It’s another white sky day. Aki and I have just left the Treadwell Woods and dropped onto Sandy Beach. The beach’s “sand” is made up of crushed mine tailings mixed with the detritus abandoned when the Treadwell mines closed almost 100 years ago.
The sun is up but is blocked by the smoke. Light from it manages to power through the haze to sparkle on the surface of Gastineau Channel. We can hear eagles complaining from their beachside roosts. But tiny and feisty belted kingfishers are the only birds to show themselves.
A kingfisher lands on the top of a busted wharf piling, gives Aki and I a careful look, and turns to study the surface of the channel. Spotting movement, it dives beak-first into the water, raising a splash that would knock it out of any human diving competition. No fish dangles for the bird’s beak when it surfaces.
What a difference a few days can make. It was hot during our last visit to this rain forest. Forest fire smoke had turned the sky gray. The sky is grey today but colored so by clouds, not smoke. It is cool enough to need a sweatshirt to keep warm. Last week the trail was jammed with kids and their parents—all heading toward the tidal flats or Shaman Island. This morning the trailhead lot was empty until I parked there.
Without crowds, heat, or sun, the rain forest is a calming place. The quiet helps too. Only birdsong breaks the silence. It’s a once again a place to heal.
The little dog and I fall into our familiar patterns. She sniffs and I click my camera or look at reflections in the beaver pond. She sniffs and I pop a few sweet blueberries into my mouth.
A flurry of bird action takes us both surprised when we reach the edge of a little muskeg meadow. Chestnut-backed chickadees land on branches just above our heads. Thrush and their cousins the robin trot across the boggy meadow ground. Just ahead a red breasted sapsucker prospects the trunk of a slow growing pine tree for sap. After eyeballing us briefly it returns to his work.
Eagle screams are more prevalent than gull complaints this morning. Normally the screams make Aki cringe. Today she ignores them. Is the little dog going deft or has she finally forgotten the interaction with an eagle that made her distrust the big birds? She responds to my whistle summons so she can still hear.
Forest fire smoke still obscures the sky and softens the outlines of mountains. When we can see the sun, it mimics a glowing coal. Up north, large swaths of the Kenai Peninsula still burn. To the northeast Yukon hectares of forests are afire. I can almost taste the smoke.
We walk along the Mendenhall River, passing underneath roosting eagles. One watches a brother ripping flesh from a fish that it plucked from the river. We could wait for a one of the eagles to try for a fish. But that might test Aki’s patience or make her remember why she used to be so scared of eagles.
We climb up a gap in the beachside cliff and take a forest trail back to the car. It’s all eagles inside the forest. Their white guano dots the understory plants. One screams each time we approach its roosting tree. Every hundred feet we find one of their feathers. Just before reaching the car I almost step on an eagle feather. It looks like a child trimmed it with scissors.
An immature eagle, small patches of white showing on its chestnut brown head, hovers over the North Douglas boat ramp. I am close enough for a good, crisp view of the bird. Behind the eagle smoke from Yukon forest fires dirties the appearance of the glacier that descends between the Mendenhall Towers toward Fritz Cove. We need rain to wash the air. The forest needs it to water the understory plants and refill ponds and streams. I wish that I hadn’t stopped at the boat ramp to watch the eagle.
Aki and I leave quickly and drive to the Rainforest trailhead. The smoke filled air hasn’t deadened the difference between darks and lights in the forest. But clarity drops off when we break out of the forest and onto the beach.
Smokey air has reduced the Chilkat Mountains to smudges on the horizon. Aki finds plenty of strong smells to investigate. I use my eyes and ears to a fruitless search for surfacing humpback whales, seals, or ducks. We heard an eagle while walking through the forest. But none screams here. Even the sea is quiet. Then a song sparrow settles into the crotch of a cow parsnip plant and sings its “sweet, sweet, sweet” tune.
Aki and I have been avoiding Fish Creek since the first king salmon returned to spawn. The chance to catch one of a 15-pound salmon draws a crowd of combat fishermen to the Fish Creek Delta. The chance to gorge on salmon meat draws eagles and other carrion eaters. For that reason I wanted to sneak in a visit before the fishermen arrive.
I woke up early this morning and noticed that the tide had ebbed during the night. “Maybe” I told Aki, “ we can have the delta to ourselves this morning.” The trailhead parking lot was empty when we pulled up. Aki shot out of the car so she complete a survey of pee mail messages before we crossed over the Fish Creek bridge and moved down the trail. An adult bald eagle, the first of at least twenty would see, abandoned a scrap of food on a gravel bar and few down the creek.
Three or four king salmon broke the surface of the pond as we circled it. A beaver munched on wild flowers on the near shore. I tried to sneak by the beaver but tripped on a root. The noise panicked the big rodent into the water where it slapped its tail to warn the rest of the clan. Satisfied that I wasn’t a wolf or coyote, the beaver swan toward the little dog and I. It stopped a few meters offshore and closed its eyes. After a quick nap, it paddled away.
A spit covered with wild roses and blooming fireweed connects the Douglas Island with a forested island at the mouth of Fish Creek. I counted six eagles roosting in trees on the near edge of the island forest. Another eagle bounced up and down in the top of another spruce, having been chased there by a fierce crow. The diminutive warriors own the interior of the island where they are raising this year’s young. They begrudgingly allow the eagles to roost on the forest edge.
Aki stayed close while we circled the outside of the little island. With each step we seem to flush two or three eagles. Many had taken up roosts in the trees along the edge of the spit by the time the little dog and I completed our circumnavigation. A cloud of them flew out and over Fritz Cove as we headed back to the car.
I just can’t help attributing human attributes to wild things. In the stare of a thrush I see defiance. A slouching marmot telegraphs nonchalance. This morning, on the way to the Rainforest trailhead, I tried to read the emotions of an adult bald eagle.
The big bird was perched in the top of a short spruce tree. I stopped the car just twenty feet away. The eagle looked to be contemplating the view up Lynn Canal or maybe just enjoying the feel of sunshine drying out his rain-dampened feathers. An audio version of Nina George’s “The Little Paris Book Store” was playing on the car stereo. As one of the actors described the meeting of the protagonist and his lover, the eagle turned and looked at us with its eyebrow raised, as if questioning my taste in books.
It’s early morning so there is only one car in the trailhead parking lot when we arrive. In an hour or two the eco tour vans will disgorge cruise ship passengers more interested in wild things than jewelry shopping on South Franklin Street. They are my favorite kind of visitors but I’m pleased not to have to share the trail with them today.
The leaves of understory plants in the forest are still weighed down with rain from a recent shower. They sparkle when struck by sun shafts. Above the trail a gray thrush mom tries to induce one of its chicks to fledge. In a nearby hemlock, a red-breasted sapsucker stops hammering the tree’s bark to give the little dog the stink eye.
Aki and I are returning from Boy Scout Beach on a trail marked every half-mile or so with fresh bear scat. To warn the bear of our approach, I pull out my fancy phone and ask it to play Pachelbel’s Canon. With its repeats, the canon is a snake chasing its tail. But it is a gentle snake that doesn’t clash with the bird song or the music of Eagle River.
Before the canon can repeat once, we come upon bear scat laid onto the trail like lines of calligraphy. Did the neighborhood bear form a kanji character with its waste product? Emptying its bowels on the trail rather than in the surrounding woods was probably an attempt to claim territory or to warn noisy humans of its presence. Did this bear go the extra step of forming the character for good fortune, peace, or courage? Or is this scat just the random product of a bear’s alimentary canal?
This morning I couldn’t understand the message of songbirds, eagles, or the Canada geese that flew low over our heads when we approached the beach. What sounded like a robin’s love song to its mate was probably a warning for other birds to stay away. Geese honks, which rang in the air like warnings to flee, might have been taunts. The hangdog reaction of an eagle to the screams of a nest mate made me think that the eagle was being scolded.
I had the impression that the birds expected me to be non-fluent in bird language. They weren’t honking at me. But in the magical realist world hinted at by the kanji-like bear poop, I have to wonder if it is trying to say something to Aki and me.
Summer is powering ahead in the rain forest. Necklaces of white sorel flowers decorate the bells of forest spruce trees. Maidenhair ferns, already unfurled, wave in the lightest wind. Midway up a large spruce a woodpecker chips off chunks of bark which clatter through the tree’s branches to the ground. The sound encourages Aki to move on toward a muskeg meadow.
Cloudberry plants on the meadow are already setting berries. In between them heather-like lingon berry flowers bloom. All the meadow flowers and grasses glisten with newly fallen rain.
Aki sniffs her way to the beach, now exposed by a negative low tide. A gathering of eagles announces us. The little dog wants to sneak back into the woods. But the causeway to Shaman Island is exposed so I carry Aki onto it. On a sunny day you can see the glacier and the Douglas Island Ridge from here. But Payne’s gray clouds block all that this morning.
In order to return to the forest trail we have to walk under a spruce tree occupied by two very young bald eagles. A mature eagle roosts above them like a watchful parent. The young ones, recent from their nest, look at us with their pale-green eyes. They are so large and fierce looking, I can’t convince myself that they hatched a few months ago. Like the flowers, the eagles can’t afford to waste a day of summer.
The rain, the absence of unnatural sounds, and the calming dominance of forest greens are needed this morning. The little dog and I are near worn out by our recent stint of warm and sunny weather. Like the just sprouted seeds in our garden, we needed a little water from the sky.
The flowering forest plants are ahead of schedule. Tiny green balls have already replaced the lantern-shaped flowers on blueberry bushes. Yellow water lily flowers unfold onto the surface of the beaver pond. The fallen petals of cloudberry flowers dot the muskeg meadow we must cross to reach the beach.
No one would call all these small beauties exciting. But I’m fine with that. We had out excitement quota filled for the day when I stopped for a moment at the boat ramp. The old troller boat that had been beached was now afloat just offshore. I wanted to photograph it against a background of the smuggler cove islands softened by low lying clouds. Twenty meters away two eagles fought over a scrap of fish. The winner carried it down the beach, leaving the loser to sulk.
Thinking about the disappointed eagle, I follow Aki onto the Outer Point Beach. A solitary eagle flies from Shaman Island to a beachside spruce. Otherwise, only gulls and gulls animate the grey scene. A puff of vapor forms above the surface of Stephen’s Passage. In seconds I can make out the black back of an exhaling humpback whale. Just behind the surfacing whale, another vapor plume appears.
The whale sightings provide more reassurance than drama. I’ve seen humpbacks breach near my kayak. But reassurance that there are whales is all I need on this gentle morning.
Aki is covered in mud again. It just took seconds for her to sneak past her human family and slip into a pond that is thick with decomposing plant matter. We aren’t worried. Soon we will reach a pocket beach where she will get a quick bath.
It’s Memorial Day in Alaska. For Aki’s family it’s a day to drop out of normal life and spend time with each other. What better way is there to honor the family’s deceased? While Aki chases her Frisbee, I remember my parents and grandparents and the other honored dead. If they retain the love they had for life after joining the dead, they would smile knowing that their living kin were enjoying life, human and wild, on a wild beach rather than standing before their headstones.
We spooked an immature bald eagle to flight when we reached the beach. The crows moved in after the eagle left, teasing mussel shells off exposed rocks. The ones they couldn’t crack with their beaks were carried into the air and then dropped on a flat rock, which served first as an anvil and then a table for the hungry birds.
Walking with Aki 