About a week before my daughter graduates from her Lower 48 college Aki and I hike the East Glacier Trail. While Aki, a poodle mix roams ahead I think about how I approached life at my child’s current age. Things like movies had a great influence over me. There was that time I watched Lost Horizon on the family’s black and white TV.  (Too young to catch it on the silver screen). That beautiful film seemed to lay out all of life answers and provide a great stage for the lovely Jane Wyatt and dashing Ronald Coleman.  I dreamed of dating Ms. Wyatt and vowed to grow a pencil thin mustache like Mr. Coleman. Neither happened but I still remember the plot.

Mr. Coleman plays a talented diplomat who is needed in London to end the threat of war. He is abducted and taken to Shangri-La, a magical  valley high in the Himalayan Mountains where the dying high lama asks him to take over his responsibilities.  The movie asks the audience to examine what is truly important and to consider adopting a different set of values.

I think of Lost Horizons today because the East Glacier Trail takes you to a Southeast Alaska version of Shangri-La. First you travel on the Trail of Time, passing markers commemorating the glacier’s edge in 1916 and 1920, far from its current face. Then you climb, sometimes negotiating, Ronald Coleman like, granite cliffs with the help of wire cable hand lines.   You also pass miniature moss framed waterfalls that cascade over granite grooved by the receding glacier. One is terraced like the orange orchards of Kishu Island.

A mile or so in the trail winds through moss covered boulders scattered like they fell from a giant’s pocket. These erratics form the doorway to a flat plain drained by a clearwater stream. The noise of town and the airport that were constant companions on the climb up the hill are gone, replaced by the sound of moving water and bird song,

I stop next to a chickadee just a foot from the trail and enjoy a rare opportunity to study one of these tiny earth tone masterpieces. He cocks his head and I find myself imitating the gesture. “Peace to your brother,” I say before moving off. In too short a time we approach the foot of a yellow cedar stairway that takes you 221 steps to the summit.  This too echos Shangri-La, with its grand staircase to the monastery where Mr. Coleman meets the high lama.

We climb the 221 steps but find no fount of wisdom at the top, just two complaining ravens amid relics of an old mining operation that emerge here and there from the moss covered ground.  I think again about my daughter and how we climbed these same 221 steps when she a child while she and a friend of the family sang “Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold.”   I can almost hear the echo of their refrain in the rushing of nearby Nugget Creek.

Stopping to photograph the glacier on the way down I find myself standing on a large pile of spruce needles, a sign of insect damage that we didn’t see before the current series of warm winters. The glacier also reflects the warming trend, having retreated quite a ways from where it stood when my child sang it her song of friendship.

We find one more echo of childhood down the trail when the sound of children playing  sends Aki scurrying to my feet. I expect two kids to plummet past us on bicycles. When they don’t, I listen again and realize that we are hearing the sound of bear cubs playing. Fortunately they are behind us so we press on to the car.

Wake up and end your winter slumber. That’s what I want to tell the Fish Creek Woods but only fools talk to trees. That’s how Aki sees it. We find a few blue berries willing to send out a spray or two of blossoms but everything else is wrapped up tight.

The soft woods trees and other deciduous plants can’t gamble with nature. Leafing out now and a killing frost could deny them a chance to grow in the summer sun. Their reticence extends famine time for the bear and deer who need some green growth now. Both are around, leaving tracks in creek side gravel. Aki leads me to the bear’s bedding area. Nowhere are the clipped off shoots of beach grass to give evidence of the bear’s spring feed.

There is freedom of sight for Aki and I in this dormant wood. With the devil’s club restrained she owns the low spaces and runs freely under downed trees. For me, this time without leaves allows appreciation of shapes and running water and, ironically, the force of life. Now I can see unimpeded all the young evergreens sucking life from decaying nursery logs. Nothing is wasted here. I can also see reminders of the salmon of summer that will fill this stream with their dying bodies and these trees with eagles and bears. Eagle feathers are scattered along the trail like bread crumbs. Eagle scat and down cover the ground near the spawning grounds.

The West Glacier trail starts on ground too new to be interesting on any but the sunniest day. We have such a day and enjoy patterns of light and dark cast by early morning light. The muddy portions of he trail froze hard last night and have yet to thaw. A thin skim of ice covers the ponds that will soon release clouds of mosquitos to prey on this summer cruise ship tourists. It is good to take this trail now before summer with its guided ecotours, bugs, and helicopters.

The main trail is one of frustration. Even now, while the trees are still bare we only get filtered views of the glacier. After a couple miles of flat walking we climb far above the glacier ice. From here the glacier becomes a frozen river sending up rapids of ice where it flows over granite domes and ridges. A rough trail takes you to the glacial ice but Aki and I keep climbing toward the summit of Mt. McGinnis.

A shattering marmot whistle takes me by surprise and I realize that I’ve dropped into the  hiking trance, partly induced by the constant low frequency drumming of grouse. After that I look up more and see things like a grouse and these mountain goats grazing in the sun. I also see the lines carved into hard rock by the glacier and car sized boulders dropped here and there by retreating ice.

We stop where an overhanging rock offers a rare unimpeded view of ice. I sit facing the glacier. Aki faces down the trail, leaning against me, enjoying the warmth of the rock. I reach over and rub her ears. She licks my hand once in thanksgiving. Then we return to the trail.

We returned to higher country on this sunny, warm day. It feels like spring, even while snow shoeing on this high ridge. Aki brought along the other human who feeds her and they are playing catch with her precious frisbee as we move over open ground surrounded by mountains.

Many old souls live here. In the meadow ancient but stunted mountain hemlocks stand alone, sculpted by wind to Bonsai perfection. They cling to ground passed over by others and survive. We pass the twisted remains of others that have not.

Moving into a surprisingly thick spruce forest we find thick but misshaped trees with twisted trunks. Some are split from root to crown. Parallel ladders of dead branches climb up the sides of others. Their tenacity would suggest desperate pride in a human but trees lack such complexity. They only want to live where their seed fell.

Stopping near the forest edge we perch to eat lunch on a twisted spruce that corkscrews horizontally towards the sun. Aki alternatively begs for cheese and for someone to throw her frisbee. When neither happens she shivers, not for dramatic effect but because constant movement keeps her warm.

Not counting Douglas Island and city streets, Juneau has one 45 mile long road. Weirdness tends to collect at both ends. Today Aki and I try the root ridden trail to Dupont that starts at the road’s southern end.

We pass first through a forest of oversized alders and meet a gentle soul collecting wild greens to go with his lentil dinner. He’s old, grey but erect with a buffalo plain shirt that’s pockets are stuffed with the morning harvest.  Over a crisp wild cucumber shoot he has just handed me I give him a measuring eye. He could be handing me death in wild form for some look alike plants can kill. Seeing only wisdom and kindness I eat the shoot and everything else he hands me for this time of year wild foods taste fresh and full of summer’s promise.

The trail goes native after we leave behind the kind gatherer. Winter rains have washed trees root bare so they curl like arthritic hands over the steep hill side.  Whole trees, still attached to their upturned roots block the trail as if tipped over by a petulant giant.

After passing though some softer land decorated by emerging skunk cabbage, we break onto the beach at Dupont where they stored bombs during the Second World War. Here I try to catch some Dolly Varden Char. Aki only wants to chase her frisbee, She loses it while washing it in the sea. Her angst rises as it floats away from the beach until I snag it with a salmon fry fly. It‘s all I catch.

I wanted to write about the moss wrapping trees in the deepest forest with a  burning green fire.  Backlit by the morning sun, it seemed the most important thing.

Aki and I rediscovered these moss covered trees after abandoning the old river trail. It will soon be made impassible by spreading devil’s club leaves. On this trail, only the river matters with its gravel bars jammed with stacks of drift wood, some whole trees with roots attached. These give evidence of the power of flooding torrents. Such proof is needed today, when the current raises barely a ripple on the river’s surface.

After the moss, came the geese, seen not heard this time, as they searched the river meadowlands for safety. While heading there I was diverted by sun and shadow playing on the still white mountains rising out of the spruce forest. A line of bare branched alders formed an imperfect screen across the base of one peak. Aki and I admire   the winter above mix with spring below and return to town. 

Aki and I attempt again the ascent to Cropley Lake. This time we bring reinforcements and a map that promises an easier route than the shear wall of snow we faced on our last try.  The other human in Aki’s daily life joins us after packing a picnic, which I gladly carry in a day pack.

Keeping Fish Creek on our left we follow the track of a skier that crashed down through this thick forest to the ski area parking lot. He or she had skills for we find no blood on the snow. Near where the trail breaks out onto a rolling mountain meadow we flush a pure white ptarmigan. At this time of year, flushing means stirring the bird into a slow strutting walk.

I think of Bethel friend Franz for together we once hunted these tasty birds from the seats of snow machines. This one looks fat and would probably yield nice stew meat. It also looks beautiful, striking an erect rooster pose, head slight aback to monitor danger.

An hour and half on snow shoes brings up to the lake. The surrounding mountain walls are closer that I remembered. Deep snow still covers all. Hundreds of small avalanche tracks marks the steep mountain walls, promising danger to anyone foolish enough to pass under them.

We had full sun when we started but now dark clouds fill half the sky. The stubborn sun still shines through a sucker hole to fill one of the mountain bowls with pure white light.