Category Archives: Aki

Blue Blink

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Wind blown rain whipped across Chicken Ridge when we headed out to the western edge of Mendenhall Lake. Aki and I drive through rain, heavy and light, along a Gastineau Channel flooded by the tide. We have little hope of dry weather and no reason to expect sunshine. The weatherman calls for four more wet days. But the glacier makes its weather without consulting meteorologists.

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Near the glacier, ice covers the lake and all available trails. A skim of fresh rainwater makes everything super slick but the little dog’s sharp nails and my ice grippers allow us safe travel. We have the place to ourselves so no one else sees the sunlight wedge open a crack in the cloud cover. At first only a tight shaft slides through to hit halfway up the glacier. As we walk along the lake edge, blue sky replaces gray and the greens of spruce covered hillsides warm towards yellow. We turn back into the woods and don’t notice blue’s disappearance. Under occluded skies made more acceptable by the short, but rich taste of spring, the rain returns.

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Dog Day

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It’s a smear of slush kind of day in Downtown Juneau. Aki and I approach a parliament of ravens and pigeons feeding on some scattered grain. The ravens’ “y” shaped tracks dapple the disappearing snow. Beyond the birds, I can see empty cruise shop docks and the Tee Shirt and Jewelry shops that form the tourist trap line of summer. Guys building yet another cruise ship dock fill the air with industrial sounds. The melting snow and ice reveal trapped smells that hold Aki’s focus. It’s a good day to be a dog.

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Would-be god

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Again, I’m on the beach in front of Treadwell, looking to Aki like I am worshiping a raven. This one lands on the splintered top of an old piling that had been driven into the seabed over a hundred years ago. Then, the tough column of wood formed part of the Mexican Mine wharf. I’m on my knees trying to frame the purple-black bird against the flank of Mt. Roberts. Last spring I assumed a similar supplicating posture in front of a raven on this beach for the same reason. I felt like a fool then as I do now.

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Aki trots over to the piling and barks. The raven croaks back. I struggle to take the bird’s portrait while they converse. Minutes after we leave the beach for the woods that have grown up around the mining ruins, the same raven lands nearby. It struts at an oblique angle that allows it to keep one of its hard little eyes on me as it approaches. Since there is nothing for him to scavenge nearby, he must be seeking attention, not food. No, attention is the wrong word to describe his motivation. It’s admiration he is after. Aki is having none of it. The little dog wanders away from the bird who-would-be-a-god, nose down, tail up, trying to set a good example for me.

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Dupont

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The trail to Dupont leads to a World War II ruin, not to heaven. But I still feel like a soul in purgatory. Cursed looking tree roots try to catch my feet as I maneuver around hemlock trees that cling to a precipitous slope. Super-slick patches of ice lay between the roots. Aki has no problem with either of these challenges. She scampers up or under or around the hazards and waits patiently for me to work my way through each danger zone.

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A mile in we enter a zone of windblown trees, each ripped out by the roots. Rocks that the tree roots had formed around remain stranded in their root wads. It’s been at least five years since we last walked to Dupont. Then, this section of the forest offered a peaceful place to rest and enjoy a filtered view of Gastineau Channel. Now, it is a metaphor for the devastation of war, which makes a kind of sense given where the trail through upheaval ends. Dupont once served as a depository for bombs and other munitions. Today alder trees crowd the ruins of bomb cribs and the old loading wharf that is no longer useable. We catch Dolly Varden trout in the stream that once provided water for the war workers. Aki loves to chase her Frisbee on the flat beach where they staged explosives for loading. If I didn’t know that we would have to pass back through the blow-down zone, I could almost forget that parts of the world are at war.

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Winter Quiet

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Aki and I leave Chicken Ridge early, before the scheduled start of the Women’s March. In a half-an-hour our escape route down Main Street will be blocked. The sun crowns above Pt. Salisbury, infusing wispy clouds above the channel with Easter-egg colors. It’s cold and windy but the little dog and I are dressed for it and the colder temperature we will have along the Eagle River.

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The big meadow that feeds migratory birds Spring and Fall wears a new covering of snow, untracked except for those left by a cross country skier and a clutch of snowshoe hares. One bald eagle skulks near the meadows edge where it searches the riverbanks for food. Small lines of surf roll up river and the incoming tide lifts and cracks new ice. We have to take a long detour around the normally dry meadow channel because chucks of heavy ice now slosh against each other on tidal water.

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This early (It’s sunrise) I expect solitude but we meet a group of young woman chattering and sliding over the new snow on skis. They fill the air with something like tropical bird song, a impression reinforced by the flash and color of their hi-tech clothes. Soon winter-quiet returns. The sun breaks over a forested hill to sparkle the new snow and the great blocks of river ice stranded on the meadow by the tide. In the forest I find a single high bush cranberry set to glowing by a streak of sunlight that managed to penetrate the old growth. Made sweet by the winter freeze, it tastes as good as it looks.

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It’s Back

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Thinking that the recent run of warm weather will continue this morning, I dressed for spring, not winter. Now I wish I’d checked with Shamus, our electronic weather icon, before driving out to Fish Creek. Shamus was probably wearing his heavy coat, muffler, and watch cap. I could use his heavy coat. Aki could probably use her winter wrap but she doesn’t complain. So, I don’t.

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Much has happened on the Fish Creek delta since our last visit. The six-inch-thick pond ice covering shattered and islands of it rode a big tide high up onto the meadow. Already new ice replaces it. There’s new snow two, maybe four inches or so, covering the trail. Aki bounds over it like a deer, ears flopping, eyes looking for a drift deep enough for a face plant. We hear an eagle but see nothing on the land but ermine and dog walker tracks.

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We have sun, at least the islands and mountains on the other side of Fritz Cove and the channel have it. They stand whiten by new, sunlit snow. But the little dog and I walk in a dusk that will last until night. Hundreds of ducks, mallards mostly, and scoters work the stream mouth. The scoters flew off minutes ago but the ducks stay as if they know it is too cold for the dog or I to swim into their territory.

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Snain

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We were going to take a wooded trail but the glacier chose today to wear its bluest cloak. Lets just sneak down to the lake, take a few shots of the thing, and slip onto the East Glacier Trail. Aki, who considers either path equally rich in dog sign, trots along without complaint.

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Tendrils of fog form on the ice to draw me closer and closer to the glacial until we are practically at the falls. When the fog dissipated we turn towards our first choice.

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Snain, a nasty combination of snow and rain, thickened as we complete the backtrack to the East Glacier trail head but Aki still darts onto the trail. Crusty snow and ice make travel for me difficult and I miss the views we had near the lake. But for what the forest lacks in drama, it makes up for with quiet and solitude. We cross beneath the Slide Creek Falls, which each summer resists attempts from sockeye salmon to leap into upstream spawning waters. Black bears chomp down salmon discouraged by the falls.

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Tne forest is littered with glacial erratics: large granite rocks dropped by the retreating glacier. Most have thick moss capes. Today all are covered with snow. If I had spent my childhood within easy bicycle reach of this forest, I would have spent my free time wandering and building forts with what it offered.

Messing About

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The storm wind whipping across the surface of this storybook-sized pond makes me think of Kenneth Grahame’s Water Rat in Wind in the Willows. I can see Ratty, in a slicker and storm hat fashioned from alder leaves, sailing his skunk cabbage boat across the pond’s riled surface. “Aki,” he might call out, “There is simply nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing, than messing about in boats.”

My little poodle-mix is a herder, not a water dog. The only reason she willingly boards our canoe is to avoid being left on the beach. If she and the water rat shared a common tongue, Aki would shout out, “Then you have never tried sniffing pee.” Having checked out all the messages left by prior canine visitors, she gives me her “let’s move it” stare, which shatters my illusion.

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It’s good that I followed her lead. The fifty-mile-an-hour gusts that ripple the protected pond surface rip through the forest canopy. We have just pasted a half-score of hemlocks tumbled by similar storms.

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Hundreds of crows huddle near the shoreline when we break out of the woods. Some hop about while others fly back and forth along the beach. Maybe the wind has them nervous. Or maybe, they are just messing about.

Herring Gulls

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As the second Pacific storm in as many days shakes the car, I drive Aki out to the old Auk Village site. It offers a trail through old growth large enough to protect us from wind-driven rain. Ducks—Barrow goldeneyes and harlequins—fish waters just off the crescent-shaped beach. We spot no eagles or ravens but herring gulls fill the air. They seem to ride the strengthening currents for recreation, not for advantage. Graceful in flight, they plunk onto the water when they land, wings half folded, as if they misjudged their approach. Many of the gulls land on the beach and gather where a fresh water stream erodes the beach gravel. Some flutter in the stream, splashing the water like children in a municipal pool. Others look for bits of food dislodged it or the small surf pushed onshore by the storm.

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Unattended In the Woods

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A week ago, the police found the body of a young man about 500 feet up this slide chute. It was close to the makeshift camp where he had spent the early winter and just a ten-minute walk from Downtown Juneau. According the police, the body showed signs of being unattended in the woods. It’s that statement that has me taking pictures of ravens during this walk down Gastineau Avenue.

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I think about the cloud of ravens, eagles and crows that Aki I watched during last week’s Gastineau Avenue walk. I remember the collection of similar birds drawn to a wolf-killed deer on the glacial moraine. I look away from a nearby raven’s stare.

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