Monthly Archives: March 2020

No Time to Whine

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Something dark flashes on the bay’s surface and disappears. As I wonder whether it wasn’t an illusion, the thing reappears. Just as I identify it as a Dahl porpoise, it is gone. Aki and I are hiding from the rain under a picnic shelter. She’s had a good morning, meeting dogs and reading the pee mail. Me, not so much. Up until now, I’ve had to be content with sightings of three golden eye ducks and a handful of mallards. 

            Aki starts whining, making it clear that she is not onboard with my plan to wait for the porpoise to resurface. I ignore her for a minute and then give in. We will never see the porpoise again. The walk back to the car makes up for the porpoise disappointment. No snow covers the trail, except where there are breaks in the thick old growth canopy above it. These patches stand out in otherwise dusk-like forest, like strips of dayglo paint. An eagle screams interrupts the song of an unseen sparrow.  

            On the drive home we stop to watch a great blue heron fish near a raft of mallards. All the birds are working a smallish tidal lake near the ferry terminal. The heron looks grumpy. It hunches it shoulders and keeps it back turned to me. I wait for some action, maybe one of its lightning-fast attempts to spear a fish with its wicked beak. But he holds his “I can’t see you” pose until Aki begins to whine.     

Little Eddystone Rocks

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Today’s 19.6-foot-high tide has flooded the Fish Creek trail and turned the meadow into a small lake. In the lake’s center a dozen mallards shelter from the wind on two tiny islands. Aki whines. She doesn’t like the wind. The little dog and I detour around the flooded trail and slip into sheltering woods. 

            We walk around the pond, stopping to puzzle over a curling line of otter tracks made in the deteriorating pond ice. Three islands of poop mark the beginning of the track line, sitting on pillars of ice four or five centimeters tall. The scat must have sheltered the ice beneath it from eroding rain. Now each piece of otter poop sat atop its own Eddystone rock, marking the otter’s passage.    

Happy it is Still Winter

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I am leaving the car in the driveway this morning because of the snow. A new storm moved off the Pacific last night, covering the downtown streets with high-moisture-content snow. Usually, the first car to make tracks in it will have no trouble. The second one can end up sliding down the street. That’s what happened to a snow plough this morning. It slid sideways down Gold Street until coming to a stop against a traffic barrier.

            Aki doesn’t mind keeping it local. She trots in front of me down our street and turns up Gold. The poodle-mix leads me up Basin Road, passing under a birch tree full of dark-eyed junkos. My little dog ignored the little birds. She was too busy checking out dog scents. 

            Worried about her safety, I keep Aki on lead until we reach the Perseverance Trail parking lot. After being released, she takes advantage of her freedom to pay sniff and chase with two other dogs. While enjoys herself, I study the shimmering light coming through ice cycles clinging to the undersides of cliff rocks. Another dog walker pulls me out of my reverie by saying, “What a beautiful day. I am so glad that winter is not over.” Aki, who has just rolled in the new snow, must agree.

Little Brat

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Aki, you little brat! The little poodle-mix had just trotted up to the campground ski trail, threw me a quick look, and took off.  As I wait for her return, I fume. This was not in the plan. My plan would have me skiing along the lake edge to take advantage of the conditions. If we had stuck to my plan, my skis would be swishing through the three centimeters of powder covering well-packed snow. I could enjoy seeing sun on the glacier before the clouds returned. 

            After steaming for a few minutes, I take off after Aki. Another skier tells me that she is a half a klick up the trail, playing with an Australian Shepard. That’s where I find her. That’s where I place her on a leash. Holding it in one hand and both of my poles in the other, I ski the packed trail to a place where it almost touches the river. 

            After stepping out of my skis, I take Aki off lead. She shakes, stretches, and yawns. If she learned any lessons from her time on lead, she is not going to admit it. We head up the river to the lake. Clouds now block the sun and hide the Mendenhall Towers. The flat light makes it hard to see details in the snow. But the conditions allow me to ski in any direction. We are the first to track the lake snow since yesterday’s storm. When Aki peers through a mask of snow that has collected on her face, I can help but smile.  

I Used to Like Leaning Into the Wind

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Aki moves along a low berm, just high enough to protect her from the storm. I walk behind her, feeling the full force of the wind. It rushes along soft particles of snow that stream across the trail. I used to love leaning into the wind, little dog. Aki can’t hear me over the sound of wind and the surf hitting the Eagle River bar.

            Off shore, beyond the surf line, a dozen gulls harass a harbor seal. It gives the noisy crowd a classic stunned-seal expression. Three other seals ride up and down a standing wave in the middle of the river. They must be searching for the salmon smolt that slip down Eagle River to the sea this time of year. I hope to find geese or ducks sheltering from the storm along the river bank. Four mallard drakes do waddle into the river and fly a wide arc around us. 

            Feeling cold, and a little cheated, I lead Aki back to the car, leaning into the wind the whole way. We drive over the Peterson Lake salt chuck where Aki and I saw a trio of river otters last fall. The otters have a dugout condo on the north side of the chuck. But none show themselves while Aki and I explore. 

            A small raft of mergansers dive on salmon smolt in the ocean just off the chuck. They remind me of the importance of salmon to nature’s economy. In a few months the first of three waves of adult salmon will leap and power their way up the rocky salt chuck and into Peterson Lake. They will be the lucky ones. Many others will have already ended up as food for seals and sea lions, orcas and human fishermen. Once they have rested in the lake, the salmon will move into Peterson Creek to spawn or be eaten by bears. The bodies of those who manage to spawn will feed eagles, ravens, crows, and gulls or serve as fertilizer for the rain forest. 

No Eagles

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Aki and I returned home wet from the moraine. I was tired. Aki was not. She trotted over the top of snow that was too soft to support me. We were heading toward the river on a little used trail. With each step my legs plunged mid-calf through the covering snow. 

            I should have returned to the well-packed trail to circle Moose Lake. But I thought if I pushed on, we would be rewarded by one of those wilderness experiences that given to those who paddle or hike beyond the edge of nowhere. Maybe a wolf will appear out of the snow or we will spot a pair of tundra swans resting on a river eddy. At a minimum, there should be eagles. 

            The trail deteriorated as we neared the river. Aki, who seemed to float over the snow crust would charge ahead to check out scents or tracks and run back to check on me. With such encouragement I made it to the river. No wolf turned to look at us. No swans or even ducks floated on the river eddy. Clouds covered Mt. McGinnis. There were no eagles. 

Raven Games

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Today I’d be reduced to talking about the weather if not for the raven. Even though channel wind drove rain and snow into its side, the big black bird perched on the top of an old beach piling, lifted its massive beak skyward and croaked out an announcement of our arrival on the Sheep Creek delta. 

            The little dog ignored the raven, concentrating instead on checking scents left on this popular dog walking beach. We walked along a grass covered dune, keeping the wind, and I thought, the raven at our backs. But it was waiting for us after we crossed a flooding stream. I expected the raven to keep a respectful distance between itself and us. Instead it walked toward Aki, rocking from side to side, turning every fourth step into a hop, swishing its tail in what I took to be a provocative manner. 

            Aki mocked charged the raven, which flew a few meters down the beach. In less than a minute it was waddling its way to the little dog. One of the smartest of birds, the raven could have been teasing my poodle-mix. But it could have had darker intentions. Aki didn’t wait to find out. She growled again. Perhaps bored with its game of taunt-the-poodle, the raven flew off.

False Retreat

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This morning the little dog and I sought a trail that wasn’t covered with mushy snow. We found it in the strip of forest that curls around the north end of Douglas Island. The trail there was bare and made for easy walking except where remnants of snow covered the path. An invisible cloud of small birds—dark-eyed juncos and chickadees—almost deafened us with their insect-like chirping. 

            Water poured over the beaver’s dam, which was still covered with decaying ice. Yellow-green shoots of skunk cabbage pushed up through the ice. It felt like winter had abandoned the forest, retreating into the still snow-covered mountains of the Douglas Island Ridge. 

            On the beach fronting the forest, eagles relaxed on the top of waterside-rocks. A scattering of mallards waddled in and out of tiny lines of surf. High tides had flushed away most of the snow from the beach. But no green leaves climbed up the dead stalks of beach grass. Is this another false spring?  

Sheltering Raven

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I heard a raven croaking disapproval as I walked home from Downtown Juneau. I am used to negative ravens, who usually pronounce judgment from exposed roof tops. But, this morning’s raven sheltered from wind and flurries of wet snow under an overhanging roof. I, bent into the wind, squinting to protect my eyes from driven snow, socks soaked by sidewalk slush, agreed with raven. This was a day to take shelter from the storm.

            Unfortunately, Aki still needed her walk. The little dog was all innocent excitement while being dressed. She charged out the door, took a few steps in slushy snow. 7 cm deep, and stopped dead. She would have gone back inside if I didn’t coax her out into the street. There she could walk in wet, but not slushy tire tracks. 

            Street traffic increased as we moved toward downtown. We could no longer walk in tire tracks. Aki minced her way along, lifting her soaked paws in and out of the slush. She even gave a feeble protest when I turned back. After being dried off at home, the little dog got an extra-large treat.

Almost Empty

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Aki doesn’t think that this is a good idea. From the forest edge she watches me work across a frozen marsh toward Peterson Creek. I skirt inch thick plates of ice left on the march by the last high tide to reach the water. Two wind blown spruce form a bridge over the creek. Maybe the little dog is worried that I will use the fallen spruce to reach the opposite bank. 

            I’ve no desire to cross to the other side. We have already explored it, using a man-made bridge. We crossed it to check an eagle’s nest near the forest’s edge to learn whether it has been reoccupied. It was empty. So was the northern half of Stephen’s passage. Snow squalls obscured our view of Admiralty Island, except for a line of snow-covered peaks that glowed through the grey clouds.  Near Young’s Bay, an out of season salmon seine boat chugged along the Admiralty shore.