Monthly Archives: July 2019

Feisty Little Birds

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It’s another white sky day. Aki and I have just left the Treadwell Woods and dropped onto Sandy Beach. The beach’s “sand” is made up of crushed mine tailings mixed with the detritus abandoned when the Treadwell mines closed almost 100 years ago. 

            The sun is up but is blocked by the smoke. Light from it manages to power through the haze to sparkle on the surface of Gastineau Channel. We can hear eagles complaining from their beachside roosts. But tiny and feisty belted kingfishers are the only birds to show themselves. 

            A kingfisher lands on the top of a busted wharf piling, gives Aki and I a careful look, and turns to study the surface of the channel. Spotting movement, it dives beak-first into the water, raising a splash that would knock it out of any human diving competition. No fish dangles for the bird’s beak when it surfaces.

The Calming Place

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What a difference a few days can make. It was hot during our last visit to this rain forest. Forest fire smoke had turned the sky gray. The sky is grey today but colored so by clouds, not smoke. It is cool enough to need a sweatshirt to keep warm. Last week the trail was jammed with kids and their parents—all heading toward the tidal flats or Shaman Island. This morning the trailhead lot was empty until I parked there. 

            Without crowds, heat, or sun, the rain forest is a calming place. The quiet helps too. Only birdsong breaks the silence. It’s a once again a place to heal. 

            The little dog and I fall into our familiar patterns. She sniffs and I click my camera or look at reflections in the beaver pond. She sniffs and I pop a few sweet blueberries into my mouth.

A flurry of bird action takes us both surprised when we reach the edge of a little muskeg meadow. Chestnut-backed chickadees land on branches just above our heads. Thrush and their cousins the robin trot across the boggy meadow ground. Just ahead a red breasted sapsucker prospects the trunk of a slow growing pine tree for sap. After eyeballing us briefly it returns to his work. 

Even Bears Like to Have Fun

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Aki and I are walking along the edge of the Troll Woods. Mosquitoes buzz around us but can’t land if we keep moving. I pay for each photograph with a bug bite. Aki doesn’t seem to be bothered by the mossies. 

            When the little dog stops to sniff some pee mail I spot a line of tracks recently made in a muddy ditch. Stopping long enough to learn that a bear left them, I let a mosquito nip the back of my right thumb. It is a small price for priming my imagination with the image of a two hundred pound black bear waddling along in the mud. It could easily have chosen the firmer trail that the little dog and I are using to get back to the car. 

            Did the bear, which never has to worry about tracking mud onto a recently cleaned kitchen floor, chose to walk in the ditch just so it could feel mud oozing up between its paw pads?  Given their size and power, it is hard to think of bears as more than scary eating machines. The one that just left here with muddy paws is also a bit of a hedonist. 

Bears share other things in common with humans like the ability to have fun. Several springs ago, Aki and I watched a sow and her two cubs slide down a snow covered mountain meadow, climb back up and slide down again. The mom eventually stretched out on a rock in the sun while her kids continued to play in the snow. 

Eagles and Smoke

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Eagle screams are more prevalent than gull complaints this morning. Normally the screams make Aki cringe. Today she ignores them. Is the little dog going deft or has she finally forgotten the interaction with an eagle that made her distrust the big birds? She responds to my whistle summons so she can still hear. 

            Forest fire smoke still obscures the sky and softens the outlines of mountains. When we can see the sun, it mimics a glowing coal. Up north, large swaths of the Kenai Peninsula still burn. To the northeast Yukon hectares of forests are afire. I can almost taste the smoke. 

            We walk along the Mendenhall River, passing underneath roosting eagles. One watches a brother ripping flesh from a fish that it plucked from the river.  We could wait for a one of the eagles to try for a fish. But that might test Aki’s patience or make her remember why she used to be so scared of eagles. 

We climb up a gap in the beachside cliff and take a forest trail back to the car. It’s all eagles inside the forest. Their white guano dots the understory plants. One screams each time we approach its roosting tree. Every hundred feet we find one of their feathers. Just before reaching the car I almost step on an eagle feather. It looks like a child trimmed it with scissors. 

Natural Air Conditioning

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Aki spent much of yesterday afternoon panting in the shade. Her humans also felt the heat. To escape we packed up the car with camping gear and headed out to Mendenhall Lake. The dashboard temperature reading dropped as we approach the lake. It was ten degrees cooler there than downtown. A strong wind blowing off the glacier made it feel colder. Good thing we brought firewood. 

            This morning Aki joins two of her humans for a canoe ride on the lake. It is flat ass calm. The little dog makes the ride interesting by shifting the boat’s balance dashing from side to side of the canoe. 

The sun is up, turned red by the forest fire smoke. We paddle toward the glacier and then divert toward a spot where we found good blueberry picking in the past. 

            Aki hops out of the canoe when we beach and soon finds herself wading down a flooded trail behind her humans. She dog paddles over submerged blueberry plants and past white stalks of lady tresses. Soon she is back in the beached canoe, looking tiny against the still massive glacier.   

Smoked Out

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People in Juneau are praying for rain. It is the only thing that will cleanse the air of smoke. We won’t see any precipitation for at least a week.

            Aki and I are walking along a Douglas Island beach. It normally offers views of the glacier and across Lynn Canal, the Chilkat Mountains. This morning forest fire smoke denies us the views. Until the rain comes, we have to look inside the forest to find clarity. 

Aki’s Independence Day

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Yesterday morning, before the annual Independence Day parade with its marching bands and mining machines, Aki and I walked up Perseverance Trail. Cars filled the Mt. Roberts trailhead parking lot but none of their drivers could be seen. They must still have been above the mountain’s tree line where they had watched the annual July 3rdfireworks display at 11:59 P.M. 

            After we spotted a bufflehead hen and her chick swirling in the turbulent waters of Gold Creek, Aki refused to go further up the trail. Maybe she thought we were celebrating her independence day.  We returned home on a trail that dropped into the Gold Creek valley where ripe fruit hung from salmon berry bushes. If there had been any humans nearby, we could not have heard them over the sound of the creek. 

            A few red columbine flowers lingered on and along a small watercourse a pioneer monkey flower plant was already in full bloom. 

Harvesting

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It’s harvest time in the Rain Forest. Aki was barely awake when we headed out to a promising berry picking spot. The little dog showed great patience as her other human and I slowly filled our recycled buckets with blueberries. 

            Last year, a hungry sow black bear and her cub hammered the patch that usually satisfied our berry needs for the year. We turned to the mountain meadows as back up but their production was also down. On today’s expedition, which I thought would only be a reconnaissance mission, we picked close a gallon of blueberries in less than two hours. Most were plump and juicy.            

  When our buckets were almost full, Aki started keening.  It was clearly her time for attention and exercise. She led her humans us on a loop through the forest; stopping often to luxuriate in the rich smells left by other four-legged visitors.  

Singing for Rain

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An immature eagle, small patches of white showing on its chestnut brown head, hovers over the North Douglas boat ramp. I am close enough for a good, crisp view of the bird. Behind the eagle smoke from Yukon forest fires dirties the appearance of the glacier that descends between the Mendenhall Towers toward Fritz Cove. We need rain to wash the air. The forest needs it to water the understory plants and refill ponds and streams. I wish that I hadn’t stopped at the boat ramp to watch the eagle. 

Aki and I leave quickly and drive to the Rainforest trailhead.  The smoke filled air hasn’t deadened the difference between darks and lights in the forest. But clarity drops off when we break out of the forest and onto the beach. 

Smokey air has reduced the Chilkat Mountains to smudges on the horizon. Aki finds plenty of strong smells to investigate. I use my eyes and ears to a fruitless search for surfacing humpback whales, seals, or ducks. We heard an eagle while walking through the forest. But none screams here. Even the sea is quiet. Then a song sparrow settles into the crotch of a cow parsnip plant and sings its “sweet, sweet, sweet” tune.