Passage to Juneau: a Sea and its Meanings by Jonathan Raban
London: Picador, 2000 (first published 1999) ISBN 0330346296
Why do we read the books we read? Sometimes it's because we desire the information it imparts. Other times it's because someone we respect has told us a book is worth reading. And sometimes we read a book just because we have admired the writing of the author through their other work, and want to enjoy being in their company once more.
Passage to Juneau, for me, falls into the last of these categories. Some years ago on a whim I read Raban's Bad Land and enjoyed the way he combined travel, personal experience, history, and skill with the written word. In fact I enjoyed it so much that when I saw Passage to Juneau in my local second-hand bookshop I bought it without even knowing its subject matter.
I can thankfully state that in Passage to Juneau Raban has done it again. He has turned a description of his sailing journey from Seattle to Juneau via the Inside Passage into a history lesson, a basic anthropology of the indigenous inhabitants, a social study of the fishing, logging and tourist industries, as well as a journey through personal tragedy.
Using juxtaposing sections, Raban describes sailing through the endless channels of the Inside Passage, with its unique tidal and weather systems. As he passes through each area, he describes the history of the local indigenous population through their artwork, myths, and stories - showing how contact with the white world has bowdlerized and distorted our view of what a traditional life must have really been like. Raban shows us that rather than a life in "harmony" with nature, the native stories tend to show us a people living in fear of both the sea and the forest, trying to propitiate the spirits of the weather and the ocean; to repel bears and attract salmon.
He goes into detail about the voyage of Captain George Vancouver, who was sent by England to accurately chart the area and search for the fabled North-West Passage. Raban tells of a cursed voyage, with the prickly and unpopular Vancouver at odds with his upper-class officers, and feared and hated by his crew. Vancouver's focus on trade was particularly looked down upon by them, and his predilection for flogging was looked on in horror by the Indians. Vancouver's differences with his younger midshipman allows Raban to discourse at some length on the Romantic ideal of unspoiled countryside versus seeing land and sea as a resource to be exploited.
The land and sea of the Inside Passage is unique - mountains on either side closing in on the sea creating narrow canyons which the tide races through, something Raban found continually fascinating, as he did the incredible depths of the ocean in some areas of the Passage. The vast areas of uninhabited countryside were offset by the constant passage of cruise ships which, Raban notes, are both a blessing and a curse to the local communities, many of which were at the time moving from an economy structured around fisheries, canneries and logging to having tourism as their economic base.
Raban writes about all this with feeling and intelligence, realising that he also was a tourist as he sailed by these communities, some of which were slowly decaying back into the primeval forest as their reason for being slowly dissolved owing to the shrinking access to fish and timber.
During the voyage Raban has to confront the death of his father. He breaks his trip to return to England to be at the death-bed and funeral. His father was an Anglican priest, and Raban muses on the meaning of faith, realising that what he saw as a yawning gulf between his and his father's beliefs was perhaps not so wide after all.
Raban's wife and young daughter are also a central part of the narrative. He has left them in Seattle while he sails, arranging for them to fly to Juneau to meet him there at the end of his journey. Early in the book we are told of his constant calls home, his joy at hearing his daughter's voice, and his concern that he has left his wife to cope with day-to-day life without him. After his return from England, these calls disappear from the story. The family re-unite in Juneau only for Raban's wife to inform him that she had decided to end the marriage. After this body-blow Raban sails back to Seattle, alone and introspective.
Passage to Juneau is a wonderfully written book: Raban takes the reader with him, whether he's battling dangerous conditions at sea, coasting with whales, encountering bears (there is a hilarious section where he takes his ship's bell with him on shore to scare them away, and only succeeds in convincing the locals that he's mad), his interactions with both the locals and tourists, and his reactions to both the death of his father and the dissolution of his marriage.
Even if you have no interest in the sea, or the history of British Columbia and Alaska, there is much in Passage to Juneau to enjoy. Highly recommended.
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