Category Archives: Aki

A Blink of Sunshine

Leave a reply

1

After days of heavy rain, Aki and I finding ourselves squinting into sunshine. We just left the flume trail that links the Juneau Highlands to Perseverance trail, knocking accumulated rain water off elderberry plants that crowd the trail. I probably shouldn’t have chosen this trail because it is flooded at by charged streams that plunge down the side of Mt. Juneau to Gold Creek.

2

Even the humble salmonberry leaves sparkle in the sunshine, which also turns the normally dull devil’s club berries into bright red globes. When the sun moves back behind the marine layer colors fade and we return to the world of muted greens that typifies the rain forest.

3

In Spite of the Rain

Leave a reply

1

On this walk through the Treadwell ruins it will rain hard but there will be no wind. We will pass many dogs and their humans. Aki will play with the dogs and ignore their humans, including the woman who will shout, “Keep that dog away from me,” even though Aki will already be twenty feet down the trail. A raven will waddle between the stubs of wharf pilings and stop only long enough to give us the stink-eye. Three kingfishers will chase each other across the surface of the glory hole and one will land in a nearby branch for the sole purpose of scolding my innocent dog. An eagle will sink its talons into the top of a ruined wharf piling and screech defiance at a pair of other eagles who will show the good sense to perch under the shelter offered by beach-side spruce trees. It will be a good walk in spite of the rain.

2

Whale or Squirrel

Leave a reply

1

Today I planned on writing about the rain after Aki and I returned from walking a circuit around Outer Point Trail. A hard storm had hammered the forest just before we arrived, leaving behind beads of water that clung to berries and mushrooms. These water beads captured all the surrounding light and then shined like globes of hope until destroyed by wind. Globes of hope are compelling subjects, more interesting than politics or street violence. But a whale trumped them when it surfaced and exhaled a one hundreds meters from the little dog, swam through its own mist cloud and disappeared. Aki, who finds squirrels the most compelling things, turned away from the whale while I fiddled with the lens cap on my camera. But she waited we me, without complaint, for the whale to resurface. When it did, all but its spume hidden by the Shaman Island spit, she led me back into the forest toward the chitterling squirrel.

2

Sacrilege

Leave a reply

1

Near the downtown Juneau bus terminal, Aki ignores the guy standing next to a spray-painted sign that asks, “Why Me?” I can’t. In his hand, he holds a beautiful, if old, carving adze. It’s one of the curved-bladed ones, handy for scooping out the back of a mask but hard to sharpen. Performing a sacrilege, he uses the adze to dig a trench in the soil of a planter box. Above the sound of passing tourist buses, we hear a song of condemnation hurled in the man’s direction by a nearby raven. I’d join in if I knew the words.

2

Interludes

Leave a reply

3

Back in Juneau and back with Aki, I load the little dog into the car and head out to North Douglas Island. This morning’s light, but steady rain doesn’t deter us. We stop near the boat ramp where fog rising off Fritz Cove obscures the industrial buildings that dot the north section of the Mendenhall wetlands. For once, we can see the glacier snake off the Juneau ice field between coastal mountains as one could have before Joe Juneau and Richard Harris followed Chief Kowee up Gold Creek—before the mining and all that followed.

2

Minutes later, we walk onto the Rainforest trail and hear the voice of a tour guide educating cruise ship passengers about the old growth. We will pass three more guided groups before the walk ends. During interludes when the forest manages to swallow projected voices and camera clicks, water and bird songs dominate. “Plunk….plunk…plunk,” chant drops striking elephant-ear like skunk cabbage leaves while the varied thrush whistles.

1

Fireweed

Leave a reply

1

“Just to let you know. There’s a bear hanging around down there,” the nice sounding dog walker in expensive casuals says while pointing at a field of flowering fireweed that seems to stretch to the Mendenhall Glacier. I smile back, thank her, and walk onto the meadow. A bear is never far from you anywhere in Juneau this time of year.

2

An electric-orange plastic fence blocks the trail but the note stuck to it warns of erosion, not bears. Last week the ice dam that backed up water on the glacier at suicide basin broke, flooding the lake and raising the river to a record flood stage. Charged with fast water, the river undercut the trail, making it unsafe for travel. The little dog and I move onto a gravel “work around” trail and spot matted vegetation where a bear had slept and many bear sized trails through the five foot tall fireweed plants. Panting from the heat, Aki collapses in a patch of shade near some fireweed stalks and pants. I think of the cool forest the trail would take us through if we preserve, if we risk the bear. It’s not worth it. We turn back to the trailhead, arriving as a family with small children, all on bicycles, pedals to their car.

3

Rush to Fall Time

Leave a reply

2

Aki and I needed a trip to the woods. After the morning fog burned off, we headed to one of our favorite trails—one through old growth forest to the beach. Ten minutes in, Aki leaped up to some high ground above a dying pond and stiffened tail, body, and ears. I wondered if she spotted to young male deer I saw here on our last visit but found that she was staring at a tree creeping bird. I’d just seen a red-breasted sapsucker hammering a spruce tree. But the bird that worked its way up the trunk of a dying red alder didn’t have the fire engine red head and chest of an adult red-breasted sapsucker. It must have been a juvenile bird. Like a shy human teenager, it took advantage of it’s dull, earth tone feathers to blend into the background.

1

The forest was in high summer. The time of blue berries had passed but there were still many purple and red huckleberries to pick. As a sign that we are charging towards fall, I found chicken of the woods fungus growing on a downed tree. The time of king salmon must have also passed. Few boats fished for them off of false outer point or the mouth of Fish Creek. Why is nature in such a rush to end summer?

3

Out of the Wild

Leave a reply

3

Last week, while Aki chased her Frisbee over Juneau trails, I explored lands drained by the Innoko River area in Western Alaska. Some of the area I passed through has been designated wilderness. But we saw as many or even more animals in the non-wilderness areas. The flying predators we spotted—eagles, peregrine falcons, owls (great grey and great horned), and even a raven—seemed more interested in keeping near their food source than fleeing us. On each beach we sampled we added our boot tracks to those of geese, wolves, moose, beaver, porcupine, and grizzly bears. Twice we watched moose swim the width of the Innoko River.

2

Today, now back with Aki in Juneau, I spent part of this Fourth of July picking blue berries near the Mendenhall River. While we walked on trails beaten through the patch by black bears, none appeared. Even one did appear it would not make the moraine a wild place, not when rubber rafts full of cruise ship customers constantly float past the berry patch.

1

Taste

Leave a reply

1

At Eagle Beach, Aki charges over the wild strawberry patches to retrieve her orange Frisbee. Drops of water fly from the brush she forces her way through to get her toy. When she returns it to us for another throw, green seeds color her muzzle. The little dog doesn’t notice the bent over humans up and down the beach as they search for the tiny strawberries. Some move on their hands and knees, like supplicants to the berry god. At first I share Aki’s disinterest in the berries. Domestic strawberries are already ripening in our yard and we will have almost two quarts of wild blue berries picked for pie before sunset. But between tosses, I start searching the weeds and find little red globes hanging just above the ground. They taste sweet but not like a farm berry. They taste a little like the grass and peety soil smells. They taste of the place that grew them.

2

Father’s Day Bison

Leave a reply

1

Last Father’s Day at 6 A.M. in Missoula, when Aki was home in Juneau, I checked the progress of the sunrise. Yet to climb above the Garnett Mountains, the sun still managed to paint the underside of broken clouds pink and pearl. Each subsequent second intensified the colors of a yellow and green field of blooming wild mustard. A single blue heron flied toward me as I straddled my folding bicycle. The bird’s wings beat a slow, full rhythm as if all the souls of those who had died during the night rode burrowed under its feathers. The heron, its body almost as thin as a paper airplane, flied toward the Blackfoot River and disappeared into a wall of still-gray clouds.

2

I rode toward the town of Lolo to watch a herd of bison graze near the edge of Highway 93. Traffic was light, but I still took the unfinished bike trail rather than the highway for the views it offered of the Blackfoot River a quarter of a mile below. The slight sound of my brakes disturbed to flight another heron feeding along the river. Later, I watched it fly over my head when I pedaled back to Missoula.

3

The rancher was irrigating the field where the bison herd grazed. Some stood in the spray like city kids on a hot day. Most fed on the drier grass along the old rail line that once served the Bitter Root Valley. One large bull watched my every move. He had a lot to protect. At least a half-a-dozen young bison, horn-less and with fur still reddish-brown, wandered among the bulls and cows. One butt his mother, like a dairy calf wanting to suckle. Getting no response, he returned his attention to the grass. While most of the young feed, one gave me a long hard stare until I remounted my bike.

4

Back in Juneau and reunited with Aki, I follow the little dog down one of our favorite beachside forests. Rain, rather than irrigation spray wets the ground. I think of the Lolo bison and the mule and whitetail deer that I saw on my recent family visit to Montana. Funny that I haven’t see many our Sitka black tail deer on my walks with Aki. Then, I spot the young male deer, hock deep in shallows of a little pond, starring at me. I’m not carrying a camera, which allows me to extend the eye lock without the distractions of focusing and framing. I broke before the deer, which held its ground even after I continued down the trail.

5