Category Archives: Dan Branch

Return to the Moraine

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The large cottonwood trees that screen the glacier have begun their slow autumnal striptease. Aki and I see evidence of their dance along the moraine trail—Valentine-shaped leaves, yellow and orange and green, plastered by rain to the gravel or floating on the many beaver ponds. But only the most patient voyeur could appreciate or even detect the trees’ languid movements.

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Evidence of beaver work is everywhere. Their dams back up waters in the trailside ditches so they now flood over parts of the trail. A patient man or dog might spot ripe silver salmon moving up the swollen drains on their way to spawning grounds deeper in the moraine. But I am impatient this morning and Aki is too fixated on fresh beaver scent.

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She has an attraction to beavers that would prove fatal if she ever managed to close on one. She rarely passes on an opportunity to roll in their scat, something that brings a look of pure bliss to her face. The little dog has many blissful moments this morning as we pass a trio of cottonwood logs that the beavers had floated together and then stripped bare of bark. I wonder how many it took to reduce the logs to glistening white in one night. Because they work the swing and graveyard shifts, the beavers are probably resting in their dens but I still keep a look out for them. More than once, Aki has followed a moraine beaver into the water, tail wagging, apparently hoping to play.

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What’s the Deal?

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Jumpy, opinionated, grouchy are all labels you could lay on the belted kingfisher. Visiting the ones that live above Treadwell’s collapsed glory hole is one of the highlights the old mining ruins. They usually bounce through the air above the glory hole, chittering at each other and the little dog and me. This morning there is only one bird and it is stationed just off shore on one of the fractured wharf piling. It huddles there in pouring rain, ignoring us. Has it lost it’s mate or is it just having some quiet time?

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So Much Life

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Aki keeps a respectful distance from the fawn’s corpse. She sniffs and pulls back, then leans forward to sniff again. Still beautiful, even charming in death, the little deer died along the road after being struck by a car. I think about marks made in beach gravel by a deer that must have been panicked by our approach. The caution it showed might cause it be more careful when crossing highways.

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Discordant bird chatter distracted me from the deer tracks. Two belted kingfishers were in the midst of an aerial dogfight. Maybe “ballet” is a better word to describe the way the two birds weaved in and out of each other’s flight path, sometimes almost touching salt water. So much life.

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Presents

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Aki and I are walking above Gold Creek on a trail that could take us to the ruins of the Perseverance Mining District. An hour ago, fog filled the Gold Creek valley but it is gone now, burned off by sunlight. The little dog plays touch and sniff with other dogs. Strong, slanting sunlight turns the broad devil’s club leaves translucent and makes even dying foliage beautiful. All summer the plants in the valley have taken energy from the sun and necessary moisture from rain. Soon they will drain their leaves of color until the yellows, oranges and reds of fall have replaced summer green. Then the lovely leaves will hang for a week or two like an offering to the sky that nurtured them and a present to those of us who preserved through a long, wet summer.

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Ignoring the Portents

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We start on the university campus and walk around Auk Lake. Aki jumps when a salmon splashes near the shore. But she soon settles into the walk. I didn’t see the jumping salmon and spot only indirect evidence of fish presence in the lake. Once the wake of an unseen object, a subtle “v” shaped wave, moved along the trail’s floating walkway. Other times we would hear splashes.

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Even though we have a sun its light can’t penetrate through the lake’s surface. No wind ripples the lake so the souls of glacial mountains appear trapped in its waters. Other than some eagles’ screeching complaints and blue jay scolding, we hear no bird song. I take my cue from Aki and ignore the portents, enjoy the smells of a forest well into autumn.

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False Optimism?

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Aki and I are soaked from brushing up against understory plants. Maybe we shouldn’t have taken this seldom-used path that cuts across headlands to a pocket beach. But it’s the end of summer when the little dog and I make a pilgrimage to the beach for its view of Favorite Passage. We usually spot an eagle or two, maybe a whale, seal, or sea lion. A bald eagle does flush from a spruce when we break through to the beach. But only one guillemot dots the passage.

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We shouldn’t be surprised. It’s been a challenging summer with little sunshine and lots of rain. The rain plumped the harvestable berries but ripening without the benefit of sunny days, they are either insipid or sour. This has made me pessimistic so I am not surprised by the lack of wildlife. I give little attention to an oval of blue forming above Shelter Island. Dark storm clouds will soon cover it.

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While climbing over a low coastal hill, we pass a patch of blue berry brush that sports a handful of ripe fruit. The one berry I can reach is as sweet as farm grown. Next to it is a bush already darkening to fall reds and browns. But the optimistic plant also has new flowers that now glow in an unexpected shaft of sunlight.

Seward

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Aki and I walk a route through Downtown Juneau. Because it offers rich opportunities to check pee mail as well as good chances to grab a goody dropped by a tourist onto the sidewalk, it is one of the little dog’s favorite walks.

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This morning we moved down Gold Street and then up Gastineau, passing the ruins of the old A.J. Mine. Forty years ago Aki would have seen many feral cats. They lived in the relatively warm mine tunnels and scavenged meals in Juneau Cold Storage. But that intuition burned down and parvo virus wiped out the cat population. Tourist shops and homeless have replaced them on the downtown streets of Juneau.

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While climbing backup to Chicken Ridge, we stop to study the new statute of William Seward. While Secretary of State Seward engineered the purchase of Alaska from Russia. This mads him one our patron political saints. After the purchase, Seward visited the Alaska panhandle, including the Tlingit village of Saxman. The village residents feasted Seward and gave him valuable, hand made gifts. Unaware of Tlingit cultural rules, he never reciprocated with gifts of his own. After a reasonable time had passed, the Saxman people erected shaming totem pole with an unflattering effigy of Seward at the top. If Seward had satisfied his cultural obligation they would have lowered to pole. But, it stood like a public dunning notice until this summer when, after being attacked by carpenter ants, the section of the pole carved in Seward’s image had to be removed.

Spooked

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When Aki alerts to danger, I take her seriously. She has spotted several bears that I would never have seen without her help. But, today she growls at a small stream coursing along the trail. It the water, moving along a wooden boardwalk trail section does have a bass resonance. It is dark except where it turns translucence after breaking over a damn of sticks and sparkles. After growling, the little poodle-mix drops her trail and sulks to a spot behind me. A hundred feet further up the trail, she retakes point.1

Hanging Out

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This morning I am a little overwhelmed by forest greens. Aki and I are walking through a protected old growth forest that is not surrendering to fall. All life has already drained from the line of cow parsnips that buffer the forest from the sea. Atop their dead-brown stalks, the plants’ large flowers have been replaced with circles of seeds. But under the forest canopy blue berry bushes still display fruit on their summer-green branches.

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1Around False Outer Point and across Gastineau Channel a remnant of Lemon Glacier hangs above Costco and the state jail. On most days it looks no more remarkable than a snowfield. But there is something about today’s light that turns its ice a pastel blue. In the Alps or even the Canadian Rockies, there would be a good trail leading to the hanging glacier. But here, its just another sign of the warming earth.

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No Drama

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On a gray day, one without weather drama, Aki and I climb a gravel road leading to Gastineau Meadows. Aki sniffs along in work-dog fashion. If she saw the two used syringes laying orange and white in trailside grass, she gave no indication. Hopefully, the children who played loudly on the nearby school grounds haven’t found similar  needles. I’ll trash them along with bags of Aki’s scat after we finish the hike.

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I won’t notice any birds or animals on the meadow, except for the water skimmer bugs that skitter across the meadow ponds with the tips of their legs jammed just under the water’s surface. The surrounding mountains—Juneau, Sheep, Jumbo, Gastineau—will look tired, like aging actors in late morning light. A light fog will rise off the channel and threaten to give the mountains cover and then dissipate before fulfilling its promise.

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