TRACY ARM FJORD, ALASKA

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A glacier-carved masterpiece, Tracy Arm Fjord winds narrow and serpentine for 26 miles into the southeast Alaska coastline. 4,000 foot granite rock walls soar straight up out of ocean 1,000 feet deep; waterfalls cascade down in silver plumes; mountain goats prance and dance across the vertical escarpments; seals sun themselves on pan-ice tabletops;  garlands of greenery, decorated with wildflowers festoon the mountainsides; in July hummingbirds pollinate the wildflowers on high; and year-round, powder avalanches drop from the steep peaks as if in slow motion. It is a wild, remote Paradise in perfect yin-yang balance so surreal and dream-like. At the eastern terminus is South Sawyer Glacier, the ancient sculptor of the fjord, that calves the biggest and bluest icebergs in Alaska. The blue ice has been described as sapphire, topaz, cerulean, ultramarine — but the best adjective is “Windex.” Windex blue, it is!