A man finds himself, on a cruise ship

Henry Gunn pressed his gloved hands over his ears and shuddered in the blast of the foghorn. The sound waves, funnelled by the walls of the gorge, mixed with the whoops of delight from passengers onboard the Prince Olaf, vibrated sheets of ice from the Hubbard glacier. Henry thought it was like watching a frozen palace topple into the sea, mortared to smithereens by a battery of decibels. He was squashed against the rail of the front deck, between his wife, and a gaggle of camera-happy tourists from Europe, including the Petersons, a couple they had befriended from Stockholm of similar age and earning bracket. The correct term for a sea glacier shedding ice was 'calving.' But stood cheering this destruction, Henry thought the word ridiculously inappropriate.

Judy, his wife of forty years, asked him for the camera. He passed it over the shoulders of feather down jackets and woolly hats. When she had the strap he peeled away from the crowd and sneaked back to the cabin.

The Alaskan Wilderness Cruise was a combined gift from their three daughters, a 40th anniversary holiday, 'A second honeymoon,' his wife had joked. Henry still called his daughters 'the girls,' despite the fact they were all mothers. Since they had embarked on their own lives, he always pictured them racing away from home like clippers off the shore, sails snapping in the breeze on a sunny day as he waved goodbye.

He guessed they had sensed his boredom of retirement, and booked the holiday to invigorate his stale days pottering about the garden.

A cruise probably seemed a good compromise. After thirty years as a dental hygienist, Judy had developed arthritis in her ankles, and struggled to walk further than a couple of miles. Henry, a keen hiker on their trips to Yorkshire, would walk the cliff paths for miles, leaning into the bracing winds of the North Sea, while Judy pottered around the galleries and teashops of Whitby and Staithes. 'Cruising the Alaskan wilderness onboard the luxurious Prince Olaf,' chirped the glossy brochure, 'combines both comfort and adventure, as port excursions include dogsled rides, whale watching, and visits to First Nation villages.

' Yes, they had photos of humpbacks breaching. On the first morning the entire dining room leapt from plates of poached eggs and salmon to snap a killer whale and her calf. They had watched sea lions gambolling in the wake, and shot video of the ghostly Northern Lights, dancing with the rising steam from their cups of hot chocolate.   

But for Henry, the wonders of the cruise had been like watching the Discovery Channel on his plasma TV. Clarity and startling colour, but without the close-ups.

He had never been so frustrated and bored, trapped even. While he slumped stupefied on another all-you-can-eat smorgasbord, Judy chatted freely among the other passengers, fluttering from one couple to another on gusts of small talk. Among the cliques in the saloon Henry felt like an awkward guest at a party in his own house.

The night before the Prince Olaf moored in Resurrection Bay, he swiped his credit card on the satellite phone and called his eldest daughter, Faye. 'She's off gossiping with the other passengers,' he told her. 'You know what she's like after a couple of wines.' Faye suggested they needed time apart, and that even the closest couples fall out when cooped together. 'True,' he agreed, even though the ship was the size of a small town, and their cabin and balcony more than ample.

'Maybe I should do something different at the next port,' he suggested. "Get out into the wilderness on my own.' She joked about him shooting a bear and bringing back the pelt for a rug. Janet stood in the middle of their cabin with her hands on her hips. Henry was sat on the bed lacing his hiking boots. She pursed her lips and bit her cheeks, listening to the PA announcement that passengers could now disembark. The moment the message stopped she started, 'We come away, let the girls spend a small fortune for us to be together, and you suddenly decide you're going to play Davy bloody Crocket.'

'It's only a day.'

Judy reminded him that they were booked on a dogsled ride, an extra fee on top of the cruise package that could not be refunded. 'Ridiculous,' she snapped, zipping up her Gore-Tex jacket, part of a matching his and hers set they had purchased especially for the trip. 'What am I supposed to tell Tina and Erik?'

'Who?'

'The Petersons! The couple you've been grunting and yawning at for the past five days!'

After waving off his wife, sat grinning through her grimace with the Petersons at a window of the Alaskan Railroad train that would take them to the sled ride, Henry walked into Seward.

Laid out in traditional city blocks and wide streets, the old frontier town is a neat ensemble of wooden homes and fishing boats nestled at the foot of Mount Marathon. Henry noted the white cap of ice perched on the rocky peak gleamed like his own, hairless crown. The attendant at the General Store told him about the annual race up and down its slopes. 'Started with a brag by a bartender in 1915. Bet his patrons he could get to the top and back in less than an hour. He did it in 62 minutes.' Henry guessed two hours would be a respectable time, at his age. He would hike to the peak and take a photo of their ship. That would surprise Judy. He bought two power bars, a bottle of mineral water and a jumbo pack of beef jerky. He stowed his snacks in the rucksack, adjusted the straps and walked out to the edge of town.

Unsure of exactly where the trail began, he asked a woman washing her car. She was so solidly built he actually thought she was a he until she turned around. When Henry asked if it were safe to hike with bears around she let out a hearty laugh. 'Just don't go askin' one for a ride.' The trail rose sharply from the car park. Within minutes Henry was pulling at roots and pine branches to help him climb. It was late autumn, and though the day was blue and clear, the air was crisp with an Artic chill.

Still, he was sweating through his jacket. After five days of seafood buffets and dessert trolleys, no more exertion than a game of shuffleboard or circuit of the deck, he was out of shape. He was embarrassed by his own body, the bulge of fat straining over his waistband. Instead of stopping for a rest he levered himself up the steeper sections by pushing off his knees as he climbed. Only when he was high enough to see the ship in the harbour did he reward himself with a drink of water. He felt his heart clattering in his ribcage, heard his panting in the windless silence. He was not yet above the tree line. He sat on the pine needles until he stopped wheezing. F orty minutes later, dusted with earth and twigs after twice falling, he reached the bare rock of the upper slopes. Only another hundred metres to snow and ice, then maybe the same distance again to the glittering peak.

Henry would have stood longer if two men had not skipped past in running shorts and vests. 'Beautiful day,' said the first, a sweatband keeping back his straggly hair. Henry watched the muscles in his tanned calves bunch and flex with each stride. The second man, in equally short shorts, slowed a little after glancing over his shoulder at Henry's beetroot face. 'Take it easy there,' he advised. 'No prizes today.'    

Henry swore beneath gasps for breath. Then he picked up the pace. Occasionally a lump of rock, loosed by the runners ahead, came bouncing down the slope. One boulder, the size of a head, crashed by within metres of the trail, before smashing into the trees below. Henry gritted his teeth, 'Come on you old bastard.' Just as he crunched onto the start of the ice, the men came flying past. A separate trail to his left was a river of slivering shale. The leaping men dropped metres at a time, hanging out their arms like birds with each massive jump. Henry watched them bound and glide to the foot of the mountain. Top to bottom in a matter of minutes. A minor landslide tumbled in their wake, the smaller stones tinkling notes all the way down.

Henry had goosebumps at the thought of descending. With a new vigour he hiked onto the snow, at last finding his rhythm, breathing between his steps rather than against them. He positively raced to the peak. At the top he threw his rucksack from his shoulders and punched the air as though celebrating a goal in a cup final.

The ship in the harbour looked like a toy. Henry pictured his wife with the Petersons, probably browsing around souvenirs in a cluttered and overpriced gift shop. Maybe even buying a postcard of the mountain he had triumphantly scaled. After chewing two strips of leathery jerky, and half a tasteless power bar, he walked the flat peak to see the inland vista behind.

Finally, he saw, and most importantly, felt Alaska. Jagged, snowy peaks of distant ranges hovered between land and sky. Unbroken forests of emerald green rippled across the lower slopes. He imagined bear and moose in the hidden ravines, the rivers of glacial melt cascading off volcanic rock. He daydreamed he were a woodsman bunkered from the world in a log cabin, slipping on his boots to hunt caribou and trap beaver. He could actually hear the report of his rifle caroming through the valleys. But he had never even shot a gun, nor killed anything bigger than a mouse. And anyway, what would a man living in a log cabin do in the evenings?

The descent was not quite the soaring leaps and bounds Henry had envisaged. Where the two runners had fearlessly ridden the sliding shale, Henry reached out for grip and balance, several times riding the slope on his backside. His knees wobbled with the strain of landing, and though going down was certainly quicker than going up, he was glad when the trail levelled out. Henry followed a trickling stream, hiking through the shallows where path and water merged. Above the sound of his own splashing, he heard the river, rushing, like static on the wind. Quite suddenly he came out of the pine onto a wide, pebbly wash. The mountain trickle joined a gushing torrent, a snarling, surging river that fell inland from the peak, before, Henry presumed, meeting the ocean further up the coast. Where the river bent back on itself and slowed, taking a rest from its own violence, a small bay of calm water reflected the peak and blue sky above.

Henry shrugged off his rucksack, sat down on a large, smooth boulder, and removed his shoes and socks. He neatly set them together, rolled up his trousers and stood. But before he stepped into the water for a paddle, he looked around, back up the trail to see no one was following. Then he sat down again and took off all his clothes. He was very pale. He sagged and drooped, had varicose veins in his legs like loose wiring. But when he took off his watch, stood unadorned in the wilderness and felt the fresh breeze about his naked body, his dimpled buttocks and dangling genitals, he felt ageless, a man beyond measuring by years. Sixty of them or not.

He jumped right in. The melt water took his breath away. He dunked his head, rose and spat. Even waist deep he could feel the power of the flow, and kept his feet firmly on the bottom so as not to be swept away. Henry waded head down, watching his toes, carefully stepping the sharper stones. Like a man might walk searching for something dropped, or lost.   Shivering within a minute, he ran parallel with the bank to keep warm, thrashing the water like an excited toddler.

He wondered what his wife would say if she could see him now? What she would think if she knew this moment was the happiest he had been since his youngest daughter left home? And for a moment he let himself glide with the current. He thought of floating down into the valley, adrift from the world, his life. Just moose on the wooded peaks, bears in the deep and ancient passes, sculpted by meteor and volcano, the crushing glaciers.

NICHOLAS HOGG