In The Land Before Time
Once upon this same earth, beneath this same sun, long before you, before the ape and the elephant, as well; before the wolf, the bison, the whale, before the mammoth and the mastodon, in the time of the dinosaurs. Now the dinosaurs were of two kinds. Some had flat teeth, and ate the leaves of trees, and some had sharp teeth for eating meat, and they preyed upon the leaf-eaters. Then it happened that the trees began to die. The mighty beasts who appeared to rule the earth, were, in truth, ruled by the leaf. Desperate for food, some of the dinosaur herds struck out to the west, in search of the Great Valley, a land still lush and green. It was a journey toward life.
And just like that, the avalanche-swept Chilkat Mountains rose above me, and the silver-grey saltwater of the Lynn Canal stretched out below. A transition of sinewy aspirations from summit to sea level, now as real as the dry bags rattling in the hatches of my loaner NDK Explorer.
It took two flights, a five-hour ferry, and months of planning, saving, and circling REI clearance racks to get here: Haines, Alaska. I’d come first for the Southeast Alaska Sea Kayak Symposium, followed by a five-day expedition along the northernmost stretch of the legendary Inside Passage. It did not take me twenty-four hours to understand why they call it that—inside. More than just the safest route along protected coastal waterways, paddling this breathtaking corridor invites a passage inward, too. Miles, not only through wilderness, but into one’s stowaway self.
In Alaska, rain doesn’t fall—it lingers. It seeps. Cold rises from the ground and settles into your bones, not with drama but with steady, quiet insistence. It doesn’t chill—it claims you, the way the sea claims a drifting log. Forty degrees in Southeast is not forty degrees in Summit County. I doubled my base layers, added a vest, and swapped gloves at the last minute. I accepted the dampness’ discomfort as part of the pristine domain we were about to enter: the realm of whales and grizzlies.
Then, on the morning of May 6, the journey was no longer lines on a chart. We left the land and our luggage behind. Just myself, my friend I., and our two skilled, steady guides. That first day’s paddle was a reminder—this is how the blade likes to slip into the water. And yes, if I engage my feet, my core takes over, and my shoulder thanks me later. Rain held off as we cruised through long black lines of ululating scoters, past sea lions rising vertically like pylons, and picture-perfect pocket beaches, until we landed on Shikoshi Island. Dinner was burritos: hot, fast, and deeply satisfying. We were ready to crawl into tents by nine, even as the northern sun remained tangled in the clouds, quilting a lavender glow over pewter waves.
While the guides scrubbed every molecule of food from our cookware down the beach, I climbed onto a rock, bear spray at my hip. Just far enough to feel alone, but close enough to still be within reach. I sat. The silence wrapped around me like an incoming tide, then tugged. Its immensity reached further inside my doubled-up puffies than the damp cold ever could. I was mesmerized by the magnificent stillness—and from nowhere, a thought surfaced: I wish my mom could see this. And then came the tears.
It’s been more than a decade since I cremated her, yet suddenly, the current of grief flowed fresh. But the land was vast enough—empty enough—to hold it. And so I let it be.
The Chilkats are younger than the Rockies, where I grew up and spend my winters now. Lower in elevation, yes, but unruly in a different way. They rest uneasily on a fault line, and their youth is palpable—soft glaciers slide down their flanks, moraines carving straight paths to the sea. No roads. No resorts. Just tectonics and time.
And yet, they are not untouched by age. They’ve seen things.
“That’s the Davidson Glacier,” says our guide, B. She points to a blue-brown cradle of ice tucked into rock high above. “In Muir’s time, it calved right into the water.”
A strange familiarity visited as the peaks played peekaboo with the setting sun. What does this remind me of? Then it clicked: an old-school TV. A VCR tape. An animated movie from the 1980s. I was five, maybe six. The Land Before Time.
I hadn’t thought of that film in decades. But it appears it’s carved into me like glacial striations in rock: the loss of a mother, the ache of separation, the quest for a new beginning that leads to belonging. Littlefoot’s journey to the Great Valley was not just a physical adventure—it was symbolic of loss, growth, and the pursuit of homecoming. The cycle is a quest, and the quest is a cycle.
The next morning, a black sliver of triangle sliced the water, not quite a whale—more a shadow moving on the backside of a wave.
“Orcas,” declared A., one of our guides. “They’re moving north through the channel. Do you see?”
I did not.
“There. Sometimes I swear people think I’m full of shit.”
The rain came, the rain went. The wind calmed. A stillness hovered in the air. When my fingers ached with the premonition of arthritis, or I struggled to pee through four layers, including a onesie beneath my drysuit, I uttered my secret, silent mantra: You chose this. You gave your time and money to be here. You chose this.
Morning crept on, bringing 20-knot winds, gusting higher. Too risky to cross. So we waited, boiled water, and watched the whitecaps. A long, extended lunch with a side of marine forecast: “southeast winds, 25 knots. Gusting 30. Seas three feet or less.”
When the wind eased off just enough that our guides decided we had a safe window, I imagined tipping into freezing water, soaking my tent, my sleeping bag. I pictured blowing my ferry angle and getting sucked toward the sea lion-covered rocks. Enormous and lurching, they were curious—maybe too curious. I repeated the mantra: You chose this.
And yet, as the days wore on and the landscape wore me into it, like moss and rivulets braiding down a mountainside, I began to wonder if I really did choose anything, ever, in this life. Or if all choices are really just a chain of reactions, like a current that can slacken and switch directions at any moment, driven here and there by the wind.
We reached the other side safely—mainland now—deep in bear country. I. collapsed in his gear on the beach, spray skirt like a blanket, PFD a pillow. The wind picked back up. The guides were pleased—we’d hit our timing perfectly. They started prepping dinner. I. woke and pitched his tent beside mine. We devoured our tortellini quietly. Tomorrow, we’d need to make up the lost miles—20 at least. As we turned to chocolate, A., remarked, “I see sun on the horizon.”
I took that thought with me to my sleeping bag. As I prepare to work as a sea kayak guide this summer—not in Alaska, but in Maine—this trip loaned me horizon enough to hear the quiet part of me say: this is why. There’s a reason I feel drawn to open charts and trace new routes while so many peers double down on marriages, children, careers. Watching A. and B. hang tarps, heat up coffee, call through the trees to find a bear-fence spot, I wondered: What kind of guide will I be? Will I be any good? Will I enjoy it?
When I was little, I wanted to be “an explorer.” My adults chuckled dismissively, first of all because I was a girl, and second because we live in modern times where, allegedly, nothing is left to explore. But my childhood heroes—Frodo, Littlefoot—they weren’t explorers in the mold of Shackleton. They left the known out of necessity, out of love. Because their world shifted beneath them, and home was no longer home. They had to move into the wild.
The realization surfaced gently, gradually, and repeatedly, like the mother humpback and her calf we saw on our third day. A chance emergence from the depths, just long enough to breathe.
Mom blew first—tall, loud. Then the calf, no bigger than a motorcycle, followed with a smaller puff. They glided alongside us, unbothered. A quorum of gulls and terns marked the bait ball beneath them. They knew we were there. But they also knew we meant no harm. So they carried on.
The Land Before Time. That’s what brought me to the cockpit of a sea kayak in the first place. Maybe what I’ve been seeking all along is not just to set free some mythical inner adventurer, but a more tender exploration of the primordial stillness beneath my decades of grief. The kayak offers a vessel to navigate the flows of our lives through time, connecting everything seen and unseen. The primordial isn’t distant or ancient—it’s as ordinary as pulling up the skeg and turning downwind.
In my boat, I am Littlefoot. Small, unsure, moving through immensity anyway. Or like the fire B. tried to start on our last, rainy night in Berner’s Bay. Soaked wood. No kindling. Nothing to catch. She kept at it. Then A. said, “The cutting board broke in my hatch earlier.”
“Let’s do it,” grinned B.
More firestarter. More blowing. And finally, a spark that didn’t die. A little fire, quietly kindled to life.
Many times, the earth beneath me has cracked—divorce, death, breakups, pandemic. On land, sharp-tooths abound: grizzlies, yes, but also dissonant personalities. But the Great Valley? That’s not a place. It’s a moment. A softening. A clearing. A hush where grief exhales, and loss gives contour to the course ahead.
When the seismic strikes, especially early in life, we survive by burying it in the noise of the busy. We make to-do lists, pay taxes, donate our dead loved ones’ things, and carry on. But the longing for the mother who once guided us—silently, skillfully—along the shore never really leaves. Sometimes, when the world grows big and quiet enough, that ache is allowed to pass through. Not to be fixed or banished—just witnessed and admired.
Littlefoot: I've never wandered so far from home.
Rooter: Oh, it's not your fault. It's not your mother's fault. Now, you pay attention to old Rooter. It is nobody's fault. The great circle of life has begun. But see, not all of us arrive together at the end.
Littlefoot: What'll I do? I miss her so much.
Rooter: And you'll always miss her. But she'll always be with you, as long as you remember the things she taught you. In a way, you'll never be apart, for you are still part of each other.
Littlefoot: My tummy hurts.
Rooter: Well—that, too, will go away with time, little fella. Only in time.
Our first full day back in time, on land in Juneau, happened to be Mother’s Day. It’s a day I’ve long preferred to ignore and chastise as empty capitalism at work. Those first few without her were so bitter—brunches and flower stands like salt in the wound. Then, over the years, it was easier to just pretend the day didn’t exist. But it does. Every May, with the cherry blossoms, it comes.
Maybe that’s what the Inside Passage truly taught me. The trip offered not just an epic route through remote, glacial inlets, but access to the remoteness inside me: grief, memory, wonder, it was all finally allowed to come out and take a look around. Though meditation teachers in snazzy city studios will muse aphoristically that you should be able to “find your Zen anywhere, even in the middle of Times Square,” for me, it took five days in the Alaskan backcountry to unmoor my deepest feelings from memory’s anchor and let them roam free for a little while.
On Sunday, as I.’s tour guide friend showed us the sights of Juneau—among them mothers and daughters and mothers and sons weaving through gift shops and trailheads—I didn’t flinch. I didn’t avoid. I just moved among them. I chose to be here. And I’d choose it again. I ate my Eggs Benedict. I let it be.