"I’ve been around enough naturalists to know that there’s always something unusual in the vegetable crisper," Nickens says. Merlin pulled out droppings of elk and ringtail cat. Vulture pellets. Film canisters of small bones. The bodies of a Gambel quail, rock squirrel, ground squirrel, two pocket mice, a javelina. And assorted tamales, of course. These, Nickens reports, tasted just fine.

Not every story yields culinary satisfactions. Profiling skunk researcher Jerry Dragoo ("Skunk Man," p. 108), Steve Kemper remembered that Indians and trappers ate the odoriferous critters. So Kemper asked Dragoo if he had ever tried one. "Yes," he answered, "one time." And how was it? "Not something I’d recommend," Dragoo responded cryptically.

Something else that Kemper concluded was not such a good idea: mimicking a skunk’s anxiety behavior. Kemper was with Dragoo and his wife, Gwen, next to a skittish little hooded skunk named Charlie. Recalls Kemper: "Dragoo told me how skunks stomp their forefeet when they get nervous or angry, and he then imitated the movement, lifting his arms and slamming them down. Charlie watched with growing alarm. Gwen watched Charlie, also with growing alarm. ‘Honey,’ she said to her husband, displaying her own anxiety behavior, ‘don’t do that!’"

Kemper has written about all sorts of animals for Smithsonian, from anacondas to iguanas, poisonous spiders, beluga whales, Canada geese and bighorn sheep. But, he says, the ride he took in Dragoo’s car within inches of four of the skunk man’s untamed friends "takes the prize for the oddest moment reporting from the field."

by Carey Winfrey, editor

This curious relic came to us from my husband’s side of the family, the Japanese side. The Japanese have a long tradition of saving the umbilical cords of their children as mementos of the happy occasion of birth. My ancestors, Irish and plainspoken, found the actual child memento enough. Nevertheless, when my mother-in-law sent along the umbilical cord of her father, Kutaro, I suppressed my first instinct—to wonder why our friends inherit stocks and bonds while we inherit mummified body parts—and graciously assumed responsibility for protecting the venerable item. In other words, after showing the cord to my delighted husband and children, I quietly put it away in a drawer.

But children never forget, and one day our fourth-grader decided he wanted to take the heirloom to school for cultural heritage day. "I don’t think this is what the teacher had in mind," I told him, but he prevailed, and needless to say, his presentation was a crowd-pleaser—these were 10-year-olds, after all.

The cord gave me the creeps, though, and so for the drive home from school, I consigned it, in its box, to the trunk. Unfortunately, it worked its way free and into some uncharted abyss. Although we searched from time to time over the next few years, we never found it. We began to think of the car as a very large reliquary.

Then a pickup truck blew through a stop sign, totaling our vehicle. I walked away with hardly a scratch and wondered, at that moment, if Kutaro hadn’t somehow extended a measure of paternal protection. I thought with remorse of my neglect of family duty and the fact that the search for the ancestral remains was undoubtedly over.

But what did I know of salvage yards, or the sensitive souls who run them? The proprietor at mine was a friendly fellow who seemed to perceive my dejection. He helped me clear out the car and then watched quietly as I continued to root through an obviously empty trunk. "Was there something else?" he asked delicately. Well, why not? "There’s an old umbilical cord loose in there, and we’ve never been able to find it," I said without elaboration. I must have sounded deranged. And then, here’s the wonderful thing. He didn’t laugh, or ask questions, or slowly back away. He just turned to the trunk and, half a minute later, emerged with the prize. "This is it," he said with the serene assurance of an expert witness schooled in the lore of the ancient cord. I still don’t know how he did it.

I now take my role as the Keeper of the Cord more seriously. I bought a little silver box, placed the relic inside, and put it on the mantel. My husband is pleased. Our guests are puzzled but polite. As for me, I still think about the guy from the salvage yard. He may live on the edge of the Midwestern plains but deep inside him burns the spirit of the East. Perhaps, in some small way, I, too, have been enlightened.

by Cynthia Cavnar

And the views! With a glass of wine in hand, you might watch a pair of Alaskan brown bears gambol on the tidal flats. Or perhaps you might see a breaching humpback whale break the quiet waters with sudden violence, or a roly-poly sea otter float by on its back.

Our author, Michael Parfit, and his wife, Suzanne Chisholm, made their voyage on Holland America's MS Volendam, but some 600 other cruise ships make port calls in Alaska every year. Choice is the order of the day: prices range from $600 to $6,000; cruises leave from three different cities; tours last from 3 to 12 days; and eight major cruise companies and half a dozen smaller companies vie for your vacation dollars with slick promotional material. As a result, it's a good idea to get cruise wise before embarking on a journey to America's Last Frontier.

Our selection of cruising guidebooks should get you started, but with so many choices—from ship size and onboard atmosphere to amenities such as cooking classes, wine tastings, even salsa dance lessons—a good travel agent is worth his or her weight in gold. An experienced agent will be able to find a cruise that meets your budget and lets you travel with people of similar interests. Cruise Lines International Association (212-921-0066) offers a Cruise Expert Locator to find one of its specially trained travel agents. Also, check out the on-line booking service at cruiseweb.com (1-800-377-9383). Cruise through our travel tips this month for advice on everything from what to wear to what to tip.

A Flexible Cruiser Gets the Deals
Veteran cruisers say that if you are retired or have a flexible schedule, you should think about making your reservations close to the sailing date. Cruise ships are often fully booked, but when they aren't, the last rooms are frequently sold at very low prices.

Beggars Just Might Get Choice Digs
If you are willing to take what's called a "guarantee" cabin, which is usually of lower quality (no outside window, for instance), you can save quite a lot of money, and you are often upgraded to higher quality cabins at no extra cost.

Cruisers of a Feather Should Stick Together
Pick the right cruise for your temperament. Travel agents have a pretty good handle on this, but in general the more expensive cruises tend to cater to a middle-aged or older clientele. On these ships there may be more elegant food, and fewer party animals. Others are more relaxed, with more families—and thus more kids' activities, group activities, and energetic parties. So be sure to check out the cruise line profiles detailed in any good travel guide.

Dressing for "Seward's Icebox"
When William Henry Seward arranged for the purchase of Alaska in 1867, critics derisively called it an icebox. With temperatures dropping below freezing even in the summer months, especially on the waters in Glacier Bay, don't leave home without a warm jacket, a scarf and gloves. Pack rain gear, for legs and feet, too, so you can be on deck in all kinds of weather. Alaska's ferocious mosquitoes shouldn't bother you too much on board, but carry insect repellent for port calls.

You Don't Have to Dance the Hokey Pokey
Don't worry about being strapped into an activity regimen on a cruise ship. More and more cruise lines are providing "freestyle" cruising. On these cruises, there is no particular agenda. Dining can be highly flexible, for instance. You have say over hours of dining, places to eat and table selection. Be aware, however, that this kind of flexibility often comes at a higher cost; on a few liners eating at the more elegant restaurants incurs an extra fee.

Cruising with a Conscience
There is some controversy over the way crews from poor countries are treated on the ships. If that concerns you, find a cruise line that has an agreement with the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF). This is a mainstream organization that represents about 600,000 seafarers worldwide and has agreements with about 60 percent of the cruise lines. These agreements cover minimum pay scales, working hours and other important items, such as medical coverage if an injured crew member has to leave the ship. Some major cruise lines do not have such agreements, so if you want to feel better about the living conditions of the cabin stewards, waiters and other workers on whom your cruise happiness depends, ask your travel agent to make sure they do.

The Early Bird Cruiser Gets the Worm
Whatever time the cruise line tells you to get there for embarkation, get there sooner. As cruise ships refine their onboard operations, standing in line for anything has become less frequent, but you will stand in line to get on the ship. Arriving early may mean that you'll sit around the boarding lounge for a few extra minutes, but it'll pay off because you'll get on board more quickly.

Patience Is a Virtue
Likewise, with disembarkation, you may have to wait because you will probably be coming home through customs, and that often takes a while. Cruise lines will try to make it easier on you by sorting your disembarkation order by numbers, usually arranged according to the time of your airline flight out of the port of entry, but it will take several hours for all the passengers to get off, so don't fret. Find a pleasant place to sit and wait for your number to be called, and take the time to enjoy the memories you have just been making.

Remember You Are on a Ship
On every cruise, there's a few minutes when you will have to stand around feeling foolish, with flotation gear hanging around your neck, and listen to a ship officer tell you about dire emergencies. Lifeboat drills are mandatory and will be enforced. It's better to feel foolish up on deck with a bunch of other people than to feel really stupid when the room steward flushes you out of your stateroom like a naughty child. Anyway, the lifeboat drill offers a good opportunity to make friends.

It Won't Cost You, If You're Careful
A cruise is sold as a package, and that includes all the food you can eat, whenever you want it. But once you're on board, cruise lines make a lot of effort to get you to spend more money. So if you limit your alcohol consumption, don't gamble and keep your shopping costs down, it's possible to stay on budget.

You Don't Have to Take a Tux
Even if the cruise itinerary says there are formal nights, usually "formal" means a business suit is fine. If taking a vacation means you refuse to see a tie or cocktail dress in your closet, there are almost always alternative dining spots that won't require much more than a bathing suit.

You're on Vacation, but They Aren't
Include tipping in your travel budget. Figure on spending at least $10 per day per person for all your tips. On some cruise lines, tipping is the only way your cabin steward or waiter makes any significant money. On others, tipping is described as voluntary, but remember that the wages for the people who wait on you for up to 14 hours a day are still pretty low.

A Stateroom the Size of Texas?
Don't expect spaciousness. It's a ship. Many rooms are not much more than 150 to 185 square feet. Amazing things are done to make the rooms seem bigger, such as the ample use of mirrors, artwork and windows, but most of them are just plain small. Pack accordingly, and plan to be out on deck a lot. It's great up there.

Wal-mart, K-Mart Sell It for Less
Your pre-trip checklist will include several things that you can buy on the ship but will pay more for there. Bring along your binoculars, camera, film, batteries and walking shoes. If you need a hair dryer, bring one; only about half of the ships have hair dryers in the rooms.

The Paperwork
Even though your cruise will often be international, you may not need a passport. For many destinations, a birth certificate is all that's required. Check with your travel agent or cruise line.

Who You Gonna Call
Eight of the large cruise companies offer Alaska vacations that include sea voyages through the Inside Passage. We found another six companies offering smaller ship experiences, including a family adventure this July sponsored by the Smithsonian Study Tours aboard the 74-passenger Wilderness Adventurer.

The Big Guys
Carnival Cruise Lines
3655 NW 87th Avenue, Miami, Florida 33178-2428; Telephone: 305-599-2600, 1-800-438-6744; Fax: 305-599-8630

Celebrity Cruises
1050 Caribbean Way, Miami, Florida 33132-2096; Telephone: 305-539-6000, 1-800-646-1456; Fax: 1-800-437-5111

Crystal Cruises
2049 Century Park East, Suite 1400, Los Angeles, CA 90067; Telephone: 310-785-9300; Fax: 310-785-3891

Holland America Line
300 Elliott Avenue West, Seattle, WA 98119; Telephone: 206- 281-3535, 877-SAIL-HAL, 1-800-628-4855; Fax: 206-281-7110

Norwegian Cruise Line
7665 Corporate Center Drive, Miami, Florida 33126; Telephone: 305-436-4000, 1-800-327-7030; Fax: 305-436-4120

Princess Cruises
10100 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90067; Telephone: 310-553-1770, 1-800-774-6237 (1-800-Princess); Fax: 310-277-6175

Radisson Seven Seas Cruises
600 Corporate Drive, Suite 410, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33334; Telephone: 954-776-6123, 1-800-477-7500, 1-800-285-1835; Fax: 954-772-3763

Royal Caribbean International
1050 Caribbean Way, Miami, Florida 33132; Telephone: 305-539-6000, 1-800-659-7225; Fax: 1-800-722-5329

The Smaller Ships
Alaska's Glacier Bay Tours and Cruises
226 2nd Avenue West, Seattle, WA 98119; Telephone: 206-623-7110, 1-800-451-5952; Fax: 206-623-7809

American Safari Cruises
1901 36th Avenue W #201, Lynwood, WA 98036; Telephone: 888-862-8881, 425-776-4700; Fax: 425-776-8889

Cruise West
2401 Fourth Avenue, Suite 700, Seattle, WA 98121; Telephone: 1-206-441-8687, 1-800-888-9378; Fax: 206-441-4757

World Explorer Cruises
555 Montgomery Street, Suite 1400, San Francisco, CA 94111-2544; Telephone 415-820-9200, 1-800-854-3835; Fax: 415-820-9292

Clipper Cruise Line
7718 Bonhomme Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63105; Telephone 314-727-2929, 1-800-325-0010; Fax: 314-727-6576

Lindblad Expeditions
720 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010; Telephone: 212-765-7740, 1-800-397-3348; Fax: 212-265-3770

Smithsonian Study Tours (1-877-338-8687)

"What size?" asks he.

It is a question I loathe. "Thirty-four...twenty-eight," I reply, my voice trailing off in self-apology. I pray for mercy. Instead, he scans my legs to be sure they are long enough to reach the ground. "Twenty-eight?" he repeats, as if I have asked for the absurd, say, a sweater for my gallstone. Twenty-eight is not a pant length, it is an invitation to a roast — a number so shy of expectation that no self-respecting store carries it except as a gag or an act of charity.

"We carry nothing shorter than thirty," he says, standing no taller than I. "And what length do you wear?" I ask. "Thirty," he boasts, hoisting his pants clear up to his navel. Now he delivers the coup de grâce.

"Have you tried the boy's department?"

I recoil in horror. I am not, for one moment, about to mingle with some prepubescent schoolboys, tugging over a pair of dungarees. Out of the question. Am I not entitled to some shred of self-esteem? I'd sooner go to the party in purple knickers than show my face in the boy's department.

A moment later I find myself stepping off the elevator onto the third floor, the boy's floor, eyeing a rack of grotesquely colored pants and waiting for a gaggle of pimply lads to move aside and let me have a closer look. I knew I should have ordered from a catalogue. Let them wield the scissors and spare me this ignominy. A pair of "twenty-eights" should only arrive in a plain brown wrapper and be opened in the privacy of one's home.

For years I tried to wear a size thirty, pretending my Chaplinesque cuffs were not sweeping the streets. People mistook me for a half-melted candle. How is it at 5-foot-8 — near average height — I am held in contempt by the staff of every store I enter? Now, cowering in the boy's department, I hear the voices of adolescents cracking all around me. I wistfully remember at their age fearing that the pants might shrink too much. At my age, it is I who am shrinking.

I start to walk away when a salesman intercepts me. "Help you, sir?" he asks. "You want to help me? Stretch my legs," I mutter. Well, not out loud, but I was thinking it. Instead, out comes something equally lame. "I am looking for dress slacks for a boy."

"How old is he?" the salesman asks. "Forty-nine," I confess. "It's me." He stifles a laugh and checks my waist. "Thirty-four," he says ruefully. Now the final insult. "We carry nothing larger than a thirty waist."

Fine. Pants-wise I am forever stuck between floors, neither man nor boy. At this rate, the next salesman will suggest my place is with the circus. "Come see the creature with the twenty-eight-inch inseam — the incredible human baobab tree." Even now that I am willing to grovel, to do battle with sixth-graders for some miserable polyester pantaloons, there is nothing here for me.

A moment later I am back on the street, putting as much distance as possible between myself and the boy's department. I am resigned to wearing the pants I arrived in, a pair of wrinkled chinos, too long by far. By God's grace, this evening's party will be dark, and I may once again hold my head high — and my pants, as well.

By Ted Gup

For some of us, there is comfort in knowing that other great persons have also suffered from cacography. Napoleon, for example. His handwriting was so atrocious that notes he sent to his commanding officers looked like maps of the battlefield. That learned essayist Montaigne complained: "My hands are so clumsy I cannot even write so as to read it myself, so that I had rather do what I have scribbled over again, than take upon me the trouble to make it out."

Also indecipherable was the script of the great newspaper editor Horace Greeley. He once fired a staff member who, whatever his shortcomings, had the wit to put Greeley's note of dismissal to good use. Since nobody could make out the writing, the unemployed journalist was able to pass the note off as a letter of recommendation and promptly land himself another job.

Or may I call your attention to this entry on Cleveland Abbe in an old volume of the Dictionary of American Biography? At the conclusion of the article about the pioneer weather forecaster, the writer observes: "From August 1893, [Abbe's] chief duty was the congenial one of editing the Meteorological Journals of the United States Weather Bureau. This caused him to write to hundreds of scholars the world over — a pleasure to him, but a task to those who had to decipher his difficult chirography."

Chirography, is it?

Of course, the typewriter and the computer have pretty much done away with handwritten personal notes and letters anyway. If penmanship is a subject of concern these days, it probably matters mainly to autograph givers (see Bech, John Updike's fictional author, who suffers writer's block while signing his own name) and autograph collectors.

Tug McGraw, the onetime New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies relief pitcher, offered this advice: "Kids should practice autographing baseballs. It's a skill that's often overlooked in Little League." Since my twin sons are devout Little Leaguers, they may well take McGraw's words to heart. I fear, however, that no matter what they do, their autographs will be unreadable. Bad handwriting runs in the family.

Illegibility can be hilarious. In his 1969 movie Take the Money and Run, Woody Allen portrays an inept bank robber. After he pushes his stickup note to a teller, Allen and the teller get into an argument about whether one of the words in the note is "gun" or "gub." The teller consults with a colleague, who mistakes the word "act" in the phrase "act natural" for "abt." Several of the bank's officers get into the act (or abt), and eventually the dispute over what the note says escalates into a rowdy crowd scene. The moral, I guess, is that bank robbers should take courses in penmanship.

At least my bad handwriting has saved me from a life of crime. That is something to be thankful for.

By Louis Phillips

Since the haunts we visited were all in the countryside or on beaches, our trips were great for children. Soon our young son, Alan, and daughter, Tenney, were traveling with us. The children added extra gear: stuffed animals, two more snorkels, flippers, masks and water-ski belts. For traveling, the belts were tied around the outside of the suitcase that held the telescope, making that piece of luggage look like an accident victim.

Alan soon became a butterfly-and-beetle expert, and his hobby required nets, more guidebooks, specimen boxes and a black light used for night-flying insects. In East Africa, we also carried a bait can to attract butterflies — with bait made up of overripe bananas, beer and dung, which "improved" with age. Tenney's travel gear was relatively simple. One notebook listed the animals we saw on daily safaris. Another listed the number of individual species spotted in any one destination. Still another contained extraneous animal records — the names of all the paintings with dogs in them at the National Museum of Fine Art in Oslo, for instance.

That all our gear would exceed the baggage allowance was a fact calmly accepted by my husband. "Just the cost of traveling," he would say.

Having learned over time to travel with this cavalier attitude, I was quite astonished to find that most people we knew regarded the baggage allowance as something sacrosanct. During an island stop on an Indian Ocean cruise, I purchased a souvenir for a fellow passenger who at the last minute had decided to stay aboard that day. When I presented the woman with an envelope holding a single dried vanilla pod, she politely shook her head. "No thank you," she said. "My baggage is already overweight."

After returning from a trip to Saint Vincent in the Caribbean one winter, my husband and I attended a dinner of the Linnean Society at the Museum of Natural History in New York. Before we were seated, I spotted a woman who had stayed at the same island hotel as we and who had helped us load our baggage into the taxi for the ride to the airport. As I approached my friend and the group of people she was talking to, I heard our name mentioned. "Have you ever seen the way the Mudges travel?" she said. The horror in her voice made me stop in my tracks. Suddenly, despite a certain savoir faire acquired through age, experience and much globe-trotting, I was right back in that Buffalo train station, sheepishly carrying a birdcage covered with a towel.

By Marguerite Mudge

She: "It's because you were going too fast."

Me: "It's because you gave me the wrong directions."

From this point on, it's all downhill. And it happens, to put it in approximate terms, all the time.

So imagine our delight recently at the discovery that technology has found a way to help us out. We were in Florida. The woman at the airport car-rental counter mentioned that our vehicle came equipped with an "onboard navigation system" that would all but guarantee we'd never get lost.

Over the next six days, we came to love the little black box with the glass screen and buttons between our seats. It resembled those game things kids are always poking madly. At the push of a button, we scrolled to (a) our destination city and (b) the street and the desired address. This, I should add, we did before putting the car into gear. In a few seconds, a little map jiggled into place on the screen, showing our car as a yellow triangle, and we started out.

Suddenly, we both froze. A flat male voice spoke from the box: "Right turn ahead!" A chubby yellow arrow filled the screen and shrank to a stubby dash as we neared the intersection. Two sharp beeps, turn complete, arrow gone. Another map appeared on the screen. Our little triangle — guided from the heavens by a satellite! — continued traveling jauntily down the road.

This superior guidance system gave us a new lease on the driving life. Conversation returned to topics other than speed, direction, location and being late. I took to responding to the system's metallic commands with, "Thank you, George."

Only once did we squabble, but this time it was us against the box. It was on one of those rare occasions when we knew a shortcut. The computer preferred us to stay on the main road. We bypassed its instruction. "Make legal U-turn," the voice insisted. Again we ignored it and continued on our merry way.

Now what, we wondered. This was man (and woman) against ma-chine, pragmatism against computer logic, the mind versus the microchip. Moments later, the box gave up. Threw in the towel. Saw things our way. "Rerouting destination," it sniffed. And a new map miraculously appeared on screen. How courteous, I thought. How decent.

A few days after we got home and back in our own car again, we missed the turnoff to a mall we'd visited dozens of times before.

She: "Why weren't you watching the signs?"

Me: "Why me? Why weren't you?"

Outburst.

Solution-oriented, we carry on. A notebook in the glove compartment now lists frequent destinations with detailed directions, and we've begun to think seriously about buying a new car with an onboard navigation system. No, we don't need a marriage counselor. We need George.

By Lewis M. Simons