Monthly Archives: May 2018

Languid Meadow

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It’s 55 degrees F.  The recent series of dry, sunny days has dried out the meadow muskeg so Aki and I are taking a trail that would be impassible during the monsoon season. I mention the moderate temperature because Aki grabs some shade each time she rests.

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In spite of the summer-like conditions, the meadow grass is still brown. Magenta-colored wild rhododendron buds are just starting to form. But there are no other signs of summer except bird song. If the muskeg were a little drier, I’d lie down next to Aki and enjoy the light breeze.

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The little dog and I drop off the edge of the meadow and take a trail down to the Fish Creek bridge. The trail is lined with yellow skunk cabbage blooms and blue berry brush heavy with white blossoms. A Steller’s jay flies over our heads and lands on a spruce branch and scolds us for having the nerve to walk through its forest.

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Forgiveness

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The ducks and geese are gone, leaving the tidal meadow looking deceptively empty. But Aki and I flush warblers and sparrows with each step we take along an earthen dike that borders it. In the pond formed by the dike a young beaver swims back and forth, stopping only to slap its tail on the water. I tell it not to worry, that neither the dog nor I have any intention of taking up residence on the pond.

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Minutes before, two Sitka black tail deer had walked across the North Douglas Highway as we slowed to turn into the trailhead parking lot. One, a young male with nascent antler buds took the lead. The female deer followed, more interested in eating new growth grass than our car. The male took up station at the tree line and stared at me. I knew he would break into the woods if I left the car so I didn’t move.

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After circling the beaver pond, the little dog and I push on and round the tip of a peninsula where we have seen so many mallards in winter. Eagle cries and crow cackles come from inside the old growth spruce forest on the peninsula but I can’t see one of the noisemakers. On the backside of the peninsula a mature bald eagle stands behind a flat-topped rock that is covered with barnacles. Bright sunlight makes its head painfully white. Even though there is food to find on the surrounding wetlands, the eagle stands still behind the rock, as if it were a pastor practicing for the Sabbath homily. As we approach the eagle, a whale surfaces and exhales.

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Another bald eagle flies, with talon’s extended, toward the preacher, which screams at the late arriver. I expect a fight but am treated to an apparent offer and acceptance of forgiveness. The newcomer bows its head low and approaches. In seconds it’s lowered beak is almost touching the preacher’s talons. After the other eagle lightly touches the supplicant they separate.

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If I were in a more skeptical mood, I might have described the scene as the reunion of an unfaithful husband and longsuffering wife. I could have portrayed a hungry eagle scolding its mate for not delivering some food. But it is early summer and we are enjoying the fourth day of warm sunshine after a long, wet spell. The meadow grass will never shine as green. Purple lupine flowers show near the tree line and the columbines can’t be too far behind. I shouldn’t be surprised that I saw love and forgiveness in an eagle’s actions.

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Morning Entertainment

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The Sheep Creek delta seems empty this morning. No gulls or ducks or even crows wade in the creek waters. No heron stalks small fry in the shallows. A clutch of gulls float in Gastineau Channel under the eye of the adult bald eagle perched in the superstructure of navigation aid no. 2. If it weren’t for a large raft of scoters on the channel waters it would be stone quiet.

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I imagine that our other local waterfowl are feeding on their summer grounds on the outside coast. Later, when the creek fills up with spawning pink salmon, clouds of screaming gulls will make it difficult for Aki to hear my summing whistle. But today, she has no such excuse. I’m in the no man’s land between the splash zone grass and the channel. The little dog stands in the grass, using her mental powers to call me back. She wants us to walk down the beach at the edge of a grass-covered dune, which is rich in dog smells.

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This drama repeats itself on every visit to the creek so I keep walking, knowing that she will eventually trot out to me. When she does, we walk toward the nav aid to check out the eagle. It ignores us, only leaving its perch to sweep out over the channel to fish.

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Aki’s been a good sport about what she considers a silly detour so after a few minutes we walk over the grassy dune where she can scent and pee to her heart’s content. At the end of the dune the nav aid eagle is now perched in an alder tree. Maybe, for the big raptor, we are the morning’s entertainment.

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Harvesting Spring

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Aki and I are heading up Basin Road on this soft and sunny morning. As we left home, Rufus hummingbirds worked our neighbor’s feeder. Other neighborhood birds—dark eyed juncos, robins, warblers, and the rest of the songbird gang—ate and sang.  It’s a morning that can make you believe that the sun will always shine, birds never stop mating and singing, and the cottonwood leaves will never lose their translucent luster.

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A realist, the little dog knows what is coming for us from across the Pacific Ocean. Another rainstorm will be here in a few days, washing away interesting scents and mudding the trail. While I am content to dawdle, Aki carefully catalogues message left her by other dogs.

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On the southern slope of Mt. Juneau, mountain goats are making the most of the weather, chomping down succulent new growth of the tough trees and scrubs clinging to the steep hillside. Like migrant workers following the harvest, the goats will move higher and higher up the mountain until spring reaches the summit.

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First Light Breaking

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First light is breaking after the storm as Aki and I enter an old growth forest. We won’t see another man or dog on the walk to the beach. The light reaches deep into the forest and makes translucent the green skunk cabbage leaves as they muscle up through the waters of the beaver pond.

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Reaching the beach we discover that the minus three-foot ebb has exposed the causeway to Shaman Island. Eagles feed on land normally covered with ten to twenty feet of water. I usually have to coax Aki onto the causeway. But today she follows at my heals.

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It’s a tough morning for ravens and eagles. The crows that roost on the island harass them. As we leave the causeway, a raven flies over us, crows pulling at its tail feathers. Other crows do the same to a deserting eagle. To the north storm clouds lift to reveal the glacier and Mendenhall Towers.

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Late in Coming

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Aki and I have come too soon to the troll woods. It looks and feels like winter has just left. Many of the lakeside alders and cottonwoods stand with naked limbs against a dull-grey sky. But there is hope for spring in for the form of pussy willows and bursting alder buds. Even though little or no snow remains on Thunder Mountain, it is cold enough for me to hood up.

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By straining I am able to spot one mallard on Crystal Lake. The shrill whistles of the vared thrush and once, a hawk’s complaint supply the only other evidence of animated life. Pushing deeper into the moraine, despite a government sign warning of recent bear activity, I lead the little dog to the edge of a beaver-flooded trail.

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Aki, apparently knowing I will have to soon reverse course, the poodle-mix watches me doing a clumsy tightrope-walking maneuver along the trail’s edge. When I reach a patch of dry ground, my eye is pulled down to the flooded trail by the panicked movements of water bugs. They are heading toward islands of grass where the waves generated by raindrops can’t break the tension that keeps them afloat.

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Confluences

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We are enjoying the confluence of raindrops and sunshine that can form between storms. The twenty-four hours of rain just ended glistened the new understory growth and hung fat drops on the tips of blueberry leafs. Even though this is a weekend morning, no one else is using the Rain Forest trail. Aki doesn’t sulk. There are enough left over smells to keep her occupied as we drop through the old growth forest to the beach.

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Other than the pale pink blueberry blooms, only the butter-yellow skunk cabbage flowers challenge the forest’s green monopoly. Shafts of sunlight spot light both kinds of flowers and shine through leaves and lattices of old man beard lichen. The air is full of the songs of working birds but the vared thrush’s shrill whistles and the jack-hammer sound of woodpeckers make it hard to hear the sweeter tunes.

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Sun shafts bring out streaks of intense color on the beach after we leave the forest. A great blue heron grooms itself on an exposed rock at the water’s edge. When it stops to face Lynn Canal, it looks like a messy-haired preacher about to deliver a Sunday sermon to the congregation of gulls and ducks that has formed in the nearby waters.

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Prettier at Opening Time

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Sometime during the past century a country and western singer made a lot of money by singing “The girls get prettier at closing time.”  Lack of experience prevents me from evaluating the truth of this statement. But I find myself singing the song to Aki as we walk through the Treadwell Ruins.

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A fast moving storm slammed into Juneau last night, blowing away the patch of high pressure that had provided us with four warm and sunny days. So we are taking advantage of the shelter from wind and rain offered by the cottonwood forest that has grown up over the ruined town. The Treadweel cottonwoods, alders and willows leafed out during the warm spell. They preshow the beautiful colors the trees will display next fall. Each leaf is unmarred by insect, disease; undarkened by exposure to the elements. For the only time in the year, the cottonwoods fill the air with the smell of balsam.

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Ground plants and shrubs won’t ever look as pretty as they do now as they unfurl their tiny leaves. Fiddlehead ferns uncurl their tightly wrapped stems. Even the shaggy cow parsnips look pretty this time of year.

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The Morning After

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I could hear them bickering when we reached the Fish Creek Pond. At least two bald eagles were having words. Aki ignored the noise to concentrate on all the good scents left along side the trail. Neither of us paid much attention to the incense-smell of the balsam poplar leaves opening to the morning sun.

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We eased up onto the dike that forms one edge of the pond and walked toward the creek. A mature bald eagle and an immature one perched close to each other on a bleached-out driftwood log. Another eagle stood waist deep in the creek, as it he decided it was great day for a bath.

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The wet eagle must have been pulled under by a steelhead trout. Using its wings for lift, it managed to escape the creek waters and skip over to the shallows where it could stand. Raising its wings again, the big bird waddled onto a gravel bar. The scene had the feel of Sunday morning coming down. The two dry eagles watched with passivity of the hung over while the other one looked like it had no idea how it ended up in mid-stream.

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Now the little dog and I move down to the creek mouth where two Canada geese alert the world of our presence. A flood tide has covered the wetlands and backed up the creek. As I focus my camera on the glacier, the geese explode off the water and fly a low flight path over Fritz Cove.

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Taking it for Granted

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A matched mallard pair speeds across Moose Lake. Spooked by another dog walker, their flight is driven by a need to escape, not to reach a destination. When they near the opposite edge of the lake the ducks throw up their wings, hover for a second and then splash onto the lake’s surface.

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The mallards move back toward the center of the lake and disappear into a reflection of Mt. McGinnis and the glacier. Being able to witness action like this by ducks that are common as pigeons in a park is something we take for granted. I am going to try not to do that in the future.

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Thanks to our local beavers, the parameter of Moose Lake is shrinking. Someday it will be a meadow and ducks will have to find other water where they can fish and feed. That’s how nature works. Sometime in the too near future the glacier that now launches icebergs into Mendenhall Lake will retreat from the lake and become a hanging glacier. That’s on us who contribute to climate change.

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After the glacier’s retreat arctic terns will no longer be able to rest on icebergs that come to ground near their nesting site. Cruise ship tourists will ride boats across the lake so they can scramble close enough to the glacier for a selfee. Locals will remember the time…