Category Archives: Aki

Quiet Times

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This is a low-cruise-ship day so Aki and family head out to the glacier. No buses idle in the parking lot when we arrive.  No line snakes out of the bathroom. Without the crowds, the visitors that did make the trip out from town look relaxed and happy. They don’t even seem to mind the rain.

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Aki carries her Frisbee in her mouth. The emergency-services-green disk flops back of forth as she trots along. We try to talk a back path to Nugget Falls but find it flooded.  But that doesn’t matter much today since the crowds are small and happy.

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Two newly calved icebergs have come to rest in the lake. I stop to enjoy them. In a few years the glacier will have retreated away from the lake too far for launching bergs. At this point no amount of wishful thinking or even good environmental practices can stop the retreat.

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Glacial melt and recent rains have swollen Nugget Falls so it is really pounding into the lake. The crashing water forces water spouts and sprites to rise twenty feet into the air, obscuring our view of the glacier. Ignoring the noise and fury, Aki begs her other human to throw the Frisbee. When it is tossed into the direction of falls, she charges after it as if on a sunny beach on a quiet day.

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Breaking The Calm

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It’s peaceful in the rain forest this morning.  No sun threatens the clouds. No wind challenges the calm. It is so different from yesterday’s whale watching tour. Aki would have loved the attention she would have received from the other passengers when they were not photographing orcas. When they were distracted by whales, the little dog would have hunted around lower deck for dropped food. But I think Aki enjoys these mild days with me, alone on a trail, more than a party.

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It takes little to shatter a calm, even one as profound as this one. Like a drop of accumulated rain falling from tree branch onto the beaver pond, a small thing can send out disruptive ripples.

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As we pass the pond on the way to the beach, a tour guide walks up. He speaks in the quiet tone of a person who prefers silence. I am waiting for my crew to arrive. Thinking a crew of soft-spoken people would almost go unnoticed, I wish him well.  The little poodle-mix and I walk on, reaching the beach as the tide starts to cover the Shaman Island causeway. The usual eagle guards the causeway from his usual rock. Two gulls bicker than settle into silence. Even the waves seem careful to hit the beach with a whisper. Then a child cries out like a tattletale gull as the guide leads a group of cruise ship tourists onto the beach.

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Dying Fog

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This morning fog hides the sun and blocks the view sheds of the Fish Creek Delta. Cruise ship fog horns mix with the panic honks of unseen Canada geese. Aki is nervous. The high-pitched screams of eagles hidden in nearby spruce trees put her on guard.

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The sun breaks through the marine layer and starts to deconstruct fog covering Fritz Cove and the surrounding mountains. That touching forested hills seems to tear itself apart on the old growth trees. Ocean fog moves up and down the bay like a hunting animal.

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While focusing my camera on a patch of fog flowing up and over a clutch of spruce, I spot two male deer on the foreground. One stands guard while the other one lies on meadow grass. The trailside grass prevents Aki from seeing the two deer. She will never know they were so close. Both deer are grazing in the meadow when we leave their view shed.

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Quiet Time

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Grey clouds dominate North Douglas Island this morning but some shafts of light manage to reach the glacier. This promises a sunny day ahead. But I don’t mind the low contrast lighting, which increases the chances for solitude. For the nose-dominated Aki there is little difference between blue or gray skies. She rarely looks above the horizon.

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Two ravens spar like fighter pilots above the beach. One drops onto a rock near Shaman Island. When it curls its wings back for landing, the finger-like wingtip feathers curl back like an eagles. For a moment I believe that the raven has transformed into one of the big predators. Then it croaks, spoiling the illusion.

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Down the beach, a mature bald eagle eyes us from its spruce tree perch. I walk out onto the beach for a better view of it while Aki waits on the trail. The sound of a surfacing humpback whale surprises me. When I turn to look, it is throwing up its flukes for a shallow dive.

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While Aki and I wait for the whale to surface again, a walker approaches on the trail. He waits with us for the whale. He is old, but not stooped. With one hand he touches his beard. The other seems to grip an invisible cigarette. We talk of fishing the river that Aki and I visited yesterday. He points out the eagles strutting along nearby Peterson Creek. We agree that they are there for the returning salmon. The whale surfaces again but only long enough to toss its tail up for another dive.

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Fishing in Brown Bear Country

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Aki has temporarily abandoned me for my fishing partner.  She stayed with him when I drifted downriver to try another spot. When we hike with another human the little dog trots back and forth between people, urging us to close ranks. This morning I expect her to show up after I have made a few casts. When she doesn’t, I remember the pile of brown bear (grizzly) scat that I had to step over to reach this spot. We are in prime bear country. They are also here to fish for silver salmon.

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Aki has bluffed down several black bears in the past but the larger brown bears can’t be bluffed. I quickly reel in my line and start back to where I last saw the little dog. She is not there. Neither is my fishing partner.  I look at the swift water undercutting the bank where they stood when I last saw them and start back down river.  They could have easily passed me. I wouldn’t have heard them over the roaring river.

Aki appears at my heels, tail wagging. Should we head downriver or up? The little dog points her nose up river. I follow her to a barely discernable side trail now being used by my fishing partner to regain the main trail.

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Alder Dominance

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Alders dominate this morning’s walk across the moraine. They line almost every trail we take. If left alone, the tough shrubs would colonize the trail gravel, leaving us nowhere to walk. Grumpy sounding Stellar’s jays jump around inside the trailside alders as if to get a better view of Aki in case she is about to break some law. I’d like to ignore these forest police but the alders provide little to divert my attention.

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Aki loves these alder lanes because they offer the best chance of dog contacts. But I need a different view shed. Reluctantly, the little dog follows me down a lesser-used trail to the edge of a beaver pond that is rapidly transforming into a grassy wetland. Before the beavers built the pond dam, spruce and cottonwoods thrived in the flooded area. Now their dead-gray trunks rise from beds of reeds transforming into fall colors.

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On the way back to the car, I spot a blueberry growing alone on a bush. That’s right little dog; we have to stop at the store on the way home. Aki’s other human needs domestic blue berries for a low-sugar pie. We pass a great blue heron sulking in the rain. When I stop the car to take a better look, the big bird stretches out its neck and uses its long wings to lift up and away across a field of grass already the color of straw.

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Ropes

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Aki sniffs at something washed up on Sandy Beach by last night’s tide. Every high tide leaves a rope of rockweed along the length of the beach. I’m walking down this line of seaweed, taking an inventory of gull and eagle feathers, bits of crab shell, and sometimes whole salmon bodies. Thankfully no plastic objects or bags peak out from under clumps of the rockweed.

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The last storm tide that ripped down Gastineau Channel sucked away from the beach several inches of the finely pounded gold ore that we call “sand.” This exposed rusted machinery and fragments of ceramic bowls too thick to be fashionable today. What was once garbage we now considered relics of a time before the collapse of the Treadwell mine tunnels in 1917.

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We pass the partially restored tower that once ventilated the mine tunnels that ran beneath the channel. The usual pair of bald eagles roost on the tower’s metal roof, apparently obvious to the approach of the inbound Norwegian Jewell.  The mega cruise ship spews up two thick ropes of pollution from its stacks as it motors towards Juneau.

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Little Dramas

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Aki and I are the only ones on this normally popular beach. While she wolfs down something dropped yesterday by a child, I wait for the reappearance of a marbled murrelet. The pudgy little bird just plopped below the water. As ripples from the bird’s dive spread, a knot of herring explode onto the surface.  Something has scared the little fish out of the water.  I suspect the murrelet but the herring continue to panic out of the water even after the bird pops up. I look without success, for the wake of an unseen object, the fin of a hunting Dolly Varden.

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The rainfall intensified while I watched the flying fish and Aki ate. It drives us down beach and into the protection of an old growth forest. The time for thimble berries has past but I manage to find a few handfuls of red huckleberries. Aki has to make do with the smells left by passing dogs.

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At the forest edge we can spy on a clutch of gulls grooming themselves on some waterside rocks, Off shore a harbor seal cruises back and forth near the birds. It affects the studied indifference of a hunter and is careful not to make eye contact with its prey. If the birds are aware of the hungry seal, they don’t seem scared.

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Fledged

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Aki and I are on a hunt for an eagle’s nest. Last week a friend reported seeing two eaglets in it. I want to do the same. Aki, whose eyes are starting to cloud with age, is along for the chance to visit with other dogs.  We are on a popular dog-walking trail near the airport.

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The trail could be an icon for the successful human-wild animal interaction.  It wraps around the outside of the airport, offering views of a tarmac runway, floatplane lake, glacier, eagle’s nest, water treatment plant, Mendenhall River, Willie’s boat yard, and many mountains.

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Within a few minutes I spot an eagle in the top of a spruce tree. It looks tired enough to be on break from nest-watching duty. White puffs of eagle down decorate surrounding twigs. I can’t spot a nest. Aki looks bored so we leave the main trail and take one that curves along the river’s edge. A harbor seal, head just out of the water, cruises over to investigate and then slips into the river.

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We pass between drying stalks of cow parsnip and fireweed spears that have gone to seed.  Fireweed down fills the air like light snow will next December. Ahead fourteen Canada geese stand in mid-river on a submerged gravel bar. They make no noise until a flock of two hundred other geese fly across the wetlands to join them. Now the air is full of geese chatter. At first I take the noise to be warnings of danger or assertions of territorial rights. But as it goes on and the geese swim over to the original fourteen birds, their cackles sound more like party noise.

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The solitary eagle is still in its treetop eerie when we return to the main trail. In minutes we find a cottonwood with a “This is an eagle’s nest tree, don’t mess with it” sign. I look up and see the nest but no eaglets. Fledged but not forgotten by the tired eagle in the nearby tree.

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Enriched by Light

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Sunshine enriches this visit to an old growth forest. It backlights the translucent flesh of plant leaves and throws strong shadows off hunting dragonflies.

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But I wonder if Aki cares. Sunlight reflecting off the beaver pond forces her to squint and, I think, sometimes to sneeze. As long as her little nose works, she doesn’t care if the sun shines.

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The little dog and I walk along through the forest to a small bay. Soon the bay will fill up with waterfowl making their annual trip south. They will be joined by harlequin docks fat with baitfish from the stormy outer coast. Local mallards will share the bay with them and a few resident eagles. Today a few crows croak from a rocky island in the bay. Gulls, full from feeding during the ebb tide, putter around the same island or rest on the Shaman Island spit. I hear but do not see an eagle. Its high-pitched scream sounds like a piglet’s squeal.

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