Category Archives: Beavers

Neutral in the Beaver Wars

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P1140205Back from Sitka, Aki’s other human and I take the little dog exploring on the glacial moraine. The wind that has hammered downtown Juneau since our return can’t reach us here. We have sun, lots of snow, and a temperature just below freezing.

P1140204We want Aki to enjoy this adventure because when it is over she is to be taken to the veterinarian for injections, teeth cleaning, and nail clipping. She dashes over a series of terraced beaver ponds while I muse over the good and bad provided by the industrious rodents. Beavers killed these trees and transformed their beauty from a living celebration to one created by blistered forms. Their dam works create habitat for young silver salmon, some that might be swimming under the ice beneath our boots. But when the temperature rises, the backup from their ever expanding ponds will flood our access trails to the troll woods and berry patches.

P1140197Finding myself neutral on beaver beauty, I concentrate on a cottonwood leaf that has spent the winter trapped by the cold. Like the beaver, the dead brown leaf transforms the moraine, using the heat from spring sunshine to carve Itself a steep walled sanctuary in translucent ice.

Mind the Gap

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P1130538With the sun just skimming along Thunder Mountain, only portions of the Troll Woods receive today’s sunlight. Aki and I walk from dusk to light and back to dusk. A being that follows her nose rather than her eyes, the little dog shows no preference for the frosty gray of shadows or the sparkling white of sunlit woods.

P1130510The temperature hovers near 15 degrees fahrenheit so the sun offers little warmth for Aki. It can’t melt the frost feathers covering alder and diminutive spruce trees.

P1130513Thanks to the extended cold snap we are free to walk across lakes and invade the  beaver’s flooded forests. It’s a bit risky, since the beavers nibble out trails beneath the surface of their pond ice to maintain access between their food and den. On the Kuskokwim, elders warned us not to walk over frozen beaver ponds without being prepared to break through the ice. I approach each beaver dam with caution. Behind one, a world of bark-less sticks, alder leaves, and submerged tree branches  exists, frozen in time and ice.  Behind the big dam near the beaver village, we find an irregular shaped hole in the ice—looking like the street exit of a London Underground station. The beaver’s Oxford Circus. P1130546

Abstract Reflections

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P1130269On this, one in a long string of foggy days, reflected and abstract shapes hold my interest. Without shafts of sunlight to create shadows on old growth spruce and Hemlocks in this beachside forest, their trucks flatten to elongated rectangles disappearing into the gray. From the beach we find fog and low clouds blocking off dramatic mountain ranges and slicing off the tops of forested islands. The tide has flooded over all interesting beach shapes. Rather than be like these gulls huddled together in a group sulk, I try to find things to excite me as much as trailside smells wind up my little poodle mix. They are back in the woods where the trunk of a shattered hemlock tree injects orange colored, sharp-edged planes into the soft, green forest. Nearby, the waters of a beaver pond reflect back the shapes of spruce partially severed by beaver teeth.  P1130243Nearer the beaver’s dam, alders form sophisticated abstractions by curving over the pond in a search for light. Reflection is the key, mine and that of the trees.P1130252

Rain Brings the Calm

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We have the moraine almost to ourselves. Only a few dog walkers show on the well packed trails. Our solitude comes cheap—rain dampened pants and boots wet from tromping through soft snow.
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Last weeks’ rich winter whiteness remains but without the enhancement of sun or the sparkles of frost. The snow, almost too white when contrasted with the black silhouettes of bare trees, throws up its own light. Since low clouds and fog cut off views of the glacier and its mountains, we only have the white, and gray, and black of the lower ground.
P1120914While last week’s sunny excess excited, this landscape deconstructed by rain brings calm, like that which always surrounded my father. He would have been 95 today, If I had the skill and an umbrella, I’d capture the calm, monotone moraine with ink washes but my painting couldn’t include this stream near the beaver village, stained a rust red by the surrounding muskeg.

In the Dark Looking out at the Light

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P1120538The weatherman promised cold temperatures, sun, and 40 knot winds. For once he was wrong about the wind. It usually appears with the sun in December. This pleases Aki, who thinks the wind rude to blow on days with a hard frost. P1120566

Today I find the beavers rude for flooding out yet another of my favorite trails. We need this one through the old growth forest to access a beautiful North Douglas Island beach. They are using the trail as part of their new dam. Water seeping from it forms a glaciated surface on the trail that makes walking impossible without some sort of ice aids. Already water backing up behind the dam climbs the trunks of living trees. If nothing changes the trees will be soon dead. Still, I can’t get myself to dismantle the mortarless portion of the dam to stop the damage. Must remember to always wear ice cheaters on winter visits to the beach.

P1120543On the beach, a gang of gulls float close to the beach. They appear to ignore the little dog and she ignores them. (Have they reached an understanding?). We stand in shadow on the beach but can see the low angled sun strike Shaman Island, Lynn Canal, and the mountains beyond. The contrast brings out the beauty of dark and light.  A light wind rises to drive small waves onto the beach. They splash water on  rocks already iced over by yesterday’s waves, giving them a sinister beauty. Aki, discouraged by the rising wind tries to lead me into the comfortable woods. I linger, still hoping for whales. “You are probably right little dog,” I tell her, “too late for whales.”  On the drive home I see my whale, a humpback, grabbing a snack in Smuggler’s Cove. Is he topping off for the long swim to Maui or one of the non-breeders who stay the winter?

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Rain only Encourages the Beavers

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIn hope of finding snowfall rather than the heavy rain plaguing Chicken Ridge this morning, I hauled Aki out to the glacial moraine. Rain followed us there. In a minute Aki lost her initial exurburance for the adventure, stopping me 50 meters from the car with a questioning look. Raising one front paw out from the rain sluiced trail ice, she stopped to offer an excuse for returning to the house. Believing that beauty and the happiness it brings can be found even in hypothermic weather, I pressed on.   Loyal friend that she is, the little dog followed with tail down until we met a happy Labrador retriever who had not lost his exurburance. After that, pride and interesting scents kept up her spirits. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

While the rain lessened the effectiveness of my gloves, I read a government sign that asked us not to attack the beaver dams currently flooding out access to half the moraine.  A group of trained volunteers were controlling the flooding by notching the dams. This reduced the flooding while keeping the water levels high enough to protect the silver salmon spawn. According the sign, and I have no reason to doubt its words, the beavers’s work helps the salmon which feed trout, eagles, and bears.  Have I misjudged the industrious rodents. Maybe yes, maybe no. The problem is that the little guys dam salmon streams and watercourses that have never seen a silver salmon. Water backing up from one of the later efforts is currently flooding out my favorite access trail to moraine. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Breaking up the Party

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P1110988This morning Aki and I broke up a party on the moraine. Bald eagles rather than teenagers filled the guest list. Teens wouldn’t be partying in this a heavy downpour.  The eagles sought fish, not booze.

P1120003The party had just about run its course when we arrived. Two mature bald eagles screamed at each other until one chase the other out of a shared roosting tree. Perviously, they both flew down the trail to rest in the same cottonwood tree. This left three immature eagles, each a confusion of brown and white feathers, who always look bigger to me than the grownups. They held spaces in trees above a ruptured beaver dam.  Late returning silver salmon and the trout that eat their eggs and flesh must pass through the gap.

P1110991Two of the young eagles flew off, leaving one very stubborn teenager in control. Even he eventually flew off, but only to a cottonwood a hundred meters up the lake where he turned his back to us and defecated.

Too Much Water, Too Many Beavers

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P1110923Handicapped by beavers and a malfunctioning camera, this morning I joined Aki for a walk over the moraine. Recent heavy rains floated the normally dry portions of the trail. Water backing up from the beaver’s new superdam cut us off from the heart of the trail system. Even our work-around—a seldom used trail through the troll woods, was under waters from another beaver-infected lake. P1110927

Giving up on our favorite moraine trail, we tried one less appealing but heavily used by dog walkers. Aki loved it and all the dog meet and greats she had along the way. The sun shone all over the moraine, except on us. Still, the rain held off until we returned to the car. On the way we passed a raven and an eagle in the top of a leaf-free cottonwood tree. Eagle screech a complaint at Raven who, being higher in the tree, seems to be crowing his accomplishment.  Raven flew off when we approached, dipping low to make Eagle hunch in a cringe. I understood how both of them felt.P1110942

An “If Only” Morning

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P1110827A raft of surf scoters gave out a chorus of the Three Stooges theme song when Aki and I spooked them near False Outer Point. We were out there this morning at sunrise. We didn’t see the sun, just an increase in the ambient light filtering through gray. P1110853

It was one of those “if only” mornings. Most of the tidal land bridge to Shaman Island was exposed when we left the forest for the beach but soon disappeared under the incoming tide. If only I had turned off the Manchester United v. Southhampton football match at half time, we could have walked across the land bridge for the first time in a year. If only I had spotted the eagle before it dived for fish or my foot hadn’t slipped into surprisingly deep water when I checked out the beaver dam. If only there was enough sunlight to bring out the red of a crabapple leaf hiding among dead blades of beach grass. Only two sharp-sided rocks, just fallen from a golden and brown seam, managed to impress with the help of freshly fallen rain.   P1110839

Comforting Portrait in Grays

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI took this picture of a beaver dam when it was still warm enough in Juneau for bicycling. Recent wind driven rain stripped much of the color from these trees. Soon dropping temperatures will chase the pond’s resident black bears to their winter dens. I’m sad to see the disappearance of fall color but not that of the Juneau bears, one of whom still hangs around Chicken Ridge, making Aki’s nightly dog walks a little too interesting.

I’d forgotten about the beaver dam picture until uploading it along with some pictures I took during this morning’s seaweed gathering expedition. Someone had hoovered up all the lose rock weed from the drive up, load up, drive away beaches but I eventually found a little backwater to harvest. Aki kept herself entertained as I made long treks to and from the car with buckets in each hand. Looking up during a break I noticed how quiet the waters of Lynn Canal had become at slack low tide. Aki and I walked out to a view point under an occupied eagle’s roost. The eagle turned its back to us and the surf-less sea.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI photographed this peaceful portrait of the canal in comforting grays, perhaps more beautiful than the beaver pond dressed in fall yellow. If possible, I would have glided across the water with the little poodle mix to watch south bound humpback whales passing down Admiralty Island. Brought back to earth by the impatient eagle’s complaints, I returned to my wracking.