fed on their feeding—-
this Eden so rich, I carry its meat still,
my heart, my belly as filled,
as the eagle, the dipper, the swan.
In love, You open your hand to us all.
