Sorry Aki. There is no room on the boat, even for a little poodle-mix. Aki took it well, didn’t even get up from the bed to say goodbye. Now I’m watching two humpback whales feed while we troll for silver salmon in the north pass. It’s seven A.M., but the sun already warms. It is easy to forget the weeks of rain that we just went through. I’ll return home with two more silvers for next winter and a touch of tan?
Reunited after a week’s absence, Aki and I patrol the Outer Point Trail. The little dog slips back into her role as monitor of the smells. This morning’s strong sunlight makes her squint each time a pee mail message draws out of the shadows. We are well back from the beach when the sound of gulls and crows shatters the forest quiet.
It’s low tide. Just off the mouth of Peterson Creek pink salmon leap out of the water and then drop back to join a school of their kind killing time until the flood tide arrives to carry them to their spawning grounds. The crows and gulls sound impatient for the fish to die.
The beach is empty of people and the trombolo to Shaman Island is exposed. I carry the little dog across the temporary land bridge, which has become a nursery for shellfish. Vagrant crows and gulls warn us away from the island but I press ahead, walking first on a path of crushed shells between the sparkly-orange rockweed and then the dull black trombolo. I wonder if Aki or the birds think that the little dog is royalty. When it is clear that I won’t be deterred by their noise, the guardian birds circle around and take up station behind us.
Aki is calm in my arms but is slow to move onto the island after I put set her onto a grassy path. The bird din has not stopped. They won’t shut up until we return to the forest. To spare the little dog and I further abuse, I carry her back over the land bridge, the target of crow curses the whole way to the woods.
It wasn’t supposed to be sunny today, but it is. I’m on my friend’s boat heading toward the Auk Bay fuel dock. Aki is home, hopefully stretched out on a sun-warmed section of the floor. Painfully bright light bounces off Favorite Passage and a bank of quick-moving fog. It’s a beautiful monster that could cause the boat to crash onto the rocks if it doesn’t lift. It does. We gas up and head out to the place that has always provided us with salmon for the winter.
The pass is almost empty of other boats and, as we will soon find out, empty of silver salmon. There are whales—three humpbacks that cruise along the surface feeding on the small fry that usually attract salmon.
Taking advantage of calm seas, we pull up our gear and motor over to the eastern shore of Admiralty Island where we fall into a line of charter boats trolling for salmon. They are catching lots of pink salmon for their clients. We want to put up the more desirable silvers and drop our trolling lines deep in hopes of getting below the pinks. This works. When we run out of bait we have in the boat four silver-bright silvers that together weigh more than thirty pounds—a good start.
Aki and I are on the Juneau waterfront, watching the Seven Seas Mariner pull up to one of the new cruise ship docks. It’s our third cruiser of the morning. Passengers from the earlier arrivals walk up and down the docks, like salmon looking for a place to spawn. But sex doesn’t appear to be on their minds. They are fixed on shopping. Most carry bags from the tea shirt shops. One has a bag full of handmade glacier silt soap.
The squawking complaints of a seagull gang draws my attention downward. But the white and gray birds are only forming and reforming a raft. I drift to memories of hand washing experiences. I picture the thick gobs of greasy glacial silt that I wipe off my bicycle chain during the bike’s weekly bath. Even dry, the glacier silt is an abrasive powder that forms an irritating cloud when lifted off the streets by passing tour buses. You could polish glass with it. What would it do to a maiden’s face?
This is the first time that Aki and I have seen Montana Creek since last winter. Then I skied. She dashed around in the snow. Today we both slog along in the rain, stopping every so often for me to pick berries. We here not for the berry picking, which is marginally productive, but for the calming stream. Its rushing sound blocks that of rifles being fired at the nearby gun range. It also seems to carry away the day’s stress.
I don’t worry about bears, even though we pass smashed plots of grass where one reclined and spots where bears have dug up roots. The berry crop here is not good enough to draw them away from the downstream gravel bars where they can easily snatch a just-arrived dog salmon from the creek. Soon the salmon will be flooding this part of the creek. An immature bald eagle just flew by us on a low altitude reconnaissance mission up river. Then I’ll find another place to pick.
Aki is off lead on this riverside forest trail. I am not too worried. Dog salmon splash in the river but I’ve not heard the fwaap of a bear paw sending a fish and part of the river onto a gravel bar. I see bushes stripped of salmon berries but can’t detect the death stink of a bruin.
Near the edge of a tidal meadow jays, crows, ravens and eagles chit, caw, squawk, or scream. They sound cranky, like hungry people in a town with no restaurants. Aki and I skirt a fresh pile of bear scat and walk to Eagle River now filling with chum salmon that ride the incoming tide to their spawning streams.
Many of the salmon will take a sharp left turn in a tiny creek a quarter-a-mile upstream where early arrivals already mill. The lucky ones will end their one-way trip squirting out eggs or fertilizing milt into the waters of their home waters. Others will swim up dead end streams and die without procreating. The carrion birds now making such a racket along the river don’t care if the salmon die frustrated or satisfied. The just want the dying to begin.
The silver salmon are returning to their home rivers around Juneau. Time to put up some silvers for winter even though it is raining. This is bad news for Aki. But she doesn’t sulk when I leave the house burdened down with lunch, a thermos of tea, and heavyweight Scandinavian rain gear.
We leave Tee Harbor under heavy rain. The captain bounces the C Dory through the south Shelter Island tiderips toward the Point Retreat lighthouse. From there we cruise along the shore of Admiralty Island to grounds that usually offer good fishing. A humpback whale surfaces while we gear up our trolling leaders with herring. The whale, like the salmon, targets herring. Diving on them, the whale tosses its flukes skyward and disappears.
We boat a pink salmon, a rockfish, and a potbellied silver salmon. Because they don’t freeze well, we release the other pink salmon we hook. Between strikes a trio of orcas appears, seeking the same thing we do—salmon.
Hoping that there really is strength in numbers, I ride with another guy along single- track trails that winds through a paper birch forest. We are heading toward the red salmon spawning reids of Campbell Creek. I am comforted by the lack of fresh bear scat on the trail but worried by the absence of human activity in the area. We will be alone when we reach the stream.
I sing a Bob Dylan song badly as we weave around trees and up tiny rises in the trail. No one has ever reported enticing the approach of a brown bear with a Dylan song so I figure my performance will encourage the privacy-loving bears to scatter. No bears wait for us at the stream. Maybe my signing worked or maybe the bears are all down stream to intercept salmon moving upstream.
The difficult transition from salt to fresh water robs most species of salmon of their beauty. They enter their home streams fat and ocean-bright silver. By time they spawn, all have faded to mottled colors. The males form battle faces—nasty teeth and hooked noses. But red salmon change into lovely red and green creatures, showing off colors that sparkle when touched by forest light.
Walking with Aki 