Monthly Archives: December 2011

Embracing the Darkness

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Under clear skies the sun would have lit up the summit of Mt. Juneau at 8:35 AM. We wouldn’t see any sunshine at sea level until an hour or so later.   The sun would then bounce along the peaks of Douglas Island, make a partial ellipse of Mt. Jumbo, and drop a half hour or so before the official sunset time of 3:06 PM.  I think we had clear skies all of one day this month but most have played like today, a symphony of gray.

We rain forest dwellers embrace the gray all year and the darkness each winter. Other approaches lead to insanity or a quick exit to the Lower 48. Aki and I are prepared to embrace it all as we start across a moraine trail that leads to the Mendenhall River and then to the glacier.  Driving in the dark we reach the trailhead as the dusk that usually lights our mornings is building. Aki reluctantly leaves the car, chilled by the sounds of war coming from our nearby gun range. Nothing says Sunday morning at the gun club like group target practice with hunting rifles.

After working through some young woods we reach the river, now a dark green snake moving past snow covered gravel bars. From here it looks to have sprung directly from the glacier that looms above it. Only an immature bald eagle can share the beauty but he looks away from the river and into the forest below his roosting tree.

The trail takes us away from the river and along a lake where last Fall shotguns fired over duck decoys startled Aki into the woods. Today she walks with tail down until we pass beyond the lake.

I find the tracks of a Great Blue Heron when the trail starts paralleling the river again.  During yesterday’s rain storm it stood along a now dry rivulet, back to the river.  Its now frozen tacks are crisp as you would expect from such a patient hunter. I wonder why it struck a stalking pose here, which offers only snow and mud.

Noticing an unfrozen section of the river beginning to glow I look up and see sunlight trying to muscle through the gray sky.  The sun manages to send diffused beams bouncing across the river until surrendering to the clouds. Later, on the way back to the car we watch a similar struggle in the skies above an alder lined pond.  After that, it’s all gray until night at 3.

Necessary Violence

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In a perfect world man would never suffer violence but it would hammer nature. Violence churns it, grinding deterius into consumable parts;  a necessary brutality. Aki and I find a trail of violence from today’s trail head to our turn around spot on the Breadline Beach.

Aki, dashing ahead to investigate finds it first, a shredded deer hide scattered over the forest duff. We find no bones or blood or sinew, only hair and a few strips of fur.  Aki wants to move on but I linger to admire the beauty that this evidence of destruction brings to the forest floor.  A hunter probably discarded the hide nearby. Scavengers of the forest did the rest. The scene reminds me of a shredded rabbit skin I found near my snare line when we lived in the bush. A raven’s wing pattern decorated the nearby snow.

After crossing a hand hewed creek bridge we cross a muddy bottom land then climb to a still frozen muskeg meadow. The oranges and pinks of sunrise show through a wall of old growth spruce lining the opposite side. It’s almost 11 AM and the late sunrise reminders us of the impending solstice.   Nature’s violent winds have been at work here, snapping off limbs and tree tops foolish enough to reach too far for sunlight. The strengthening light turns this meadow of stunted growth into a sculpture garden.

After the meadow we drop into a spruce forest growing at the top of the Breadline Bluffs. Most are young, less than 100 years old, but we find a pocket of mature spruce tucked in a little valley.   There were more of them before rain erosion weakened the hold of their shallow roots and wind and rain undercut the cliff land where they grew. Some dropped to the beach below. The stubborn ones just snapped in half while resisting fierce storm winds. Their jagged stumps still point north in accusation. Those trees still standing near the cliff edge have wrapped their roots around exposed granite,

Moving with caution to the beach we catch a diminutive Dall Porpoise surfing in rollers just before they break. Even though Aki and maintain silence, the porpoise disappears but we still have the sunrise, now filling the ski and sea surface with yellows and blues. A gentle ocean swell, almost timed to my breathing, makes the only sound until a gull fight breaks over a nearby herring ball.  Aki wants to return to the forest. Perhaps she knows of fierce battles for survival fought here by the trees. The next one could be as soon as the next high tide.

 

Art Ice

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The State Museum in Juneau once hosted an exhibit of wonderful ceremonial masks by Yupik (eskimo) carvers.  Most represented tundra spirits. My favorite was one honoring the spirit of bubbles rising to the surface of the water. It made me think of driving a small dog team over quickly frozen ice near Bethel. The dogs pulled the sled over a mural of tea tinted ice seasoned with suspended plant strands and bubbles. On one trip we passed over a muskrat swimming under the ice to its home. This week’s hard freeze following a long thaw dotted the moraine and troll woods near Juneau with pockets of such magic.

The ice was too fragile to support Aki’s light body so we shirted each patch, passing in wonder each visual offering. At least I experienced wonder. Aki, not so much. She is the practical partner—out to avoid danger and wet feet. She doesn’t care about the concentric lines that form around the puddle edges. Each one a former boundary between ice and the still liquid surface of the puddle. She ignores the collogue of fallen leaves and still golden grass stalks trapped under the windows of ice. She does chase a small dark rodent, which scares me a bit as anything that size in these woods other than a squirrel is generally ill tempered.  Today Aki and the “prey” part in peace.

Moving past the struts of a rusted out VW Beetle rising out a newly frozen pond, we move further into the woods. The snow is still soft here making the travel harder. Soft gray light on his overcast day makes it difficult to follow the trail until we reach a well packed stretch. Relaxing I drift into that almost transcendental state awaiting those who don’t mind getting a little lost and don’t fear wild things.  Time passes then I almost jam my shin into willow arcing low over the path, which continues unaltered beneath the human barrier. We are deep in the troll woods now. I’ve been following one of the beaver’s logging roads.  They can pass unhindered beneath it. I have to step over.

I’ve been led down with rodent path before and soon have us back on a human trail but not before crossing some free flowing water courses. I pitch Aki gently over each before making my own leap. She arrives at the car with dry paws. I have wet boots.

 

Dragons and Ornaments for a Giant’s Tree

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Aki trots lightly over these slick beach rocks but I must move head down, with caution. I can’t even relax while crossing the flat planes formed by half buried stone. An almost invisible algae coating makes them ice treacherous.

Caution over rocks provides an unexpected benefit today. Moving slowly means moving quietly so I easily hear the growling conversation of a pair of sea lions just off shore. Later I hear a whale exhaling and look up to see five more spouts following the one that got my attention.  At first they appear far off but then one sounds and I see clearly its flukes rise then slide into the calm sea. There are not Killer Whales as I first suspected, who might be hunting sea lions this time of year.

While I watch the whales Aki finds something primeval to roll in and then keeps a distance from me the rest of the walk. Not knowing that she has anointed herself with beach perfume I wonder why she has become standoffish when the whales distract me again. This time one of then breaches— a half hearted sideways launch of his body into the air. Then they disappear.

Moving on, head down I find a great jelly fish spread over grass and gravel on the beach. It mimics the Birth of a Cosmos by Hubbell Telescope. No other creature offers such rich warm colors this deep into winter. It beached itself on the edge of a partially buried field of rolling gray stone with veins of white quartz.  The field rises to a sharp edged hump near the high tide line. Is it the skin of a sleeping dragon partially exposed by the last storm tide? If Aki were a child I might explain how Dragon, tired from a flight across the Pacific stretched out on the beach so the sea could massaged its back with pebbles rolling in the surf. Then Sun broke through Clouds to warm Dragon to a sleep so deep he won’t wake until needed by Man.    

Aki, still keeping her distance, scampers over the dragon’s back. I keep off it, preferring a belt of gravel recently exposed by the ebbing tide. Minutes pass. When I look up Aki stands before  a set of ice falls suspended beneath the exposed roots of some hemlock trees growing at the top edge of the beach cliff.  Aki growls. She does that when unexpected shapes cross her pass. If she were a child I’d tell her that the ice pillars were formed by seeping water freezing to other ice during the subzero weather of November.  If she were a fanciful child I would call them ornaments made for a giant’s Christmas Tree

Winter Sits Down so Fall can Dance

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Rain rather than snow spots the windshield as Aki and I head out the road. We don’t complain for the weatherman promised heavy rain that would have melted all snow. Instead we have uncertain drizzle that merely shrinks the pack.

Gun shots block out the moving river’s sound at the trailhead.  Deciding that the trail will not lead us into a hail of bullets I pull on snow shoes while Aki assumes a defensive stance at my side.  When, I wonder. did she learn to identify gunshots with danger?  The noise soon ends confirming my suspicion that it came from young hunters emptying their guns before the trip home.

Now naked of snow, the old growth spruce lining the trail rise starkly from white ground. Last weekend this would have been a place of winter wonder. Today it offers simpler fare; yellow green moss wrapped around tree branches. prismatic bags of snow melt hanging from each twig, and the sound of water courses resurrected with snow melt. I think of a doctor announcing the mother’s death in child birth, cushioning the blow with news that the child will survive. Then I feel shame. That is tragedy and this is another rain forest day where winter and fall whirl in and out of our lives with each change in wind direction.

The shrinking snow pack shows sign of a recent wind storm. In the deep woods we have to duck under a broken cottonwood trunk and we find its beautifully shaped leaves in scattered pattens on the trail. We also find chunks of moss and lichen covered branches on the ground after being blown out of the canopy.

Taking advantage of the freedom provided by snowshoes I move off trail and onto a meadow drained by a now charged stream. We cross very fresh tracks of a deer that had to drag its rear hooves over the snow surface.  He is very near. Aki stares across the stream and warns me of the deer’s presence with a bark. Wanting to reduce the animals’ stress I backtrack to the woods and we take the trail to the river.

The tide is out but we find little action on the river’s sand bars. A single bufflehead duck rides a stiff current toward the sea and I wonder if he is that last of the gang I watched float past an eagle at this same spot in the fall. Later we findt the rest of his raft fishing in some eddies up river.

We climb a rise which offers a cruising eagle’s view of the river. Almost all color has drained from the landscape below. I concentrate on the pans of broken river ice melt on the higher sand bars where they were left by last night’s falling tide.  Aki leans against my leg, eyes turned back the way we came, watching my back.