Category Archives: Black bears

Local Knowledge

Leave a reply

1 (7)

This morning Aki will meet a scary looking but nice dog and a nice looking dog that will act scary.  Both interactions will have peaceful outcomes. We won’t meet anyone else on our walk along the shore of Mendenhall Lake.

1 (5)

I am surprised to have the spectacular scenery to ourselves this morning. The low clouds that had been obscuring the glacier and its mountains have lifted. No wind prevents the lake from making perfect reflections of them. Only sunshine would ramp up the beauty. But that would also raise a wind to shatter the crisp reflections.

1 (6)

As usual when taking this walk, I am moving down a mucky beach while Aki parallels me on a mossy forest trail. Suddenly she is at my side being chased by a hulking American bulldog. Aki ducks between my legs and then burst out to chase the bulldog. In seconds I know the new arrival is a sweet guy. In distance we hear his owner’s voice. She will tell us how she lives nearby and will display a local’s knowledge of the beavers that raise their young near where she raises her’s.

1 (8)

I envy the relationship the bulldog owner has with this dramatic slice of the rain forest.  Except for the neighborhood ravens, wild animals only transit through our Chicken Ridge neighborhood. We encourage the porcupines to move on before they devour more of our fruit trees. We pray that black bears will spend more time on the salmon streams than knocking over neighborhood trash bins. I’d like the song birds to spend longer in our trees but they are too busy to comply. Mostly we see cars and dog walkers.

1 (9)

Feeling a little sorry for myself, I lead Aki onto a road through an empty campground. Around the corner a nuclear family of three approaches accompanied by a border collie.  The dog drops it head and tail and pads towards us like we are rebellious sheep. It growls and barks when Aki moves toward it. Aki looks shocked but soon recovers.  We will never see the collie or her human charges again. But the dog’s bark will reach us from across the forest many times before we return to the car.

1 (10)

 

The Way it is

Leave a reply

1 (4)

I am standing on a bridge over Steep Creek. Aki is in the car. Because a sow and her two cubs are fishing for salmon nearby, this is a dog-free zone. No bears enter my view shed but a red breasted merganser moves in spurts towards me. It swims with the desperation of an in bound salmon. Between each dash, the duck darts it head under the water. It must be targeting baby salmon from last year’s spawn.

1 (1)

Salmon drive the moraine’s economy. Bears and ducks would be elsewhere if not for the fish. Earlier today Aki and I found a silver salmon flopping alongside the Nugget Falls Trail. At first I worried that it had been carried here in the mouth of a bear that sulked nearby. Then we heard eagle scream. The fish, which must have weighed two kilos, was lifted from the lake by talons. An bird beak had already attacked the salmon’s gills and lower jaw.

1 (2)

While Aki cautiously sniffed the dying salmon, I wondered at the inherent cruelty of this beautiful moraine. The silver, now in flaming-red spawning colors, might have swam a thousand miles from the Gulf of Alaska to this lake. The whole time it ate every herring it could catch while hunted by fishermen, killer whales, seals, and sea lions. How many nets, hook, and jaws did it avoid only to die less than a kilometer away from its spawning ground? There was only one thing to do for we visitors to do—continue on to the falls so the eagle could harvest the meat.

1 (3)

Sunlight broken through the heavy overcast as we approached the falls. A rainbow appeared in the spray formed by cascading water slamming into the lake.  If the falls hadn’t been swollen with rain from the storm, if the sun hadn’t appears at that moment, if Aki and I had not been detained by the dying salmon…

1

 

 

Thank You Bears

2 Replies

1 (2)

Thank you bear, I say while securing Aki to her leash. The black bear had been digging up chocolate lily roots when we approached. It spotted us when we were only 30 meters away and slipped into a nearby copse of spruce. Aki never saw it.

1

We are on the return leg of the Boy Scout Beach Trail. It was raining when we started toward the beach. Now we walk under full sun. A stiff westerly blows at our backs, stripping yellow leaves from the riverside poplars and pushing waves up Eagle River. The wind has a fall bite to it.

1 (3)

 

On our way downriver Aki dashed from grass clump to grass clump trying to find relief from the breeze. To make our return trip easier on the little dog I lead her over a beach berm and onto a protected meadow. We bailed on that route after walking through large patches of trampled grass and pot holed ground. Tall grass and the dried stalks of cow parsnip plants prevented me from seeing more than a few meters in any direction. A whole work gang of bears could be within claw reach and we would never know it until it was too late.

1 (5)

To avoid a nasty surprise for bear, dog and man, Aki and I left the meadow to take a trail through the woods where no bruin had reason to occupy. It was just after we walked out of the woods and onto a small meadow that the day’s second bear spotted us.

1 (1)

Earlier, while on the opposite side of Eagle River Aki and I watched a different bear foraging for roots. Reaching to a noise from upriver, the bear sat up and stared toward the disturbance. This got Aki’s attention and she let out with a quiet growl. Now we had the bear’s attention. It was time for our retreat across the river.

1 (4)

Aki As Kingfisher

1 Reply

1 (3)

Should dogs have spirit animals? If Aki had one, it would be the belted kingfisher. We spot the feisty little birds on many of our rain forest walks. This morning, one burst out of a spruce tree chattering abuse, flew over a moraine lake that I was photographing, did a barrel roll and disappeared into a balsam popular tree in fall color. If you had wings little dog, that would be you.

1

Aki, who had once chased a black bear up a tree close to the kingfisher’s roost with only her bark and attitude, gave me her “Don’t be Stupid” look.

1 (1)

It had been raining where we started this walk through the glacier moraine but now it has stopped. No drops strike the lake to ruin the reflection of the poplars in high color. I’d expect ducks or even transiting swans to be resting on the lake. But only the kingfisher makes an appearance.

1 (2)

Hilda Meadows Spiders

Leave a reply

 

1 (1)

I’m on our highest ladder knocking the last golden delicious apples from our tree. Otherwise a bear will break the tree trying to climb up to get them. Last night Aki chased away one before it could climb after the apples. Even though it outweighs the little dog by a factor of 15 or 20 I felt sorry for the bear. It can’t enjoy having its sensitive hearing assaulted by poodle yapping. I don’t.

1 (2)

This morning, while the sun burned night fog from the surface of Gastineau Channel, Aki and I drove into the mountains. After yesterday’s long boat ride to the lighthouse, we both needed to stretch our legs on the climb to Hilda Meadows.  I expected no animal drama. Wolves and bears roam the mountains but in such small numbers there was little chance of an encounter.

1 (8)

There was drama from surprising sources—spiders. Every September our spiders release their children into the world. They young climb stalks of grass and fly off on glistening strands of spider silk. Many spiders must have landed in the meadows.

1 (7)

Spiders had already constructed angular webs between grass stalks and over miner’s cabbage red with fall cover. Some even suspended their silk nets between the banks of narrow watercourses.

1

Aki, who doesn’t care about spider webs or even fall color, surveyed the meadow for danger while I chased after webs. I wanted to tell the little dog to relax.  This time of year the meadow bears must be down in the Fish Creek drainage getting fat on incoming salmon. Then she led me across a patch of shooting stars flattened recently by a sleeping bear.

1 (5)

Clinging to the Green

Leave a reply

 

1 (2)

After yesterday’s eagle drama, I drive Aki to a quieter place where narrow trails connect a series of small lakes. Even though we pass many piles of bear scat on the trail, it seems almost cozy and definitely peaceful. The scat is died indigo by the depositing bear’s blueberry diet.

1 (1)

It’s a time for collecting mushrooms and enjoying mottled skies reflected on the surface of calm lakes.

1

The chance for filling a bucket with berries has past. Already some of the berry foliage darkens to autumn red. Squirrels carry large chunks of fungus up the sides of spruce trees. But most of the trees still cling to their summer-green leaves.

1 (3)

We Could Be Miles Away

Leave a reply

1

It rained all last night. This morning only a light shower dimples Crystal Lake. But soon the real drama will begin. A storm is moving over Sitka. It is scheduled to drop four inches of rain on the Troll Woods and raise the lake’s level. Tomorrow the trails may be muddy and in places flooded. But now Aki and I should have no problem exploring the woods.

1 (1)

I lead the little dog off the main trail and onto one of the beavers’ logging roads. We follow it to a little lake we seldom are able to visit.  For the last few years the access trail has been flooded by water backed up behind the beaver dams. Now it is dry.

Less than a mile away, a string of tourist buses unloads in front of the glacier visitor center. People crowd the bear-watching platform searching for inbound sockeye salmon and the bears that feed on them. A few miles in the other direction, planes and helicopters take off and land. When the wind drops we can hear airplane and bus noise. But the wind is rising in anticipation of the storm, letting me pretend we are thirty miles deep in wilderness.

1 (2)

But For

Leave a reply

1 (5)

Our path is lined with chest-high lupines but I can’t appreciate their purple beauty. Someone at a nearby picnic area is attacking metal with a grinder. When a side path through the lupine appears, I lead Aki out onto the tidal meadow and away from the noise. A heavy malamute dog charges through walls of flowering cow parsnip and leaps at my little dog. The incomer shows no malice but it could hurt Aki if it landed square on the poodle-mix. For the first in a long time I’m called upon to protect Aki—uttering the sounds that Yupik friends used to scare off stray northern dogs. Finally, the malamute’s owner manages to leash his dog.

1 (2)

As we continue across the meadow I realize that, but for the noxious grinder noise, Aki would have never been at risk from the malamute.  Aki and I have experienced many but-for moments during her 11 years of life. But for the puppy Aki’s sudden interest in hot dogs cooking in a covered picnic shelter, a diving eagle would have carried her away. If she had not startled an approaching black bear, it would have dispatched Aki with a quick swipe of its paws. Good reactions of a driver saved her, more than once, from being smashed flat by a car tire.

1 (3)

There are many positive but-for stories. If we hadn’t been standing on a shore-side boulder, we wouldn’t have been able to watch a dozen Stellar sea lions swim close enough for me to count their whiskers. If I hadn’t chose to walk down the Mendenhall Peninsula Trail, we wouldn’t have been able to watch a cloud of thirty eagles dive on bait herring.

1 (1)

The sun breaks out from the marine layer, driving away my contemplative mood. We walk up along Eagle River to the place where Aki once chased a black bear into the woods. She sniffs at a recent pile of bear scat and then at a spot where the bear might have spent the night. If this had been an early morning walk…

1 (4)

The sounds of human laughter and conversations ahead cause me to leash Aki. I slow down and hope that the people will walk out of earshot. But, they are in no hurry so I keep my little dog on her lead. When something rattles the trailside brush Aki tries to break towards the sound. I spot a porcupine moving slowing away. But for our noisy neighbors, who forced me to leash Aki, I might be pulling porcupine quills out of the little dog’s nose.

1

Bears, Beaver, or Ghosts

Leave a reply

1 (1)

What are you doing little dog? Aki is too busy to answer as she dashes into the woods on one side of the trail, stops for a second, and then charges to the other side of the trail. Are we surrounded by bears, beavers, or ghosts? I’m guessing it’s ghosts because I can’t see anything but plant life in the trail margins.

There is plenty of evidence that bears and beavers have recently occupied the area. We pass many piles of bear poop and a myriad of cottonwood trees felled by beavers. But we don’t hear trees crashing to earth or bears crashing through the undergrowth. Aki leads me off the main trail and onto a narrow path. Even if they were here, I wouldn’t see bears or beavers through the tangle of hardwood brush that closes in on the trail.

1

When the trail widens I spot flowering Nagoon berry plants, not bears. Later in the summer, the berries will draw a crowd to this trail. The berries have a cult following in Juneau whose members will race the birds and bears to harvest this patch.

1 (2)

Late Spring

Leave a reply

1

The forest should be greening up. Normally by early May green shoots of bracken, with tips curled like the head of a violin, would be forcing their way through last year’s dead growth. But today only the ever-present tree moss shows green.

1 (1)

The tidal meadow, when the little dog and I reach it, looks as dead as November. But the presence of nattering Canada geese confirm the onset of Spring. Those not chuckling graze on new shoots of meadow grass. In less accessible meadows black bears are filling their winter-empty stomachs with shoots of similar grass.

1 (2)

While Aki sniffs at a seemingly random spot on the trail, I lean down to inspect wolf scat that is chock full of tan colored fur. I’ve seen similar colored fur on our Sitka black tail deer. Winter’s winners and losers, little dog, now fueling this spring’s new growth.