Monthly Archives: October 2018

Auk Village

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Aki ignores the murder of crows gathered on the Auk Nu beach. Rather than reacting to us, the crows play a bouncing game. For no apparent reason, one flies ninety degrees up then drops like a rock onto the beach. Next two birds bounce up and down. A third bird tries it.  When an eagle swoops over them the crows fly in a low arc over the water and return to the beach. Are crows and ravens the only birds with spare time to kill?

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The other birds we pass are either hunting, eating, or resting. Scoters and harlequin ducks dive on food in the bay. A sea lion rolls once on the surface and slips under the water to chase a fish. One bald eagle surveys the bay from a spruce roost after temporarily flushing the crows.

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The little dog and I leave the beach for a forest trail that leads to Point Louisa. It takes us between lines of yellowing blueberry bushes to a spit where we can see the old village site. From this spot 100 years ago, we could have seen smoke climbing from the roofs hand-hewn long houses. Big canoes, dug out from single spruce or cedar logs would have littered the beach.  A canoe full of Auk Tlingits chased a boat of British sailors back to Lt. Vancouver’s brig.  A canoe from Wrangell carried John Muir here.

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The canoes and long houses are gone. One totem pole survives to stand over a village site of dogwood, thimbleberry and fireweed gone to seed.

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The Way it is

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I am standing on a bridge over Steep Creek. Aki is in the car. Because a sow and her two cubs are fishing for salmon nearby, this is a dog-free zone. No bears enter my view shed but a red breasted merganser moves in spurts towards me. It swims with the desperation of an in bound salmon. Between each dash, the duck darts it head under the water. It must be targeting baby salmon from last year’s spawn.

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Salmon drive the moraine’s economy. Bears and ducks would be elsewhere if not for the fish. Earlier today Aki and I found a silver salmon flopping alongside the Nugget Falls Trail. At first I worried that it had been carried here in the mouth of a bear that sulked nearby. Then we heard eagle scream. The fish, which must have weighed two kilos, was lifted from the lake by talons. An bird beak had already attacked the salmon’s gills and lower jaw.

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While Aki cautiously sniffed the dying salmon, I wondered at the inherent cruelty of this beautiful moraine. The silver, now in flaming-red spawning colors, might have swam a thousand miles from the Gulf of Alaska to this lake. The whole time it ate every herring it could catch while hunted by fishermen, killer whales, seals, and sea lions. How many nets, hook, and jaws did it avoid only to die less than a kilometer away from its spawning ground? There was only one thing to do for we visitors to do—continue on to the falls so the eagle could harvest the meat.

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Sunlight broken through the heavy overcast as we approached the falls. A rainbow appeared in the spray formed by cascading water slamming into the lake.  If the falls hadn’t been swollen with rain from the storm, if the sun hadn’t appears at that moment, if Aki and I had not been detained by the dying salmon…

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It has to happen

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We are heading into the brown time that falls between fall color and snow. Aki, we have watched most of the leaves in this forest mature from spring buds to limp, drained things. The little dog, acting as if she didn’t hear me, slinks off to sniff a tree trunk. Poodle, I know it is ridiculous to mourn the leaves. She flashes me her “duh’ look.

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Maybe because this has been such a good year for fall color, I am saddened by single leaves, now faded from red to pink, hanging from otherwise empty trees. If the time of snow and hard freezes holds off for a week or two more, we will have more color in the forest. Some of the low growing sorrels are still green while the leaves of their neighbors are mottled red and orange. But the wind has torn the yellow leaves off most of the cottonwoods and the alders are fading to brown.

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Soon we will be reduced to earth tones except for the party colors of the harlequin ducks.

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Winter Quiet

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No rain falls on Aki as we leave the house. It will pound on her when we return. But we will stay dry while on the Sheep Creek Delta.

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Less than a month ago the place was crazy loud. Eagles, ravens, crows, and gulls fought over the bodies of spawned out silver salmon. Newly arrived silvers splashed in the stream, digging spawning depressions in the gravel and muscling competitors out of the way. Aki would have liked all the commotion.

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Things have calmed to winter quiet.  I don’t see any eagles, but Aki still shelters near rocks while waiting for me. A mixed raft of mallards and green winged teals chase bait fish in a small tidal lake. Gulls rest next to the creek. Down channel, clouds mottled with darks and light let shafts of light escape to turn the water silver. These signs of instability give me hope for clearing weather until I turn towards Juneau, where clouds thick with rain have descended on the town.

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Before leaving the creek. I walk a little upstream. The water is turbulent with run off from the recent storm. In an eddy, a water ouzel dives into the stream and emerges, not with a tiny fish, but with some weeds torn from the stream bottom.

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Light Before the

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A map on my weather app shows a pixilated mass of dark greens and grays about to envelop Juneau. The sun has just cleared the shoulder of Mt. Roberts. One our neighborhood ravens perched on top a neighbor’s roof sings up the sun. When the new sunlight hits the raven it joins its mate circling in the gray sky.

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I grab Aki and head out to the car. Clouds already obscure the sun but sunset tones color Gastineau Channel. Even though it will mean getting caught by the oncoming wall of rain, I stop on the way to the trailhead. The little dog and I walk onto the Douglas Island Bridge, which offers an unobstructed view of the channel. At the far end, where the Gastineau opens onto Taku Inlet, yellow and peach colored light paints the clouds. In minutes the scene is reduced to gray.

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We drive to the nearby Dan Moller Trail and walk through wet evergreens to open muskeg. The meadows have gone to rest for the winter. There are still splotches of sunset colors around the bases of mountain hemlock trees, where low bush blueberry bushes and sorrel plants shelter.  The promised rain arrives to soak the little dog and make the sorrel leaves shine.

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Between Storms

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We are on the moraine between storm pulses. The last one ripped away most of the fall color from the tall poplars. Their living skeletons line Moose Lake. The more protected willows still provide a yellow contrast to the dull color scheme created by last night’s high winds.

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Newly born cascades of rainwater carve out channels in the Thunder Mountain avalanche chutes. Fog mist rises from evergreen forests like campfire smoke. Heavy rain has raised lake and river levels. Aki and I have to detour around large sections of flooded trails to get to the heart of the moraine. As a result we have the place to ourselves except for a bald eagle roosting in the bare branches of a poplar tree.

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With all the watercourses running high, silver salmon can now reach their spawning grounds. From its vantage point the eagle can spot potential meals as they struggle to complete their long swim.

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Heavy Rain

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Aki would probably rather be home. She’d be warm and dry there and not soaking wet as she is now. We have just started down the Rainforest Trail. She has already done her business. She stops each time I look back, ready to return to the car. But she still follows me down the trail toward a wind-hammered beach.

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I am wondering why we need to complete this one-mile loop through the woods. I too could home and dry, listening to Hawaiian music and drinking tea. But I know that both the little dog and I would feel incomplete if we shortened our walk.

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The accumulation of twelve hours of the heavy rain that has fallen on saturated ground is pouring down the hillside and onto the trail. It shoots out from beneath trees to forms lakes on some portions of the path and fast moving streams on others. Already the beaver dams have been breached even though those guys probably worked all night to save them. After the storm exhausts itself against the Douglas Mountain Ridge, they will repair the damage.  The little dog and I will be back to measure their progress.

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Only the Wrens Danced

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The storm caught us halfway through the walk. Delivered by an atmospheric stream from the South Pacific, it announced its arrival with a gusty wind. Heavy rain followed to confirm its presence. Aki, who was uncertain about the trip to begin with, turned back toward the car each time I looked in her direction.

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There was little reason to continue. It was low tide and all the sea birds were 500 meters away. There was an eagle guarding the Fish Creek Pond. But it and the mallards flew off as soon as the first shotgun blast. Far on the other side of the wetlands, someone was hunting ducks.

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We passed wild rose bushes still rich with fall color. But the rain dampened even their beauty. Dead fireweed stalks were pulled toward earth by their water soaked seed down. Only the winter wrens showed any joy. They bounced around the interior of an elderberry bush, singing in the rain.

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Aki’s Second Walk

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This is Aki’s second walk of the day. She is considerate enough to act excited when we enter the Treadwell ruins. But I have to stop often for her to catch up. She may be tired, or just really really interested in all the trail smells.

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(Aki’s only burst of speed)

The local running group is staging a race through the ruins this afternoon. I’d like to be on the beach before they charge through the forest. Aki is not interested in working with me on this. Just before the race starts, the little dog drops finally agrees to drop down onto Sandy Beach where she resumes her idle ways.

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Another high tide has reduced the normally broad beach to a sliver of itself. Resident ravens fly over us but the two eagles that usually perch on the old ventilation shaft are gone. After the ravens leave we have the place to ourselves. As if orchestrated by a house manager, a shaft of sunlight hits the ventilator shaft, giving it crisp lines. Then the light moves on, striking random portions of the mountain ridge across Gastineau Channel.

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Wanting to adopt Aki’s lazy approach to the walk, I doddle in hopes that the lighting engineer will highlight a copse of balsam poplar trees that are in high fall color. But she keeps the spot on the flank of Sheep Mountain so I have to be content with the smaller beauty brought by reflected light.

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Fish Creek Sheriff

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There is still an hour before the tide crests at 18.7 feet. Already it has turned the Fish Creek delta into a lake. Whether to escape the shrinking beaches where they had been hunting for food, or because they just feel like it, a large murder of crows retreats to the forested island that we are attempting to circumnavigate. Aki  ignores the verbal battle that erupts between the crows and a handful of eagles that already occupying the island’s canopy.

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On the other side of the temporary lake, a bald eagle swoops over a raft of mallard ducks, flushing them to flight. Failing to snatch one for a meal, the eagle returns to its roost in an old growth spruce tree. One of the crows flies over to flush the eagle from its roost. I wonder if the crow’s squawking speech would translate, “How does that feel tough guy.” The eagle holds to its perch, sending up its own verbal abuse.

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None of this ruckus disturbs a local song sparrow. The diminutive singer moves along side of us as we try to reach higher ground before the tide floods out the path back to the trailhead. Even though it could fit comfortably in my breast pocket, the sparrow shows no fear. It lands on an old piling just a few feet and stares us down like a sheriff about to tell two trouble makers to move along.

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