Category Archives: Aki

Ignoring Raven

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The empty parking for the False Outer Point Beach promises an empty trail. This doesn’t bother the normally social Aki. It pleases her owner, who enjoys each chance to explore a beautiful place in solitude. Tears are forming in the thick fog that had been preventing us from seeing more than a half-mile of channel water. Through one of them we can see Mt. McGinnis.  Through another a slice of the Chilkat Mountains appears. 

            I’m thankful for the mountain views and the fact that it isn’t raining. It pleases me more that nothing has scared the resident raft of golden eye ducks away from the beach.  Aki stays close to my side as we round the point where an eagle sulks in the bare branches of a spruce snag.  Off shore a man in an open skiff drops a hook baited with a herring into the water. I silently wish him luck in his effort to catch a king salmon, remembering the taste of winter caught kings. 

            The ebbing tide must have left behind some tasteful carrion. A murder of crows, maybe 200 of them, tussles with the local gulls for the goodies. A bald eagle abandons the beach to them and flies over our heads and onto a spruce limb.  From the top of a small boulder, ten feet away, raven lectures the little dog and I.  He follows us down the beach, croaking out his speech. It isn’t welcomed. 

Found Food

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I wonder what Aki would have made of these jellyfish. Hundreds if not thousands of them washed up on the Seaside Beach with the tide. I’ve seen the little dog nose the gelatinousness mass of an Alaskan jelly spread over the gravel of a North Douglas beach. But she never lingered to taste one like she would have a fallen French fry on Franklin Street. 

            Unlike their Alaskan relatives, almost all these Oregon jellyfish are a monochromatic grey-brown. From a distance they look like flat stones on a flat beach.  There are gulls and crows patrolling the beach but none of them shows any interest in the jellyfish corpses. 

            It’s has stopped raining for a moment so I start my Tai Chi exercises, careful to watch the surf line for sneaker waves. Out of the corner of my eye I spot a gull watching me. Other gulls join it. I have the impression that they are looking for something to distract them on this dull, gray day. They are really waiting for me to move so they can sweep down on a ruined fish just beached by the retreating tide. When I do, a cloud of gulls descends on the beach to fight for the scraps. 

Opportunist Crows

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I am still in Seaside, an honorary member of a community of writers that gathers here every January. It’s a group generous with their time, attention and knowledge. But the level of energy that ran through us at the state of this residency is dropping. 

            To recharge, I take walks on the beach. But it lacks the magic of the North Douglas trails back home in Juneau. At first I assigned fault to the multistory structures that crowd the beach. But this is off-season, so they are empty shells reduced to silent silhouettes. Then I have to blame the other beach walkers, who migrated to the strip of sand just soaked by the retreating tide. Even when none of the walkers are close, their footprints and those left by previous beach users turn the beach into a much-used highway. It might be different if I could find an eagle or one could find me. Some of the writers have seen a bald eagle but I have had to make due with gulls and a gang of opportunistic crows. 

UOP Writer’s School

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Aki is home in snowy Juneau. I’m in Seaside Oregon attending writing school. Here the mallards float lazily on the Necanicum River. Back home, they hide from storm gusts in rocky lees. Aki would love to run full out on the broad Seaside Beach, maybe even dig in the sand for treasures. But she’d hate being cooped up in a dark motel room while I attended workshops and classes. 

            This morning I walked past the Seaside Aquarium. It still looks like it did when my parents bought my sister and I admission tickets decades ago. The place was closed but I could smell the sea creatures it housed.  

            The sea here is never quiet. Even on calm days it roars with wave noise. So different from our protected Juneau water, usually as quiet as a lake. 

Sheltering From the Wind

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Aki bursts out of the car and charges onto Sandy Beach. She crosses a line of snow made brown by blowing sand, slides to a stop, and retreats behind a grass-covered dune. I can’t argue with her judgment. The 60 miles-an-hour gust that stopped her run made the 24 degree ambient temperature feel like 3. 

            I don’t have any problem convincing the little dog to follow me into the Treadwell woods. The wind rushing through the trees sounds like an express train. It’s calmer in the forest except where fallen trees opened up paths for the wind. 

            We walk on a path parallel to the beach until reaching the little bay created when the Treadwell Mine tunnels collapsed. There, close up against the rocky shore, a mixed raft of mallards and golden eye ducks find shelter from the wind. 

Auk Lake

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Today Aki and I join an old friend for a walk around Auk Lake. The little poodle has quite a crush on the man even though he is not a dog person. It has taken her awhile but she now has him looking forward to walking with her. 

            Five inches of snow fell on the trail last night. But this morning the sun shines full onto the mountains. New snow outlines the noses of creatures on the college’s totem poles. One of the poles, the one that stands in a wind-protected area, still wears a coat of frost. 

            We leave the small campus and walk along the lakeshore. As the sun climbs into the sky, a thin fog rises from the frozen lake. The fog thickens enough to hide the college classroom buildings. If not for the noise of the nearby Glacier Highway, we could be circling a wilderness lake. 

            The trail takes us into thick woods where small streams still run free in spite of several days of cold weather that set ice over the whole lake. I look for animal tracks in the new snow but only find those of people and their dogs. 

Soon We Should Have Snow

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When the wind blows this morning, it feels like it is below zero F. It is blowing as Aki and I explored the Sheep Creek Delta. The sand has frozen to the consistency of a hardwood floor. Crystallized sea foam marks the latest high tide line on the beach.  Salt water that normally retreats back into Gastineau Channel as the tide ebbs has formed a frozen lake on the exposed beach. 

            We hear an eagle scream and watch another flush three mallards from mouth of the creek. The eagle that screamed soars out from a beachside spruce and makes a half-hearted attempt to do the same. I’ve seen eagles snatch herring, small salmons, and even a steelhead trout from the water. But I never watched one fly off with a duck. 

            Once, on the Innoko River of Western Alaska, a raven crashed into a young duck. Before it could finish off his prey, he tried to grab another chick. They both escaped. 

            It was sunny that day on the Innoko like it was when I finished off my morning coffee. The sun was just being swallowed up by a cloudbank when we started this walk. A small patch of sunrise yellow still colors the horizon but soon that will be gone.  In a few hours we will have snow. 

First Light

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Needing to have the afternoon free so I can prepare for writing school, I leave the house early this morning. Aki has had her cheese so she doesn’t mind the pre-sunrise departure. We stop at the whale sculpture to watch the sun crack the darkness over Gastineau Channel. Our presence encourages a raft of mallards to slip into the cold water. They work their way over to a patch of water colored yellow by the sunrise. After relieving herself, Aki is ready to go. But she doesn’t complain when I linger to watch the ducks. 

In a dusk-like gloam we drive out to North Douglas Island where it is calm and 15 degrees F. Last night’s wind knocked the frost from the trees in Downtown Juneau. But frost feathers that still cling to the roadside brush near the trailhead. 

I have to carry the little dog over portions of the trail flooded by the water pouring over the tops of the beaver dams. It’s too cold for wet paws. The sun has reached a dead spruce in the middle of the pond. It draws my eye like a Las Vegas marquee.  Whether suffering from the indignity of being carried, or just uncomfortable with cold, Aki refuses to follow me on the trail to the beach. I press on, knowing that she will soon end her strike. She does, flying by me to take the lead. 

We are too early to see the sun light up the beach. But it does illuminate the mountains above the icefield. It also warms some offshore rocks and the gulls resting on them. Two golden eye ducks, lit by the same streak of sunlight, splash down near the rocks. It is so cold that I expect them to paddle over to the gulls’ rocks. But they are content to bob up and down in the surf. I, hands cold from handling the camera, body chilled in spite of multiple layers of clothing, feel very much the winter outsider.  

Chasing Sunshine

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The forest seems empty. It is certainly quiet. It is also dark. The snow that once brightened the trail has been made dull by an icy crust. No frost feathers circle the limbs of the spruce or decorate trailside alders. I struggle through a thicket of devil’s club to reach the bank of Eagle River. Sun still shines on the river and the tangle of uprooted trees that clutters up a nearby sand bar. But a thick screen of alders offers only a filtered view. 

I want to push on, march through the woods to reach a muskeg meadow dotted with stunted spruce trees. There the afternoon sunshine should be turning frost feathers into prisms. But Aki is a hundred meters behind me with three of her other humans. I slow down until I can hear her yip when someone throws the Frisbee for her to retrieve. 

The sun is about to drop behind a wall of trees when we reach the little meadow. It halos a small collection of spruce before it disappears. We won’t walk in sun again today. But sunlight will be shining full on the mouth of Eagle River, Lynn Canal, and the Chilkat Mountains when we reach the lower river. 

Changes in Attitudes

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Ravens flocked to Chicken Ridge this morning, drawn by a neighbor’s carelessly secured garbage bin. The messy eaters pierced plastic trash bags with their beaks and tossed kitchen waste everywhere in search for things rich in fat or protein. They ignored the vegetables. 

            No ravens greet Aki and I when we arrive at Skater’s Cabin. The song of a winter bird, perhaps a red poll, drifted across the ice of Mendenhall Lake. Otherwise it was quiet. No wind blew to knock frost feathers from the lakeside alders. 

            Even through we had the place to ourselves, Aki found plenty of smells to catalogue. While I photographed the glacier and his mountains, the little dog wandered onto the moss-covered floor of a new forest. She reappeared a few minutes later. This pattern repeated itself as we walked along the lake edge to the Mendenhall River. 

Since there was no chance that Aki could wander into a road or be carried off by eagles, I didn’t worry. But I still wonder at the meaning of her behavior. After 12 years of walks, is she looking to assert more independence? Or has she finally learned to trust my judgment. Until recently, she always acted like a careful nanny watching over a flighty three-year-old.