Wolves at Rancho La Whale Pass
The lodge was honored to host a pioneer in the destination travel business, Deborah Szekley, owner of the world famous Rancho la Puerta spa resort. Enjoying her ninth decade traveling the world, Deborah has lived a remarkable life, co-founding the modern health and fitness movement, logging a reputable government career, and serving as a philanthropist and public servant. This trip was about her three grandchildren, Jacob, Emily and Josh, and bringing the cousins together with their grandmom away from all the tethers of the regular world. The lodge and Alaska did not disappoint. Every day was spent in the great outdoors collecting more stories and seeing new things. For the Szekley’s short visit, Alaska offered glaciers, whales, halibut, dog sledding, bears, salmon and so much more. One of the highlights of the trip was a wolf pack sighting, rare for the amount of time that the wolves stayed within sight. While puttering into Calder Bay on the Northwest Side of our island, Captain William picked out three timberwolves working the treeline along the shore. Normally elusive animals, the dogs were too busy chasing geese to notice us at first. Once we were within 75 yards or so, they started to fold back into the forest. So of course, we started howling. And we must have sounded like one sick puppy because a wolf stopped dead in his tracks, turned back to us and started howling back. Within minutes, what sounded like 15 to 20 wolves joined in and we listened to the pack sing on for 5 or 10 minutes. The lone wolf on the shore kept pacing back and forth, rejoining to our howls. We decided to stay in the bay for a while so we hiked back along the creek to a fishing hole chock full of pink and chum salmon. If one questioned just how impressive Ms. Szekley was before this day, the vigor with which she attacked the hike left no further doubt. The Szekley kids fished for an hour or so, giving us time to stoke up a fire and cook up a delicious lunch of salmon, potatoes and vegetables. For Deborah, it just might have evoked memories from back in the day when she was just starting out in the destination spa business with a camp in the hills of northern Mexico. Fortunately she was staying with us, which meant we got to return to all the comforts of the lodge. And Deborah had certainly earned the warm drink and massage awaiting her and another one of Peter’s delicious, world class meals. Learn more about Deborah and the legacy she is creating at www.rancholapuerta.com. Here’s hoping that the Lodge at Whale Pass can keep inciting a little bit of Debra Szekley in all of us and encourage us all to live a full and fruitful life.
