Category Archives: Aki

Back from The East Coast

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Yesterday, while Aki walked a Juneau Trail with a dog buddy, I strolled through the National Gallery in Washington D.C. Treating the main hallways as rain forest trails, I turned off them often to explore one of the rat-warren gallery’s rooms, like the one with the Turners or the hard to spot one with the Vermeer painting of the fop with a fuzzy red beret. The paintings’ drama and rich colors reminded me of Outer Point on the high contrast days of spring or a dying winter afternoon along Eagle River.

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Remembering it from an earlier visit, I made an expedition into the basement where they keep the Degas ballerina sculptures and some plasters by Rodin. Even these reminded me of the rain forest with its complex shapes and falling leaves yielding to a strong wind.

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This afternoon, an hour after our return flight to Juneau landed, the little dog and I are alone on the Lower Fish Creek Trail. Instead of watchful guards we have an eagle that keeps us honest with its screams. I remember a walk I took a few days before when Aki’s other human and I crossed New York’s Central Park to reach the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Like it does over our glacial moraine, the sun broke through clouds to enrich the yellows and oranges leaves of trees along the trail. We passed a women turned away from the beauty to concentrate on her cell phone conversation while two men waited patiently for their leashed dog to evacuate its bowels.

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Appreciating Ice

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Through air cold enough to silence the waterfalls, Aki and I walk along Gold Creek. This time of year, none of today’s sunlight will reach the trail. It’s a day to appreciate ice.

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The little one doesn’t know or care at what temperature waterfalls freeze solid. The fills her brain with the history of all the places she has marked with scent. Aki loves this trail because of all the other dogs that mark it. Today she gets to flirt with several younger dogs. I stop often to enjoy ice sculptures that have formed in slow moving creeks and icicles hanging off moist valley walls. Even in the daylong dusk, they faintly glow.

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Sun on Ice

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This is our first return to the Troll Woods since the bear incident. That ended with a curious black bear peering down at us from atop a spruce tree. Now, hopefully, the cold that has iced over the ponds and flooded the moraine trails has also driven the bears into hibernation.

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The rising sun can’t reach the first section we cross but its reflected power brightens the frost feathers from gray to a subtle white color. Ahead, Aki trots towards a sun-washed portion of the trail. But I want to linger in the calm dusk knowing that I won’t be able to appreciate its beauty after seeing the woods in full sun

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Frost

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On these early winter mornings, the sun paints the rainforest its narrowest brush. Aki and I will spend most of this walk through it on ground where last night’s frost waits to melt when exposed to sunlight. On the border of meadow and forest, the frost may thicken for weeks on Labrador tea and lingonberry plants without challenge from the sun.

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It’s low tide when we reach the beach where cold had edged tide pools with rime ice. Frost outlines the iodine-brown fronds of seaweed. I follow Aki to a sunny stretch of the beach and expect some warmth from the sun but it only makes me squint.

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Back on the meadow behind the beach, I try Aki’s patience by waiting for sunlight to reach a patch of lingonberry brush. Somehow, three of the dark-red berries have survived the pickers and birds. The one I pluck tastes almost sweet and as complicated as a good red wine. Then, the sun glistens the scene.

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Somebody’s Birthday

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Today is Aki’s tenth birthday. We celebrate on the glacial moraine. A favorite trail is almost empty even though it’s sunny and frost feathers cover every stone, fallen leaf, and blade of grass.

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Wafer-thin ice covers Mendenhall Lake except where Steep Creek flows into it. At least four late-run sockeye salmon recently entered the stream. Three have taken up station on one end of the first beaver pond. A fourth is dead at the feet a bald eagle that is busy ripping off strips of salmon flesh with its orange beak. In seconds three other eagles land. The first bird chases off one but the other hangs about. Two magpies flutter around the feast but have to settle for scraps that have landed a safe distance from the eagles. Soon raven will push away the magpies and reach a détente with the bigger birds.

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Aki, she ignores the bickering birds but not the scent of something she catches after we have moved away from the lake. At first oblivious, I trod on until I sense her absence. Turning, I see her standing stiff, noise wrinkling in caution. A line of what looks like wolf tracks lead from her to me. I back track and take an alternative way to the car with my little protector.

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Racing

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Aki and I race through Treadwell to reach the beach before Sheep Mountain loses the afternoon light. It’s our first walk since her other human and I flew down to Seattle on Friday. Since then I’ve been racing—to board our flight, rent a car, avoid rush hour traffic (failed effort), catch multiple ferries, and to make a wedding on time. On San Juan Island, we watched two people we first knew as children race into their adult lives. Then we raced back to Juneau. I’m tired of city traffic, crowds, and airports. Mainly, I am tired of racing.

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Storm Respite

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It’s been raining in Juneau since Election Day. The forecast calls for more of the same for the next week. Today, it is also windy. Aki and I enjoy a calm respite on the forest trail near Outer Point. We pass several new downed spruce, all toppled by recent storm winds. One floods the trail with resin perfume. The usual gang of gulls occupies the beach when we reach it. Just off shore surf scoters and harlequin ducks fish in a protective storm lee like they did yesterday, last week, last month. Nothing short of a shotgun blast can disturb them. Aki wants to return to the dark woods and then home. But I still linger in the calm.

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Treadwell

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Treadwell in the rain is a peaceful place. Thanks to the hardwood forest already established among the mining ruins, storm winds can’t reach Aki and I. She tends to spook on days like this and I wonder, again whether dogs can see ghosts. There should be plenty of them here where just over 100 years ago tunnels running under Gastineau Channel collapsed and flooded out the mine. Before that, it would have been a place for me to avoid—crowded and dominated by the pounding noise of machines crushing the gold out of ore.

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I would have mourned the clear cutting of the original old growth forest and felt sorry for the Chinese immigrants who struggled to dig the ten mile long ditch needed to deliver mountain water to the mining town. I would also have admired the iron workers who cast the large gears needed to process ore. Today, the gears lay sprawled at the base of spruce and cottonwoods, mining cars waits for the forest to close in, and the only noise is made by a bossy Stellar Jay.

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Old Friends

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Today, Aki and I walk with an old friend on a beach trail we have taken many times. The little dog likes it that the friend always walks by my side. We are the perfect charges for a herder like Aki because we heard ourselves.

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A strong autumn sun lights up the dog wood leaves and the party colors of an ever-present raft of harlequin ducks. My friend and I talk about people we know and those we knew who have passed. Mostly, it’s a conversation as bright as the sunlit dogwood leaves but when we stop to watch a hermit thrush watch us, the mood darkens. Words, not the bird’s appearance bring the change: those that acknowledge loss. But they are followed by shared, happy memories of the man who would have loved seeing the thrush. 3

Comfort Zones

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As we round False Outer Point I spot an immature bald eagle perched on a nearby rock. Expecting it to fly off, I take a few pictures of the bird even though it is backlit. The big bird slowly turns it head right, then left but doesn’t move. The topography forces us to come within fifty feet of the eagle, well within our eagles’ usual privacy zone. Bur this one is still on its rock when we pass through the choke point and reach the next headland. “What’s the deal with this eagle, little dog?” She ignores me like she did the eagle.

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We keep moving to make it around a series of headlands before the tide floods the trail home. Around the last one, another eagle squats on an offshore rock. This one flies off before I can find the right setting on the camera. But ten feet away, a tiny sparrow preens on a surf-rounded rock.

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