Alaska's cities

Seldovia, Alaska

Isolated town is a haven of quiet charm on Kachemak Bay's south shore

Alaska.com

From Seldovia's harbor, it's a few minutes' walk above Susan B. English School to the "Otterbahn." Many rustic trails weave through adjacent Kachemak Bay State Park, some reachable only by floatplane or boat. But none is more accessible than the Otterbahn, built largely by local students.

It soon immerses you in the rain forest, knee-deep in ladyferns. Club mosses coat the fallen logs. Lichens and liverworts beard the rough-barked spruce. Shelf fungi ladder the busted snags. And where the going gets marshy, the city parks and recreation department has eased the way and lessened the trail's impact on wetlands with a long stretch of volunteer-built boardwalk. The stroll leads to Outside Beach just north of town.

We'd barely left sight of the school when, with the sharp crack of a branch, a bald eagle abandoned its perch high above to our left, then shot down and away, threading the sparse timber ahead like a B-52 through a chicken yard. In the distance, an unseen woodpecker responded with a rat-a-tat-tat.

The attractions of Seldovia and its surroundings don't begin and end with the woods.

"The best part is just to be here," Mary Jane Lastufka says of her job as proprietor (with husband Tony) of Across the Bay Tent and Breakfast. "And to see people really relax and maybe just stare at the sea."

Many a guest would likely agree. Tent and Breakfast also offers guided kayaking, the taking of clams and mussels at low tide, mountain biking, hiking and berry picking. It also hosts art seminars through the summer.

With an international clientele, the dinnertime conversation can be intriguing. Among the guests during our stay were Brooks Jackson, a CNN journalist; his wife, Beverly Jackson, a National Institute of Drug Abuse spokesperson; and their daughter Courtney, a freshly minted M.D. from Oregon Health Sciences University. Father and daughter were planning a road trip from Portland to Chicago, where Courtney would intern at the Cook County General Hospital of "E.R." fame.

Lastufka's main cabin, about five miles out of town, looks across to Yukon, Hesketh and several smaller islands dotting the waters beyond Kasitsna Bay, one of several coves scalloped out of the Seldovia side of Kachemak Bay. In a misty light, the island's cliffs take on a heroic bronze cast.

Kayak tours around the islands can take you within snapshot range of endlessly playful sea otters.

"Sea rats!" one Seldovian said with a smile.

They may take their share of clams, but it's impossible not to be charmed as you run alongside and they lounge lazily, a wave for a hammock. With only their feet and heads in view, they bob like swamped canoes. They have the tool user's trick of breaking clams with stones while similarly reclined. Identifying their cracked shells ashore is no mystery; unlike the kind dropped by gulls, they're broken on just one side.