Category Archives: Aki

Making Do

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The rain doesn’t bother Aki. Nor does it discourage the other dogs and their walkers on the Perseverance Trail. We all carry on, our paws or boots slowly soaking up moisture from the rain sodden snow. Greenish-brown run off from melting snow fills the trailside ditches, providing the strongest color contrast to the grey sky.

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Stark skeletons of naked cottonwood trees seem to writhe in pain. Above them the Mt. Juneau waterfalls are still frozen. Snow, not rain falls on the mountain’s upper slopes. Rather than take the upper trail that cuts across an avalanche chute, we walk on the main trail and then take a narrow path over to Gold Creek. Aki alerts and then dashes thirty meters down the trail and buries her nose in the snow. When I reach her, she is sniffing the fresh tracks of a deer.

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Having survived hunting season and all but the tail end of winter, the deer still must make it through the early spring famine time before fatting up on fresh greens. The other rain forest locals will have to make do until salmon start their annual invasion of our streams and rivers. Aki doesn’t have to worry. Her people just bought a 20-pound bag of dog food—more than enough to last her until king salmon season.

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Death Watch for Winter

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Aki and I drove over twenty miles to reach this trail. This may be my last chance this year to use my skis on it. Wet snow fell during the entire drive. “Wet” is the operative word here. The thick flakes melted on contact with the road, our car, and the bare branches of roadside trees. Rather than thickening the ground snow layer, the flakes soften it. Our days for skiing are numbered as the winter of 2017-18 begins to die.

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Aki squeals as I park the car and leaps onto the snow as I open the car door. If it were a few degrees colder, the snow would clump on the little dog’s fur. But it is too wet for clumping so she can run down the trail unhampered. I follow her into the old growth. It’s not bad skiing except where the forest canopy blocks the sky over the trail. The snow in those places is thin and icy and very close to melting away.

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I will have good skiing for most of the visit. Aki will challenge my decision to take a soft side trail. After that she will run and sniff and run some more. I will have to carry my skis and poles over dry sections of the trail. The wet snow will not stop falling. I will feel like a relative on deathwatch, hoping that the treating physician is too pessimistic about our loved one’s chances. But the forest snow is melting and rain is on the way.

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Storm Breaking

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I crunch along behind Aki as she trots down an icy trail through old growth woods. If snow still falls outside the forest, we wouldn’t know thanks to the trees’ thick canopy. This morning the weather service issued another winter storm advisory, predicting heavy snow tonight. But the snowfall was easing when we left the car for the woods.

Aki sniffs at the stump of a thin hemlock tree that had been growing on the shore of their pond. Recently, beavers chewed through it’s trunk until it fell and then stripped it of bark. Believing that they prefer cottonwood bark for eating, I wonder if the naked hemlock is a sign of famine in beaver country.

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The sky is brightening when we reach the beach. Across Stephens Passage, sun shines on Admiralty Island. Named by Tlingits “The Fortress of the Bears,”

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Admiralty has the most brown bears per acre in the world. The big grizzlies are still hibernating. Brown bears are rarely seen in our section of the rain forest but their smaller cousins the black bears often wander Juneau streets. Last summer I watched standing on out lawn to better reach an apple on our tree. Aki has chased one or two of them out of her yard.

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Salty Dog

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Snow covers the parked cars on Gastineau Street. Some are so hemmed in by snow berms that they won’t be freed without some shovel work. I have a lot of time to study the snowed-in cars as Aki inspects every yellow spot in the snow.

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We are between snowstorms. Yesterday’s left the cottonwoods and alders branches with white highlights. Already the temperature is well above freezing and the snow on trees will soon soften and fall to ground.

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Aki throws on the brakes after we drop down to South Franklin Street. In an effort to keep the sidewalks free of ice and snow, the merchants have spread rock salt on them. At first my little dog ignores the crystals but then stops. She gives me that “what have you gotten me into” look. I end up carrying her in my arms through the salted zone. Unfortunately, it is lunch hour for the downtown office workers, several of whom make teasing comments about my unique style of dog walking.

 

Disappointing

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Aki and I are hunkering into a sharp wind. It arrived with the snowstorm last night. Now the wind blows the snow sideways, perpendicular to the frozen surface of Fish Creek Pond. Neither the little dog nor I have much interest in this adventure. The storm hides the beauty that we normally find here.

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With a reluctant Aki, I climb a little rise and follow an icy trail that usually offers views of the Chilkat Mountains, the glacier, and Fritz Cove. We can just make out the cove through the screen of falling snow but it is low tide so most of the birds are too far away to see. I can just make out two bald eagles skulk on a muddy bar a kilometer away.

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When Aki starts to whine, I give up my search for beauty and return to the car. The just ended string of sunny days raised my expectations. Today’s obscuring snowstorm has brought me back to earth.

Solitary Goat

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Aki and I walk the shore of Mendenhall Lake to Nugget Falls. We seem to have the place to ourselves. Two days ago, when it was all blue skies and sunshine, half of Juneau might have been here, skiing or hiking on the trail or on the lake. Even on a normal weekday, we would be sharing this popular trail with other dog walkers. But today is the first cloudy day we’ve had after a long string of blue-sky one. People must be recovering from sun stimulus syndrome.

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Nugget Falls roars its way down to the lake under a bumpy coating of ultramarine colored ice. The places where concentrated current is keeping the falls ice free are fringed with leaf-shaped formations of ice crystals. All this bores my little dog. She follows close at my heals, trying to make eye contact. While I enjoy the solitude of empty spaces, the little dog prefers a crowd.

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She is happy when we start back to the car. I don’t know why I turn around but I do. There, on s snow-covered section of glaciated rock, stands a large mountain goat. He looks directly at Aki and me for a minute, then slowing turns away his head. A minute later, he moves slowly away.

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Herbert Glacier

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Good thing Aki isn’t here. She would have given up a half a mile back when we started post holing our way across a braided section of the Herbert River. She is in her doctor’s office, getting her teeth cleaned. Ahead the Herbert Glacier hangs above a scree field. My friend and I left our skis where the trail became too icy.

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Not too many years ago we could have reached the glacier itself in conditions like this. That was before it retreated up the hill above the river.

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We push on across the snowing plain, stepping in the footprints left an hour earlier by a group of co-eds from an Iowa College. We met the ladies at Four Kilometer Pond while they rested on their way back to their van. They were spending their spring break in Juneau doing volunteer work. After we left them at the lake, I wished that we had pointed out the moose tracks on the pond.

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The co-ed’s tracks end at a small stream of open water that blocks access to the scree field. While we eat lunch I try to work out a route to the glacier’s toe. Even if we could cross the stream and manage to cross the scree field without breaking an ankle, there would still be a third class climb to reach the ice. Somehow that doesn’t matter on this clear, sunny day.

Making Tracks

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It’s been a few days since it snowed on Gastineau Meadow—long enough for the wind to sculpt sharp-edged scallops at the top of drifts and for animals, wild and domestic, to dimple it with their tracks. Aki isn’t interested in adding her little raccoon-sized paw prints to the mix. To do that would require her to leave the packed trail and plunging into the soft, deep stuff that covers the meadow.

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You can almost always tell dog tracks from those left by their wild cousins. The no nonsense wolves and coyotes seem to always walk in a straight line. If their tracks are any indication, dogs are goofballs. They might charge off the trail into deep snow, circle a tree and charge back, leaving a “U” shaped design on the meadow. They might leap and roll and zigzag around. They never pound out a straight track that crosses a human trail and disappears into the woods. Aki and I stop to contemplate such a trail. The little poodle-mix cautiously sniffs a yellow spot on the wolf trail but does not cover it with her own pee.

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A few meters away from the wolf trail, we spot the tiny tracks of a mouse or vole that had walked across the south facing side of a snowdrift. Maybe because the sun is throwing cast shadows inside each of the tiny tracks, I find the pocked drift as beautiful as the snow covered Mount Juneau rising like a wall above the meadow.

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Snowed In Beaver Country

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I am knee deep in snow having been drawn off the packed trail by frost glistening on a grove of burned out spruce. Aki watches from the trail. She won’t move unless I do something really stupid like post hole until I am out of her sight. Even then she might just curl up on a sunny spot and wait for me to come to my senses.

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We are crossing the glacial moraine. I wanted to sneak off the trail and into the Troll Woods but that path is snowed in. We keep to a narrow trail that resembles a foot deep trench in the snow cover. I think Aki appreciates the way the narrow trail has discouraged other dogs from wandering off to urinate, which simplifies her task of checking the pee mail.

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This is beaver country. We pass a hole kept open in creek ice by one of them. In some places groves of spruce and alders, killed when water backed up behind beaver dams flooded around their trunks, lean against each other like drunks after closing time. They will have the place all to themselves after the next strong Pacific storm brings inches of melting rain.

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Disconcerting 200 Meters

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I am nervous. Aki just charged ahead and out of sight. Usually she stays close on our walks. I wouldn’t worry if we were not using a snow machine trail to reach the Dan Mollar bowl. One could smash the little dog flat without the driver ever seeing her.

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I almost wish I had a snow machine today. The sun is shinning, the temperature is moderate, and deep, firm snow covers all the bumps. The same conditions favor Aki, which is why she keeps charging away from me down the trail.

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Aki’s exuberance doesn’t last. She throws on the brakes where the Dan Mollar trail splits off from the Treadwell Ditch trail. Knowing that she won’t hold out after she can no longer see me, I push on up the trail. One hundred meters later I reach a meadow spotted with shore pines. Aki is behind, frozen in place at the top of a rise just at the edge of my view shed. She gives me her “are you crazy” look.

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The meadow opens up after I start back up the trail and I can see Mounts Juneau and Roberts rising above the shore pines. A hundred meters later, Aki slips by me and takes up her usual station several meters ahead of foot hardy human.

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On the return trip, Aki hesitates at the beginning of the 200-meter stretch where she exhibited so much caution on our way up the trail. She hangs right by my side until we drop down onto the ditch trail. Then it is back to normal. Since it is too early for the bears to awake, I think she might have smelled the Douglas Island wolf pack. Sometimes I wonder if she sees ghosts.

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