Author Archives: Dan Branch

Thanksgiving

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The first steps of the year in snowshoes always leave me discouraged.  It lasts until I find the rhythm and adjust the pace of travel.  Only snowshoes will work this morning. A series of nasty North Pacific lows have buried us in two feet of snow.  Strong winds pushed the stuff into the woods so nothing changes when we move from open moraine into the troll woods.  This first snow of the year has enough cohesion to drape white thick blankets over the trail railing.

I find the rhythm quicker than Aki who hangs back 20 feet and occasionally glances toward the car with a look of cautious hope on her face. Has she out grown the puppy joy that plunging head first into deep snow used to bring?  She did turn 5 last week. We have this place of beauty to ourselves so I move deeper into the woods. Eventually she takes station a foot behind the tail of my snowshoes.

No tracks mark the snow before we crest a low ridge and drop into the beaver flooded land. Then we see snowshoe hare tracks everywhere. Trail side alders hear heavy loads of snow. Those overcome by it lean low over the path so I have to duck under or turn back. At one of these barrier trees Aki bursts forward to roll wildly in the trail. Distracted I rise up too quickly and discharge a bucket of snow onto my head. Some manages to fall between my jacket and shirt collars. If Aki finds this funny she doesn’t show it on her poodle poker face.

My goal is the troll woods with its legion of moss transformed trees. We turn back before there when we come to the recent tracks of a wolf crossing the trail. Back at the car I pull golf ball sized snow balls from Aki while watching another snow storm move over the glacier. Its blue ice glows beneath a thickening layer of snow.

Bearing a Heavy Load of Snow

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Totem poles almost never smile even when warmed and dried by summer sun.  Today the carved face that watches my morning descent off of Chicken Ridge has nothing to smile about for he bears a heavy burden of fresh snow with more on the way.   Still he offers me reassurance, not judgment.  Does he know that the red cedar giant stood worse winter storms a hundred times before being quartersawed for the ones who created him?  Pretty good carvers, those guys, to plant such a question in my mind.

Measuring Sunsets

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When visiting family in Central Montana I found that the best part of a sunset came after it dropped below the wheat stubbled field. Then, moving fast enough to keep ahead of the mosquitos I’d walk west on the ranch road as the sky bruised purple, red, apricot and yellow and wondered if the sun’s passage wounded the blue prairie sky.

Summer dusk in Montana dragged on long enough to discourage sleep. Not so in the Florida Keys where I just spent a week camping and bicycling. There the wise watch sunsets from their front porch or carry a flashlight. You can’t rely on a lingering dusk to help you find the trail home. I couldn’t rely on lessons learned on the prairie to measure sunsets in the Keys.

On the Keys the real beauty happens with the sun still a long necked beer bottle length above the Gulf of Mexico when an orange to apricot light colors the under sides of clouds but the sky still holds blue. Then pelicans, egrets and gulls reduced to black make small migrations across the sun. Just as it eases into the horizon the sun sends a reflection all the way to the beach.  After that it drops quietly into the sea and night takes charge.

One evening, while waiting for a sunset I tried to draw pelicans and cormorants drying themselves in the last heat of the day. The ever moving pelicans made poor models but the cormorants would form an iron cross with their wings for minutes at a time and the herons and egrets could be counted on for short periods of stillness as they stalked prey in the water.

After catching and swallowing a bait fish one great egret turned as if to watch me draw. In minutes he hopped up to share the dock with me, showing me first one profile than the other. He then struck a series of 30 second poses, some with neck stretched to full length and others with it folded into an impossible curve. His Great Blue Heron cousins in Alaska wouldn’t so much as share a large inlet with me. I know there is something wrong with this hunting bird actions but they still marveled. 

The next morning I watched the sunrise over the Atlantic. The sky colored to apricot a half an hour before the sun appeared and then started paling to white. This stirred the birds who flew in long thin wedges across the bay and then over my head. Pelicans flew with beaks stretched out and egrets held their long necks in a “s” form so they looked like paper airplanes in the soft morning light.  All continued on over the roaring traffic on U.S. Route One and under fighter jets taking off from the naval air station.    

Later we visited a butterfly garden in Key West where a bronze blue heron waded in a Koi pool. Single drops of water fell from the heron’s beak into the pool to send out predictable ripples that rolled over the surface. I found myself wondering why a person living in the land of real fish, heron and egret would create something that could only remind one of true natural beauty. Then minutes went by with me simply watching the ripples distort the orange, red and black of the Koi fish gathered in the heron’s shadow.  

Winter in Autumn

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Today we get a taste of winter between autumn storms. No sun reaches us on the North side of Douglas Island even though it is after nine in the morning.  With the temperature in the 20’s Aki and I move rapidly through the woods for warmth.

The temperature drop gave forest moss a crunchy texture and formed a thick ice skim on the forest ponds. Those plants still sporting green look like overdressed fools in a hardware store. Their practical neighbors already wear their winter gear.

Nearing the beach we see Shaman Island through a screen of trees. The sun shines there but not on the beach.  Looking from this dark place over water to the light flooded island, I feel like a witness at the universe’s birth.  The low angle light of dawn reveals so much truth—-the grain in the island’s cliff, the number of each tree and bush. Clarity fades as the sun climbs and an Alaska Ferry moves past Shelter Island on its way to Haines. In between a lone sea lion breaks the surface of Lynn Canal.

Pre-Dawn Ice

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This morning a thin coating of ice covers all the walking surfaces on Chicken Ridge. The glazing on our small front deck makes retrieving the Juneau Empire a danger filled undertaking. Pre-dawn ice this time of year brings the promise of clear weather at least until the next North Pacific storm brings back the rain.

First ice brings beauty along with danger. Only a flat footed walk—more a slide really—can get me safely from Chicken Ridge to work. Shoe skating down 7th Street brings me to the Seward Street Stairs and a first view of Gasteneau Channel. This morning it wears a shawl of vampire fog, which can’t survive sunrise. That won’t be for a half an hour so there is still time for my idle neighbors  to put Beethoven’s Sixth on the stereo and watch the day build in richness with his music.

Beaver Wars

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Beavers have a reputation for hard work but not high intelligence. Their big scaly tails, perpetually wet fur and oversized buck teeth scream, “Awkward.” I once watched one trying to raise the level of a huge cement dam one stick at a time. Risking a tumble to his death over the spill way, he would  swim with a stick in his teeth, release it to be washed over the dam edge and then swim back for another sacrifice. That was an Oregon beaver, not one born on the glacial moraine. Our local boys must be more intelligent. They outsmarted the U.S. Forest Service. I have the wet boots to prove it.

The soaking happened today, as Aki and wound our way through glacier moraine and troll woods to avoid an increasing number of beaver flooded trails. The dog showed little enthusiasm for the venture. I blamed the pounding rain and promised her that we will soon be protected from the worst of it by a thick forest canopy. She still hesitated then took up station at my heals as she does when smelling danger. A few minutes later she shot ahead. The rain continued so a strange smell or one given off by a bear must have caused her timid behavior.

We emerged from the woods onto Crystal Lake. Across the lake a trail runner and his dog forded 100 feet of flooded trail. His trainers sent waist high splashes with steps that submerged his legs to mid-calf. Aki would have to swim it and I am tired of wet boots so we planned another route home. This took us to ground zero of the beaver vs. Forest Service war  At the head of Crystal Lake last spring the beavers built a massive dam that turned the area around the lake into a water park. With the Forest Service slow to react, vigilante hikers started dismantling the dam, stick by stick. This concerned the Feds, in part because the dam kept silver salmon out of Crystal Lake where State Fish and Game had just planted a bunch of land locked king salmon. Both sets of biologists warned that the two specifies could not safely share the same water.  Last Fall the Forest Service thought they fixed the problem by running a water pipe under the dam designed to reduced the lake water level without allowing a silver salmon invasion.

With the pipe in place the lake level dropped and the trails dried out and hikers credited the Forest Service with a win. The beavers retreated to their winter dens and planned next summer’s campaign.

This summer, rather than blocking the Forest Service pipe, the beavers built a new higher dam 100 feet down the outlet stream from the old dam. Water backed up from their new edifice over the top of the old dam and onto the surrounding trails. My feet and Aki’s undercarriage are soaked from our efforts to reach a dry trail on the other side of the flooded area.

What next? Will the Forest Service try to undermine the new dam with another pipe? Will the beavers respond with another dam further down stream?  Will my boots ever dry out?

Pride and a Cleansing Tide

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Today an autumnal tide flows over the Eagle River meadow. In minutes it will peak at 19.7 feet. Even now it robs the gulls of all their usual resting places. During this evening’s ebb, it will wash the meadow clean of decaying salmon carcasses and any other flotsam carried here by storm flooded streams.  Not content to appreciate the broken storm light reflecting off the flooded meadow, I try to conjure it up in high summer when lupines, paintbrush and shooting stars flowers formed colorful colonies on its green field.

We started this hike during the tail end of a fall storm. Aki had to stop repeatedly to shake off water.  While I waited for the end of each shimmy, I  looked at stubborn hold outs of summer displaying their few remaining leaves high even as they fade from yellow to brown. Below, their practical neighbors have already tucked themselves away under crispy brown covers. One blueberry bush sports a yellow leaf and 20 new blossoms. I would join the forest gossips in condemning this waste of life force but the pure white flowers, each an elongated Japanese lantern, sway with beauty in the rain.

Riverbank alders, wise survivors all, are bared for winter. Even here one tree holds a dead brown leave over the water. Cupped to catch the rain, the lone leaf releases a series of drops into the river below where each mixes with green glacier water and that colored red by running over iron oxide.

The rain stops as we reach river meadow but the tide soaks Aki. She is running up and down a thin strip of river bank sand, stopping only to track the progress of a seal in the river. It and a couple of clumsy sea lions ride the flooding tide before us. Aki startles one of the sea lions by jumping over driftwood and it crashes under the water like a diver that never does well in competition. The dog appears to swell with excitement, if not pride, and dashes along head of me on the trail, now flooded by the tide and swims over it to a patch of dry meadow. It must be pride that animates her for she turns back and splashes back to me on the same inundated path.   Having witnessed the folly of prideful flowers, berry bushes, and now Aki, I choose a humble path back to the woods.

Retreating Snow

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With wind and rain in the forecast we head out to the sheltered trails of North Douglas Island. The darkness promised by a walk through October woods is the price we are willing to pay for its shelter and a brief glimpse of its storm pounded beach. When the clouds lift to reveal new snow halfway down the island’s mountains I change the plan and head to the alpine thankful that Juneau’s tight topography offers mountain and sea trails within 30 minutes of Chicken Ridge.

I hope to track the first snow of the year but the rain has driven it off the meadow and into a retreat up the bordering mountain ridges.  No rainbow arcs over the meadows and forest this time but we still find color.  A stiff  mountain wind presses down the now golden grass to reveal patches of moss the color of Claret. Three round bog cranberries lay on the moss, still tethered to their tiny green vines. You cannot see the vines until close enough to pluck the berries. I harvest two and enjoy the tartness released with the first bite. Aki leaves the third berry for birds. She prefers the sweeter low bush blueberries. Sadly none remain.

Other tiny plants display fall reds and oranges but except for a few high bush blueberry bushes sheltering along the tree line, the larger deciduous plants stand bare. The exposed blue berry brush, as if chilled by the storm, have darkened to a rich red. Last week we found one or two bog rosemary plants in bloom.  Now their perfect magenta flowers have faded to a dead brown as if mummified by the cold.

Aki doesn’t share today’s agenda with me just continues scanning ahead for smells, She stops to show impatience when I take too long over the pond reflections or some other foolishness. One time she starts to follow a faint trail onto the meadow but stops a few feet in as if by a wall. She pees often to mark our passage. When I stop to make water she dashes to my side to stand guard. Touching, if a little odd.

Forbidden Forest

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On a trail picked only for its handy location we find some surprises this moist morning. Ten minutes in we spot the moss covered body of a 60‘s vintage VW Beetle boxed in by trees.  It makes me think of Harry Potter and also of an abandoned Tlingit village. That the VW appears to have become one with the woods makes me think of Harry Potter’ enchanted Ford Anglia skulking about the Forbidden Forest. That an alder shoot may soon pop up through the sun roof reminds me of the abandoned village I once reached by kayak.

Before Aki. I was paddling with a friend from the west coast of Prince of Wales Island to Sea Otter Sound. We stopped for lunch on a smooth beach. We didn’t realize the beach once served a village until we spotted the platforms of two long houses reaching from the woods almost to the beach.  Those who peopled this village believed in allowing totem poles to age to nothing while standing in the spots they were first raised. At that time I dreamed of finding such totem poles.

When the boxed in VW Beetle drove around Juneau, Tlingit and Haida people began moving the old poles to climate controlled buildings where they could be preserved for future generations. The last pole had been moved from this village site the winter before my visit but we did see platform homes scattered about the old village site.

Each home had been fashioned with hand adzed boards.  Some were little more than raised platforms but one still had its wide flat board with an oval opening through which people once entered the home. It also had a vertical wooden panel at the center of where the rear wall once stood. These boards had supported alone a center beam. Luck or providence had encouraged a young spruce to grow up through the floor boards until it supported the weight of the center beam as it rested in a fork formed by trunk and upper branch. One end of the beam rested gently on the vertical front panel.

After musing for a few minutes about the village I start to explore the VW further but Aki shows impatience so we move deeper into the forest covered moraine. Three blasts from a 12 gauge shotgun sound as we approach Moose Lake. Aki follows me cautiously to the water where we see the wakes of ducks swimming from the hunter. No dog splashes after a downed bird so he must be used every shell in his chamber without gain. There is a strange beauty in the sound of a 12 gauge being fired over water but Aki doesn’t appreciate it. At her insistence we abandon the lake for a path through a thick willow copse and enter a land flooded by beavers. The trail is now under water so we do a work around through the surrounding troll woods.

After regaining the trail on higher ground we take it to the paved road to Mendenhall Glacier, which we cross and then enter some woods we have never traversed. Suckered in by its open appearance we soon find ourselves in another forbidden forest. Our goal, to reach the Powerline Trail, proves hard to secure. The terrain turns hilly and each low spot is choked with tangled alders. We cross a small water course with no business being there. Lower alders reach across it and thick moss cover the rocks I must use for the crossing. Aki crosses first, flying from my hand to the ground on the far side. I follow but only with help from a strong overarching alder branch.

The terrain changes after the creek crossing—opening up in a mossy land where small fields of white lichen grew as if in planted fields. We find an empty beer can while still far from road or trail. Otters use mossy country like this for their picnics and I wonder if they have a taste for cheap beer.

Aki disappears just before we reach the trail and returns with the look of a dog wishing for the familiar. She gets it minutes later when we find the car.

The Party is Over

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I rarely see Aki so stirred up. She runs, upright tail prestissimo, up and down the river bank. At the end of each lap she sniffs and then stares out into the river current. She must scent the shy seal I saw when first cresting this grassy bluff.  Aki didn’t hear or see it. A wall of dead grass blocked her view of the river when I saw the seal and it slipped below the surface without a sound.

We wait for ten minutes, me with the camera ready, the now spent Aki panting by my side, for the seal to resurface. All we see is a raft of Bufflehead ducks and a strange circle form on the river surface as by a seal’s nose raised just enough to breathe. Downriver a self absorbed gang of gulls trot about on an emerging sand bar, admiring themselves in the mirror like surface of the bar.

We see no other signs of feeding. An eagle flew over as we left the car this morning. It landed in a riverside perch and sang out complaints to the rain. Any eagle with imagination or at least some inside information would be heading north to the Chillkat River to feed on the late run chum run. The Eagle River party is over.

Autumn advances rapidly now.  What fall color remains fades quickly on the approach of winter darkness. It’s not all bad.  Devil’s Club leaves no longer block the old river trail so we take it to the secret garden Aki and I stumbled into on Midsummer.  Its once green ferns have died back to tough brown husks. We find one red huckleberry, still moist and fresh. Some yellowing leaves still cling to the same bush but on one small shoot flower buds swell. One has burst into full bloom—a tiny Japanese lantern hanging in the rain.  Is each huckleberry bush a confederation of independent twigs?

We return to the main trail and find it covered with fallen cottonwood leaves. Crisp even in this downpour, they still crackle under foot.  I shuffle just to hear them fly with each boot step then stop in see them sail away from Aki’s paws.  May I never outgrown the need to splash in puddles or crash through fallen leaves.