Monthly Archives: April 2017

Fly Over

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The screech of a predator makes Aki jerk toward the noise. When two shotgun blasts follow, she looks to me for reassurance. We are on a wetlands trail near the airport. In minutes a morning flight to Seattle will fly over our heads. I want to tell Aki that the screech and bangs were meant to clear migratory birds from the runway.

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The noisy show doesn’t stir a raft of American widgeons feeding on the nearby Mendenhall River. These migratory ducks are another sign of spring as is the daily shrinkage of night. Frost whitens the still dead stalks of grass that cover the wetlands. But tough shoots of green grass have already started their climb into summer.

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Four minutes late, the southbound Alaska Airlines flight climbs off the runway and over our heads. Inside, one of Aki’s other humans looks down on familiar landmarks from an unfamiliar angle but we are too close to the flight path to be seen by any of the passengers.

Frisbee 6

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Against my better judgment, Aki convinced me to bring her Frisbee along on this walk on the Rainforest Trail. The beach will be the problem. The little dog likes to wash off her toy. When distracted by a crow or even a wind gust she lets the Frisbee ride away on the tide. Not this time little dog.

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On the forest trail to the beach I look for paper lantern shaped blueberry blossoms but find them still wrapped tight against the cold. We have better luck with the skunk cabbage, which appear as a clutch of boats being pulled across a mossy sea by yellow spinnaker sails. Territorial bird songs and the casual appearance of a robin confirm the death of winter.

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The blacks and whites of crows and gulls provide most of the animated color on the beach. Aki holds her orange Frisbee in her mouth as I watch one of her other humans skip rocks on the sea surface. After the last one plunks beneath the water I spot the little dog looking toward the glacier. Between her and the river of ice floats her Frisbee. Thanks to tides and an onshore breeze Aki’s toy is on a course to a nearby beach. We walk over to the most likely landing zone and wait. It takes forty-five minutes for the Frisbee to make the passage. It lands near a beautiful sea anemone. But for Aki’s carelessness, I would have need seen it’s gold-flecked green tendrils.

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Catkins and Spikes

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The Gold Creek valley seems vacant today. A male grouse fills the air with hollow drumming that continues unanswered long enough to make me wonder of there are any of their female kind around. Empty cars wait in the trailhead parking lot. A few joggers trot past but Aki ignores them unless accompanied by another dog. It’s high noon a sunny Saturday. The trails should be crowded.

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On the lower slope of Mt. Juneau, cotton-soft catkins and the fragile new growth of elder berry brush represent what we expect from spring: gentleness and hope. But, devil’s club plants send out their spring spikes, making sure that any touch will bring misery, reminding us of the hard side of the season.

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Alaskan Serengeti

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The kind woman with binoculars doesn’t object when Aki runs up to her and barks a hello. But when she reaches down to pet the little dog Aki is already back at my side. The lady returns her attention upward to watch downy woodpeckers hammer the trailside spruce. I ask for her morning bird count. “Four northern shovelers and a couple of plovers,” is her reply. She looks frail enough to be blow away by the strong off shore wind that reaches us even in this forested part of the trail to Boy Scout Beach. But she doesn’t complain; seems happy to share the woodpeckers with us.

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The morning’s strong ebb tide has shrunk Eagle River and exposed sand bars between us and the now turbulent surface of Lynn Canal. Using my old camera as a telescope, I find a wealth of waterfowl and shore birds. Canada geese and ducks (golden eyes, buffleheads, mallards, scaulps, mergansers) fish wind-protected sections of the river for sea going salmon fry. Some geese have flattened themselves against the mud bar. Others wander the exposed flats. Is this what the African Serengeti is like little dog?

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We arrive at the beach where wind gusts make Aki jumpy. Rather than stay for more punishment, we climb over a berm and drop down onto a meadow where a score of American robins hunt for food. I am surprised to see such a large flock of robins because our neighborhood birds are already building nests. These guys must be refueling for the next leg north.

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Aki’s Throne

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In the forest canopy, a brace of eagles bicker like a music hall married couple. One of Aki’s other humans places her in the crotch of a destroyed spruce tree. The forces of decay have reduced it to a hulk of soft ochre-colored wood. Most of the forest is dusk dark but a shaft of morning light animates the spruce remnant and makes my little dog glow like a crowned saint.

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The tree that forms Aki’s throne took hundreds of years to join the forest canopy and thicken to maturity. It bent to the fierce westerly winds and lived to offer roosting limbs to generations of eagles. Then one fall night, a wind with just the right strength and direction shattered the tree, reducing it to the stump that Aki now uses for a better view of the surrounding woods. She dislodges several chunks of softened tree flesh with her paws when she leaps to the ground.

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Spring Snow Frenzy

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Ah Aki, look what I’ve found for you. Until now the little dog has been a reluctant companion on this walk across the thawing Gastineau Meadows. She formed a statute of distain at the edge of the meadow when I first left the trail. Letting a strong wind whip about her ears and tail, she turned her face in the direction she clearly intended us to go. I wanted to tell her that that path will be open to us all summer. I wonder why she can’t sense that already the meadow moss softens in the spring heat. Soon each step we take will damage emerging plants and mosses.

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Only when I move out of her sight line does the little dog trot after me. I needed snowshoes the last time we crossed the meadow. Today we pass almost without effort until reaching this spot where snow still covers the winter trail. Aki sounds a happy growl and charges up the trail, her paws digging deep into the corn snow. For a magic moment she circles up and back, often leaping, always running, sometimes barking. Then, apparently spent, having regained her dignity, she waits in silence at the top of the small hill.

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Darks and Lights

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Another sunny day in the rain forest. Aki trots between an old friend and me along the forested edge of Auk Lake. It was near freezing when we started but is now warming toward the projected high of 57. Spider silk and remnant ice draw dominate the walk.

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The silk, spread taught between the twigs of a blue berry bush with bark already blushing red with spring sap, appears and disappears as a faint breeze moves it in and out of the light. Each pulse presents and withdraws in less than a second a linear rainbow of color. In wet areas not yet reached by the morning light, velum-thin sheets of ice form mazes of interconnected ice feathers. Each ice sheet is as monochromatic as the spider tightropes are prismatic.

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Eagle Edgy

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All the birds on the Fish Creek delta are edgy and its not Aki’s fault. It can’t be the weather. We have clear, windless skies. A gentle sun warms the beach grass straw. It can’t be the tide, which retreated this morning to leave acres of exposed mud for the birds to hunt and hide on. Mallards burst off the flats in twos and threes to fly in an arc around us and land on the creek water.

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Eagles launch from beachside spruce to shrink into dots over the wetlands. Eventually, I make the connection. It’s their gliding flight that routs the mallards and other ducks.

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In the woods along Fish Creek pond, a murder of crows wake from their roost. Their outriders dog our passage back to the trailhead, croaking warning to the little dog. But the resident squirrels, normally the first to scold Aki, watch us pass without comment.

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The Church of Powder and Shot

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As Aki and I hurry past the gun range to where the Montana Creek ski trail starts, I wonder at these people who chose to spend Sunday morning discharging high power rifles. Perhaps their Sabbath falls on a different day of the week. It’s still early so maybe they are centering themselves for the mid-morning Palm Sunday service by releasing violence against a paper target. For others, this may be their church: their way to celebrate creation and life. Instead of following along in hymnals, they use the Remington 270 or a standard thirty-ought-six to sing divine praise. Members of this church of powder and shot must prefer the bark of a Winchester 30-30 carbine to a homily.

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When the rifle range noise becomes hidden by the sound of Montana Creek, I ease into skiing. Aki releases her tail from between her hind legs and trots along, stopping to sniff and pee like she does when relaxed. But at the turnaround spot, where there is only a tributary of the creek to break the silence, we hear three loud bangs. Down goes the tail until it is curled between Aki’s legs. Even though we are soon back to where the creek noise blocks out violence sounds, the little dog doesn’t relax.

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After we run out of skiable snow, we walk. Yesterday, on this patch of ice and pavement, I felt like a WWI recruit approaching the trenches for the first time, trying not to duck for cover. But today, we don’t hear any shots during the 500-meter walk to the car. The gun range is practically empty. We spot only two men and them conversing quietly next to their pickup truck. Church must be out.

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Winter on Life Support

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Aki was not pleased at being left out of yesterday’s hike. Giving me hard looks, she followed me around the house this morning as I gather needed stuff for a cross-country ski on the Montana Creek trail. We have avoided this trail for the last two seasons because it starts near a very active gun range. The cannon-like noise produced hurts my ears and makes the little dog very nervous. But Aki loves snow, especially when it offers her a chance to run along side one of her people skiing. So here we are.

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Thanks it its proximity to the glacier, Montana Creek has an icebox microclimate that keeps winter alive as spring flowers open on Chicken Ridge. While walking away from the gun range on a bone-dry road I wonder if we left it too late. But three hundred meters ahead we find an icy covering that had been made just skiable by groomer. With the drum and track setter that he tows behind his snowmachine (Skido in Canadian, Snowmobile in American), he keeps winter on life support for the first kilometer of the trail. After that he just has to tidy up the snow that winter retains on its own. For the last two kilometers of the creek side trail snow stacks three feet high decorate boulders in the stream and a blanket of the same thickness covers the forest floor.

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