Category Archives: Aki

Myths of Spring

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The calendar claims that Spring waits outside our door but snow still covers the moraine and ice the beaver ponds.  Wrapping Aki in her red fleece coat I grab the skis and head to the glacier. We find a good surface for traveling but no dogs for Aki to greet. She hides her disappointment in a search for clues left by recent visitors and, when we reach their village, the beavers.

P1100479Someone has dismantled their large dam, replacing their miniature hockey rink with a sad scene—-mud, fractured pond ice,fallen cottonwoods. We can’t find beaver tracks in the softening snow. Aki heads deeper into their village until I call her back. No sense adding to their stress.

Returning to the main trail we find tracks resembling those left by very large bare human feet but with deformed big toes.  These are deep, crisp impressions in the snow with icy sides and bottoms as if made in the heat of the day by something of great bulk. We find them where the trail bisects a grove of trees killed years ago by beaver formed floods.  I look around for someone to confirm our find but Mt. McGinnis, with sun in his eyes is the only other presence.

Do I credit it a hoax or confirmation of Big Foot? Wanting a return to firmer ground I lead Aki further into the moraine and then to Mendenhall Lake and a view of it’s glacier dropping out of the clouds. A shaft of light fights its way through the cloud cover to hit a portion of the ice fall, now a translucent light blue under the sudden illumination. This is something man can not duplicate or distort to legend—at least not yet.

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Troll Throne

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St. Patrick’s Day means nothing to Aki. She is only interested in the animal moving with stealth through the woods lining this beach. We are far from the bars where most Americans like to celebrate the saint’s holiday, drinking green colored Budweisers and singing songs not heard in Ireland since it was a British colony. You might find someone there with a Bodhran but no one with a copy of Patrick’s breastplate.  Americans have always howled at the moon this time of year—the Irishman’s saint’s day is just an excuse.

My eyes settle on a wooded hill forming a bell curve across Stephen’s Passage. It’s shape might have reminded the Irish crew on Vancouver’s Discovery of Croagh Patrick. A homesick man looks for the familiar in the foreign; perhaps they imagined climbing this mountain without shoes.

P1100435We have had our pilgrimage this morning—me in boots not bare feet like Aki—the little zealot. Together we wandered half lost through a thick forest drained by an awakening creek. Snow still frosted trees, bush, and ground. Without a mountain summit to draw us on we chose the easiest paths until reaching a throne-shaped tree stump illuminated by a tiny shaft of sunlight shining through the overcast. Giving this troll’s royal chair a slight nod, I lead Aki out of the woods and onto this beach to take up station on a rock just washed clean of snow by the tide. Now we wait for sun to warm out faces or a whale to breach in Stephen’s Passage, or a line of Trolls to begin the climb up Croagh Patrick.

 
 
 
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First Light on Fresh Snow

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After allowing us a generous taste of Spring, Winter returned last week on the north wind, driving down temperatures, silencing smaller water courses with ice, covering all in snow. Now he gives us a sunny two hour window to walk through the resulting beauty.

It’s sunrise near the confluence of the Herbert and Eagle Rivers. Aki flies down the trail, bounding over deeper drifts with front and back legs acting as one. This is her favorite snow—fine enough to offer soft landings and disinclined to form snow balls in her fine poodle hair. She leaves me standing, a little in awe of what comes from new morning light striking newly laid snow.

L1200068The temperature climbs above freezing as we walk between old growth spruce and hemlock trees that carry heavy burdens of sparkling white. These, they will soon lose in the heat of the day. We find few animal tracks in the forest but many dot the muskeg meadow we must cross to get the river—small stuff mainly: mice,squirrel, hare. A larger animal left a no nonsense trail on the stream forming the meadow’s boundary. There is also the path made by tiny mice feet that ends in a one inch wide hole in the snow. Other than the flight a sparrow, made memorable by streaming sunlight, these tracks are the only found evidence of wild life this side of the river.

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Dark clouds blanket out the sun as we finish the walk, lowering the volume of beauty; bringing a surprising sense of relief—maybe just calm.  I am thankful that Aki and I aren’t jaded by nature’s generosity, which we abuse with familiarity.

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Morning Breaking

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Sunlight floods over Mt. McGinnis but leaves the rest of our view in the dim glow of early morning. Aki and I traverse up a granite cliff shaved flat by the retreating glacier. She moves freely over the ice and packed snow trail with me following cautiously behind. Already one of my ice grippers is broken.

Even without their leaves the trail side brush screen out most of the view, here of frozen lake and the flat moraine that boarders it, now just being touched by early morning light. I spot a mountain goat on the high ground above Nugget Falls, maybe a mile away and look forward to a chance to view him a close.

L1190971With their white fleece, curved back horns and prominent brow, our Mountain Goats look like descendants of the pagan god Pan. I can almost hear his pipe music play over the awakening moraine below, looking new and fresh in first light under this crisp blue sky.  Recognizing the danger in such a flight of fancy, Aki snaps me out of it with a full speed charge down trail.

Despite her efforts I still feel like the first man to transit this trail to Nugget Falls—the air too clean, colors too rich, light too pure, snow too deep and shapely, the silence too profound for me to accept her well meaning lesson.

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Alders

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Another gray day on the moraine but one spiced up with two inches of pure white snow. A good day to reflect on the humble Sitka Alder and the drab willow. They were the first plants of size to gain a foothold on the moraine, tough witnesses to the the glacier’s retreat. Normally something to cut out of a photograph, with today’s topcoats of fresh snow providing counterpoint to dark bark they make excellent frames for greater beauty.

These pioneers laid the groundwork for Aki’s Troll Woods—building soil for the poplars and spruce even though the big trees would eventually rob them of light and nutrients; force them to carry out a holding action on soggy lake edges and bogs; make them dependent on the bowels of birds to carry their seeds to newly disturbed ground.

P1100408On the edge of beaver flooded land we find an alder displaying signs of spring, summer and fall under a coating of winter snow. On one supple twig cling a well formed leaf from last fall, spent cones, and spring bright pollen pods. Almost hidden by snow are this year’s tightly wrapped leaf buds.

Red Alder, the largest of the clan, provides excellent material for carving. I learned to work with it from master carvers at the Totem Heritage Center in Ketchikan. They helped me make the tools—alder handled adzes with blades fashioned from re-tempered car springs, crooked and not-so-crooked knives ground from cross cut saw blades. They taught me to work with wood from a tree freshly fallen and how the adze could be used to quickly transform a piece of firewood into an abstract figure. They encouraged me to cradle the new form in my lap while using crooked knives to mimic my model.

With the help of another master carver, an Italian American from New York City, I used adze, crooked knives, and not-so-crooked knives to carve a mask of my recently deceased father. The intimacy of the experience helped me grieve. Here is the result.

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Geese Chasing Away Solitude

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We hoped to purchase some solitude and views of Canada Geese by taking this ice covered trail during a rain storm. As expected rain water covers the ice in a glistening clear blanket that would have made the trail unusable but for the  winter’s worth of dropped hemlock needles allowing my boots purchase.

L1190843Getting it at a bargain price Aki and I find solitude here broken only by the snuffling of her searching nose, the sound of rain drops hitting my parka hood, mallard chuckles, eagle complaints, and the near hysterical song of geese being driven off shrinking sand bars by a rising tide.

Reaching an open meadow we find a clump of the calming geese feeding alongside the trail ahead. They are all business at first but then one of their unit stops feeding to watch our approach. Aki, no fool she, is not interested in messing with these big wild birds.  Even though we try skirting them at a distance, the geese eventually take flight and move on to the next tidal meadow. Now we hear geese warning calls coming from across the river, giving advanced warning of the approach of several formations of Canada Geese that fly overhead to join their just departed buddies 300 meters away on the other meadow.

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Moving across the meadow we reach a gently sloping beach of sand bordering the perfectly still waters of Lynn Canal now reflecting a murder of crows flying toward the river.  A smaller gang of the black birds have assumed station at the top of a beach side spruce to wait for the abundance of low tide.

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Spotlights of Spring

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Seamus, the digital display on our electronic thermometer, has dressed himself in shorts and sunglasses and promises an outside temperature of 45(f). Seamus sometimes lies but not today. From our kitchen window on Chicken Ridge I can see sunlight bouncing off the waters of Gasteneau Channel, bringing the whitest highlights out of the snow covering Douglas Island.

Aki, who has spent her morning inside contemplating the unfairness of a poodle’s life, throws all sadness aside to bounce around the living room as I collect the paraphernalia of adventure—water bottle. camera, dog leash. In a half and hour we are dropping through the old growth forest on one of her favorite trails— the one leading to a wide curving beach between False and True Outer Point.

L1190745Sun may be driving cold from beach and ridge but beneath the thick forest canopy winter holds on making me wish I had worn a wool rather than cotton hat. Shafts of light do penetrate down, mottling the forest understory like the floor of an old barn. In the beaver manufactured swamp one shaft spotlights a yellow knot of emerging skunk cabbage plants while the surrounding dark water forms a mirror for the surrounding trees.

The beach is empty of dog, man and bird when we emerge onto it. There is sun light to stand in and to bring a rich mixture of lights and darks to the snow covered Chilkat Mountains across Lynn Canal. Aki wants to keep to the beach with its sun and promise of dog encounters  but follows without protect when I return to the cool forest drama.

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Escaping from Winter

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This morning’s sun has strength enough to warm my face and soften the meadow snow at my feet. We stand next to a open creek with waters dark enough to hide the young salmon heading to sea and the few sea trout (steelheads) that make a propagation pilgrimage here each spring. All we see today is the reflection of Lion Head Mountain and a few Golden Eye ducks fishing downstream.

P1100370Later we will spot Canada Geese skulking under a spruce growing near the creek bed. For now the sun is enough as we follow the stream to where it cuts through a meadow on which spruce trees form evergreen islands.

The snow cover ends at meadow’s edge where Aki finds some interesting smells to investigate. Here the adventurous plants, no longer cut off from light by snow and ice swell in size and color, turning a rich yellow-green. They draw the eye as does the wine red berries that survived the winter, still attached to the stems that sustained them last summer—a sweet late winter treat.

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Last Fall a sudden freeze trapped gas bubbling up from this shallow stream bed to form little ice bound globes. Today they escape as sunlight melts away their transparent prison.

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The Ice Holds

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The moraine during a late winter thaw like this offers some danger but also some award. A firm crust covers the snow pack to offer easy access to places normally blocked by beaver ponds. The thinning ice covering the ponds injects the danger.  Several times today we chose between safe but cumbersome passage through softwood thickets and sliding freely over ice that may yield over very cold water.

L1190620Ice and men have a complicated relationship. If young and passing in a group near an ice covered lake in spring or fall, they will urge the bravest or weakest willed to test its strength. Aki sniffs the tracks of one who ventured alone 50 meters on thin ice then returned to shore. I, young once, recreate the experience—fear making each step lighter than the last, friends still on safe ground urging speed, the delicious mix of trill and fear that fades to just fear at the ripping sound of a crack forming under foot, radiating out brothers in sisters in every direction you could take.   Sometimes the crack opens to drop you into a lake or slough where the shock warms you enough to crawl onto firmer ice. Most times the ice supports your embarrassed, but dry retreat to shore.

L1190655Since Aki is nonjudgmental, we don’t test the lake ice but move to the river with plans to follow it to the glacier fronted lake.  Others have worn a deep path in the snow cover trail. It’s walls block Aki’s view of the moraine. Rather than dash about as usual she follows in my skis, which find a good balance between slide and grip on the firm surface snow. We make good time to the river but I have to take off my skis to cross where recent washouts denuded the trail.

If true winter doesn’t return, this magic door of firm snow will close. Today we hope to pass through before the frontier closes leaving these wilder parts of the moraine to the wolf and snowshoe hares.

Turning into the moraine I lead us up a snow blown creek bed until Aki finds a wolf track winding through an alder thicket.  We follow it to the edge of a beaver pond. Aki dashes onto its smooth flat surface while I look for a safe but rough passage through the tangle of willows lining the pond. L1190664

It’s above freezing and the pond ice has that milky translucence of still solid covering. I follow the little dog onto the ice and gain easy passage, no fear, no cracking, expecting no swim at the end. Then I remember that spring ice gave no warning when I fell through it in the past. Like that time on the Aniak Slough when I dropped through an invisible trap door into the mild current until only my right hand, gripping a canoe paddle remained above water. There, stretched out to full length, I didn’t feel fear or panic, just a detached appreciation for the lovely light penetrating through thinning ice and the wisdom of the elder that made me always carry a canoe paddle  on spring crossings of the slough. The canoe paddle, extending from my little circle of open water to firm ice made it possible to escape the water and reach the wood stove warmth of our cabin. Today we need no warm place to dry out. The ice holds.

Precious Sun Break

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As precious water is to a man in the desert, is sun to dwellers of the February rain forest. Today the gray gave way to sun shine for a half hour, sending brightening beams through the old growth canopy to light up acid green moss, paint sunny pools on the snow covered forest floor, bring the blue and reds out in Aki’s new sweater.  Over a muskeg meadow a smile shape tear in the gray emits a powerful light—as if from a smile of God watching our funny little dog trot along in patterned wool.

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