Monthly Archives: September 2011

Life Force

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I am looking at a spruce that lodged twenty feet above the creek at least fifteen years ago. It would have dropped into the water to rot if the creek did not drain such a steep sided “V” shaped valley. Even so, it had to tumble on a perpendicular line to the creek and jam between rock gaps on both ends. Now it forms a tense line above the stream, mimicking a bone stuck in a dog's teeth.

Another spruce, twelve feet high, grows out of the middle of the downed logs, roots jammed deeply into the rotting wood. Doomed by the three fathoms of air between its nursery log and the stream, it will eventually destroy its source of life and fall with it into fast moving water.

Standing by the stream in a downpour I wonder at the wasted effort — a fertilized spruce seed released by its tired parent, the seed germinating then rooting in the suspended log, the resulting seedling muscling out the competition. All this for a chance to grown and live and reproduce. An Alaskan translation of the Parable of the Sower.

You see similar examples all over this rain forest. Here some stunted spruce started life in a few cups full of soil on a rocky depression then sent tough covered roots over twenty feet of granite to the ground. Nearby a mature spruce, over a hundred feet high, thrives in spite of a trunk pierced near grown level by the shaft left when its nursery log rotted away. All fight and adapt to live in this rain forest, positioning themselves to obtain enough light to live, betting on the wind to blow down a neighbor or two to open the canopy up.

Indian River

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With Aki hunkered down at a neighbor's house we flew over to Sitka yesterday for a long weekend away. The rain followed us and now pounds the surface of Sitka Sound with an admirable consistency. I'm on a trail following the Indian River to Sitka Sound. On this inland stretch big alders crowd the shores. Humpbacked pink salmon occupy the river with military precision. From time to time, a platoon of them shifts position and then drops back into formation while gull screams block out all other noise.


The gulls, fat on salmon carrion know why they are here. The salmon, made simple by lust, treat the gulls like unwelcome witnesses to procreation rather than the clean up crew.


Gull noise grows as we near salt water where a new wave of salmon is clearing the barrier gravel bar to move into the stream. Most of the birds feed on the recently deceased but some burst suddenly into a short upriver flight, land on the water and ride the current back the their starting point. One turns tight circles on the water during the float.


A blue heron, apparently worn out by the gull’s antics, slowly climbs to a tree branch high above the river for some “me” time. Following his example I follow a trail of totem poles that lead through a thick old growth spruce forest toward Sitka. The trail bisects an area of destroyed trees being colonized by a new generation of spruce. The downed trees had solid form when first nurseries for the new growth. Now they have rotted to pulp and then eroded away from the roots of the new trees, leaving them free standing, apparently supported by air.