Category Archives: Aki

Jewelry

21 Replies

2

I came for the fog but am stopped in my tracks by spider webs. Arachnids have cast their sky nets over many of the mountain hemlock and shore pine on this muskeg meadow. A necklace of translucent fog pearls decorates the trunk of a hemlock. Aki attempts to move me along to the beach with a stare. We can both hear gulls bickering, a malcontent eagle and the stage whispers of sea lions. I yield, as she knew I would and we descend into the gray as a foghorn announces the Norwegian Jewel delivering 3500 more customers for the jewelry stores and tee-shirt shops on South Franklin. None will see the spider’s fine work.

1

Chipping

4 Replies

1

This time of the year I expect to see waterfowl on the wetlands. There are none today. But little seedeaters are everywhere. They rise from the standing dead grass blades like grasshoppers from a wheat field. In the flat light it is hard to distinguish one of the little brown jobs from another. But I identify several song sparrows and a savannah sparrow. Then a rare chipping sparrow settled on a nearby root wad. While a thrush shares a spring-like song, the chipping sparrow strikes a series of poses for my camera.

2

Well Adapted

1 Reply

3

Aki, fur plastered by a downpour to her nose, whines. It is a pleading whine, not one expressing misery. Even though rain pounds down on this mountain meadow from clouds that make day seem like night, the little dog still wants me to play catch with her Frisbee. The orange saucer lies at her feet. I pick it up and toss it out over a wet, undulating blanket of fall colors. She dashes after it, sounding her predator growl.

1

Aki is not the only thing on this meadow adapted to inclement weather. Round, red cranberries lie by the dozen on top of crimson beds of moss. The rain enhances their beauty as it does the yellowing deer cabbage and blood-red bear berry plants. I head over to a pocket pond to check how this heavy rain affects the water skimmers. They ride their’ home water’s surface, bobbing slightly as the rain ripples pass under them.

2

Calm from the Storm

2 Replies

2

We can’t escape the wind and rain, even in this beachside forest. But the trees take most of the gale and protect us from sideways rain. As often happens, the adverse weather conditions discouraged other hikers and have apparently grounded the helicopters and other machines of Juneau’s tourism industry. So instead of airplane noise, we hear the surf-like roar of wind through the old growth canopy and hollow pops of raindrops hitting broadleaf devil’s club and skunk cabbage. In between gusts, raven’s clucks carry over the forest.

3

Approaching the beach during a break in the windstorm, I look forward to a chance to do some bird watching—maybe spot an oystercatcher or one of the belted king fishers diving on a fish. But the bay is empty of birds and even waves. Rather than disappointment, I feel peace—the calm that only an empty, quiet, wild place can deliver.

1

Not Sandburg’s Fog

4 Replies

1Last week’s storms surges dumped a mass of rockweed onto the False Outer Point beaches. Severed from their holdfasts, the rockweed turns from living cadmium orange to the color of iodine. The weed fills the air above the beach with the smell of iodine and my mind with the memory of my mother saying, “you know it is working if it stings,” as she brushes the dark-brown antiseptic on my cut finger.

2

Aki hunts for interesting smells among the rockweed blankets as fog thickens between the glacier and us. It pours out of the forest, over North Douglas Highway and onto our beach. This is not Carl Sandburg’s fog that comes on little cat feet. This fog slithers onto the water like a snake.

3

If we were on a boat, I’d be concerned, if not scared. But here on solid ground, with a headland providing a reference point, I can enjoy how the fog snakes around islands and cuts us off from everything with its white wall, carrying the sounds of growling sea lions and scolding eagles.

A Dangerous Coat

Leave a reply

1

Aki and I head out to the moraines, trying to squeeze in a visit before a promised Pacific storm slams us with high wind and heavy rain. Already the leaves of our cottonwoods weaken from green to yellow to brown. This afternoon’s storm could strip some of the moraine’s trees bare.

On the drive out I think briefly about bears. A sow and cubs have been feeding on salmon spawning near the glacier. We should be ok, a half-a-mile away on the moraine trail. Even if we come near bears, they shouldn’t be interested in a little dog and her scruffy master. But, I haven’t factored in my fishy coat.

3

Without thinking about anything other than convenience as we left the house, I pulled on the coat I used on yesterday’s fishing trip. A person with a sensitive nose might detect the faint odor of herring rising off its sleeves. But to a bear in autumn, the jacket must smell like an unguarded fish market.

4

Ten minutes into the hike, Aki growls and makes a faint into the woods. The branch of a trailside alder quivers above her head. Suspecting she is flushing a bird, I call her back. We walk on, enjoying reflections of yellowing leaves of willows and cottonwoods in the moraine’s pocket lakes. Far from the quivering branch, Aki growls again and breaks into the woods. Another branch quivers. After I call her back, a bear lets out three huffs and climbs ten feet up a spruce tree.

2

We divert into the troll woods and swing a wide arc around the bear visitation spots. At home, I drop the herring coat into the washer.

The Other Senses

1 Reply

1

We are only a half-mile up the Gastineau Meadows’ trail when my camera battery dies. Aki, who seems to resent the camera delays, doesn’t mind. I don’t either. Today’s lighting would only confuse the camera sensors. So I sling the camera and employ my non-visual senses to experience the place.

2

Finding a patch of late-ripening blueberries, I roll one between thumb and forefinger and feel it yield to pressure before popping it in my mouth. Its taste—more sour than sweet—makes me think of the smell of muskeg meadows soaked with rain. I search the tops of nearby spruce when a rough tail hawk belts out its “queeeee” call but I can’t spot the bird. Its next call is fainter, made further into the meadow.

Back to the Woods

Leave a reply

3

Heavy rain again drives us into the Treadwell woods where there is evidence of last night’s storm. Broken cottonwood branches litter soggy trails. We see one dog and its owner when we arrive. We won’t see any other. Another effect of the storm.

2

 

Gulls huddle on the shoreline or cruise just off shore. Three American widgeons drift among them. For a few minutes a shaft of sunlight breaks through cloud cover, enhancing the little fall color that has survived the wind. But it doesn’t stop the rain.

1

 

Fog and Fall Color

Leave a reply

1

As a heavy rain hammers Chicken Ridge, the little dog and I head out to the glacier in search of some dry. But, we find rain here too at and lake waters encroaching on the trail we usually take from Skater’s Cabin to the campground. Lake fog and low clouds hide the glacier and dampen the willows and cottonwoods’ fall color.

4

The little dog leads the way onto a work-around trail and into the almost empty campground. Only three RV’s use the huge facility today. This suits me but Aki looks like she could use some dog company. Other than a few song birds, thanks to the mist just little brown jobs, the place seems empty of life.

2

The rain stops just before we complete a loop through the campground. No wind rises but the clouds rise enough to reveal a strip of glacial ice. At the same time the fog shifts, revealing the reflections of a lakeside strip of yellowing cottonwoods mixed with dark-green spruce. It shifts back before I can focus my camera for a shot so all I can photograph is a line of tourist-red rafts heading toward the Mendenhall River.

3

I wipe off Aki and leave her in the car before returning to the lake in time to see the fog part again—this time long enough for me to capture some of the beauty.

 

Haines Highway

1 Reply

image

Fog covered the Alsek River this morning at Haines Junction. But even before sunrise we could see the St. Elias Mountains. They stood like an eroded wall between the Yukon Territory and the Pacific. Their lower flanks were exposed yesterday evening when thick shafts of sunlight powered through to illuminate the thinning cloud cover. I almost expected saints to descend from Heaven.

1

By the time we started the drive to Haines, Alaska the sun had already reduced the fog to wisps on the water.

image

I don’t want this post to be a weather report about sunshine and the cloud cover we drove under before the approach to Three Guardsmen Pass. But just out of Haines Junction we did enjoy sunlight sparking on masses of yellow poplar leaves and later on a swan pair that seemed to enjoy its warmth while resting on the waters of a pocket lake. We could see the beauty under clouds but the sun enhanced it.