Monthly Archives: August 2017

Cursing Crows and Gulls

1 Reply

1

Reunited after a week’s absence, Aki and I patrol the Outer Point Trail. The little dog slips back into her role as monitor of the smells. This morning’s strong sunlight makes her squint each time a pee mail message draws out of the shadows. We are well back from the beach when the sound of gulls and crows shatters the forest quiet.

2It’s low tide. Just off the mouth of Peterson Creek pink salmon leap out of the water and then drop back to join a school of their kind killing time until the flood tide arrives to carry them to their spawning grounds. The crows and gulls sound impatient for the fish to die.3

The beach is empty of people and the trombolo to Shaman Island is exposed. I carry the little dog across the temporary land bridge, which has become a nursery for shellfish. Vagrant crows and gulls warn us away from the island but I press ahead, walking first on a path of crushed shells between the sparkly-orange rockweed and then the dull black trombolo. I wonder if Aki or the birds think that the little dog is royalty. When it is clear that I won’t be deterred by their noise, the guardian birds circle around and take up station behind us.4

Aki is calm in my arms but is slow to move onto the island after I put set her onto a grassy path. The bird din has not stopped. They won’t shut up until we return to the forest. To spare the little dog and I further abuse, I carry her back over the land bridge, the target of crow curses the whole way to the woods.

Marymere Falls

Leave a reply

Yesterday I spent mainly at the Crescent Lake Lodge. The ground seemed old, beaten down by the feet of hundreds of thousands of overfed children. Smoke from the British Columbian forest fires robbed the sky of blue and the trees of definition. This morning, thinking of the lost beauty, I’m on the way to Marymere Falls, walking through a forest of shaggy red cedars and soldier-straight Douglas Furs. 

The trail has been reduced to hard pan by thousands of tennis shoes. Dust raised by passing walkers coats trail-side ferns and the leaves of salal berry plants. But I am alone and the trees can’t help but impress.

Don’t we savor those rare chances to be the only presence in a place of famous beauty like a rain, Venice’s St. Mark’s Square or the south rim of the Grand Canyon at first light? 

 

It is small by Alaskan standards but Marymere Falls has its own mossy beauty. I sit on a wooden bench worn smooth by the bottoms of previous visitors. Some of them carved initials into the bench or into the railing that marks the edge of a sheer cliff. But on this summer Saturday morning no one approaches with a knife. The sound of tired children or grunting parents doesn’t compete with that made by tumbling water in a great hurry to join the lake. 

Terrible Beauty

1 Reply

It is a good thing that Aki isn’t here to breathe the smoke. She is back in Juneau going on wet walks with her dog buddy. Here on Washington State’s Crescent Lake smoke turns the blue sky white and softens the lines of mountain ridges. Carried by prevailing winds from fires burning British Columbia, the smoke creates a terrible beauty. Children swim under white skies and adults guide paddle boats into the haze. I feel like I am living out the earth’s last days.