Category Archives: Dan Branch

Urban Beavers

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It’s six a.m. I’m riding through the internationally-mixed neighborhood of Mt. View, passing Pho shops and a Hawaiian plate lunch place. The restaurants are closed and I can’t find anyone on the street to ask for directions to the Ship Creek bike path. Ignoring my instinct to head toward Downtown Anchorage, I veer onto a side street. A woman of Indian origin stands in the middle of the pavement. She wears a sari covered by robes as white in the strong morning sun as a J.C. Penny’s sheet. One hand gestures toward a road dropping sharply to my right. Seeing no clues that it will connect to the bike path and wanting to avoid the sharp climb out up the street if I have misread her message, I peddle forward until she gestures again. This time I take the drop and find the bike path entrance.2

I am not surprised that she knows her way around the neighborhood. But how did she know my intent. Was she an apparition or fakir? I pass a sign, decorated by street art hearts, that warns of a narrowing path. It does constrict before climbing over train tracks and creek gravel bars covered with sulking gulls. The path corkscrews off the bridge and takes me into a land of factories and junkyards. Bordered by a covered pile of crushed cars and other industrial waste, a tribe of beavers have made their home. One of the toothy rodents swims across the pond to a den constructed of sticks stripped clean of bark. To make this passage, it must cross the reflection of an excavator parked above the den.1

Oh Momma

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Pearly-gray has replaced blue as the prominent color in Anchorage skies today. I ride away from the Inlet toward the Campbell Creek trail system, vowing to keep away from the salmon spawning stream because it draws brown bears this time of year. At first I ride against the flow of morning commuter traffic on Elmore and then swing into the woods. A single-track trail allows me to meander among white-trunked paper birch that might be hiding moose. If they do, none of the big, horse-like guys show themselves.2

I take another trail that offers more open views and spot, a half-a-mile ahead, something that looks like a wobbly billboard. As I approach it resolves itself into a young male moose with tiny antlers covered in velvet. When I stop, he stares for a second and walks elegantly toward the woods. I will have to pass him if I continue down the trail. I’ll see how it goes. Remounting, I ride closer, which causes him to freeze again. I remember my dad’s warning amount never approaching a deer or elk while they are in velvet and stop again. The moose resumes his walk toward the woods. When he reaches the forest edge, leaving a good chunk of land between him and the trail, I restart my ride.3

Wow, my first moose of the year. I didn’t see any during last summer’ writer’s school residency.

The trail brings me back to Elmore where I watch a late-model Corvette speed by before crossing over to the bike lane. I briefly ponder whether a moose or sports car would cause me the most damage and am thankful to the government that funded this ride-alone bike path.

4A mile down Elmore, a cow moose and two calves feed next to the road. Workers listening to talk radio or silently planning a pattern of attack at work wiz by the family scene. Honey, stop gorging yourself and look after your babies, I think. While the mom turns her butt to the road, her two calves dance along the verge. The aggressive one bucks like a bareback bronc and drives its sibling away from food and mom. In running away, shy one almost enters the rushing traffic stream. I’m close enough to see the startled look in the shy moose’s eyes when it freezes just before it would have been crushed by a northbound SUV. Unable to watch any more, I ride back to campus.

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Delivering Happiness

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The sun returned to Anchorage yesterday afternoon. Last night, as it softened towards sunset, low angled light transformed the normally nondescript Chugiak Mountains into Swiss Alps. The drama continues this morning as I ride from the university past University Lake. With no wind to whiff it, the lake forms a polished mirror for the rising sun.2

When the sun breaks open a blue-sky day like this one, Alaskans tend to turn their faces to the light. Some have to resist using overblown adjectives to describe the resulting beauty. The bike path keeps me in wood shade during most of the ride toward Cook Inlet but, I am able to turn my face to the sun at the spot where Fish Creek flows under the Coastal Trail. Then, I scan the wetlands for the Sandhill Cranes that fed on these flats every day of last summer’s writing school. But only gulls cruise for food. Out on Cook Inlet, a powerful tug pulls a loaded barge to the Gulf of Alaska. It might be heading for the Bering Sea to deliver fishing skiffs, trucks, can goods or house building materials to Unalaska or Nome. I remember watching similar, if smaller barges slowly moving up the Kuskokwim River, wondering what lucky guy was getting the Hewescraft boat perched on top of a stack of orange or yellow freight containers. Maybe this Cook Inlet barge will deliver happiness to someone on St. Lawrence Island or Dillingham.3

The Empty Wheel Chair

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While Aki keeps the Juneau home safe from dogs, cats, and other intruders, I’m up in Anchorage at writer’s school. It rained hard all night, which didn’t keep the seagull perched outside my dorm window from screaming me awake at 4:30 in the morning. Maybe it wanted me to see the pink and pearl sunrise that promised sunshine in the future.2

Now up, I ride my bicycle toward the Campbell Creek bike trail, past a new-looking wheel chair that sat near a front-yard fire ring. While riding the trail to where it dead ends on Dimond Boulevard, I think about the wheel chair when I should be looking for wandering bears or grazing moose. Had a paraplegic used the chair to sit close to the fire until suffering a heart attack? Was he carried into an ambulance by paramedics? Does the empty chair serve as a memorial of his death? Or is he sleeping in his bed while morning stun makes the wet chair steam?3

Lucky Day

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This has to be a lucky day—-the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventeenth year. We count ourselves lucky to be alone on the Mendenhall Peninsula trail on this dry, if gray morning. Bald eagles complain while we plunge down though old growth forest to the Mendenhall River. More eagles sulk in the riverside spruce trees.4

Diminished by the low tide, the river is empty of waterfowl. Only a seal head breaks the surface. Even though they should be out foraging on the exposed tidal flats, a mob of bald eagles sulk in the riverside spruce, some two to a tree. Even though it hasn’t rained for a couple of days, an immature eagle stretches out its mix-brown wings to dry. He must have crashed into the river trying to pull free a salmon. He was lucky to find one.3

This time of year, the river should be filling up with pink and chum salmon but we see no fins, no impatient leaps of salmon returning to their spawning grounds. I pray that they are just late in arriving. With the king salmon return being so small, bears and eagles are going to need lots of chums and pinks to get through the winter.2

While I start to feel sorry for the birds and bears and myself, three eagles whoosh over my head, so close that the wind sound of their wings startles me. One veers off while the other two fly toward each other with talons in attack position. But they are not serious about doing battle. Were they serious about snatching away Aki? Apparently unaware of any danger, the little dog stood relaxed at my side during the event. I guess seven must be your lucky number poodle-mix.5

Upper Fish Creek

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Sunlight finally broke through the marine layer yesterday. This afternoon Aki and I are seeking shelter in the thick woods drained by a mountain fork of Fish Creek. I had planned on taking the little dog to a nearby meadow and only stopped here so she could drink from the cold-water stream. Aki had other ideas and lead me into the woods. Hers was a good choice.2

The informal trail leads through thickets of devil’s club, occasionally touching the stream. The devil’s leaves glow where struck by the strong afternoon sun. Aki acts like she has forgotten yesterday morning’s fog and the wet, grey days that made up the previous week. Soak it up little dog. The rain returns Saturday3

Fog

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Fog formed early this morning in the Gastineau Chanel. Now Aki and I climb toward the Gastineau Meadows in hopes of reaching clear skies and sunshine. Overhead, an Alaska Airlines jet pulls out of the fog and then turns south, taking Aki’s human sister toward Seattle.3

We never escape the fog, which doesn’t bother the nose-centered poodle mix. Sunshine makes her squint. I’m frustrated until I find the spider webs. We would have walked past them on a sunny day. This foggy morning, with their crisp, geometric lines, the webs provide the only clarity.2

Juneau Fourth of July

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We Americans expect sunshine, warm temperatures, and lots of red, white, and blue bunting on the Fourth of July. In Juneau, we accept that rain often replaces sunshine., dives down the temperature and soaks our patriotic bunting. This morning, while Aki recovered from firework produced stress, I watched the annual birthday parade. People cheered the visiting Northwest Canadian Mounted Police, Shriners (big men in toy cars), rainbow flags, Veterans for Peace, and trucks full of Tlingit veterans wearing clear raingear over their wool blanket regalia. Kids scrambled for candy thrown from fire trucks and floats. Rain splattered on the handcrafted amor of men fighting with swords and maces.1

I enjoyed the parade but was more than happy to take Aki out to North Douglas for a walk through the rain-soaked woods. Empty of other people or dogs but full of bird song, the forest is a peaceful place. Almost ripe blueberries rise above clusters of leaves. I know I should wait for a week before sampling them but pluck a few into my mouth, find them almost summer sweet with a sharp aftertaste. Soon the sun will return to ramp up their sugar content and turn them into soft sacks of juice.3

Drawn to the blue and caramel

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Posters inviting people to an American Fourth of July celebration usually feature sunlight, fireworks, and attractive legs descending from bathing suits. One inviting Juneauites to our Fourth festivities this year should portray rain falling on soaked streets from clouds that seem to tear themselves apart on the mountainside spruce. If the clouds don’t clear or at least lift, they will swallow tonight’s fireworks. We will peer up into the rain as each explosion paints the gray sky with orange, red, or yellow light.1

Aki doesn’t mind the rain and appreciates that it cuts down on the amateur firework explosions that usually rattle her during the Fourth of July weekend. She would have enjoyed yesterday’s whale watching trip where she would have attracted almost as much attention on the boat as the humpback whales that we watched. Once we saw a stellar sea lion dogging a feeding whale. But my favorite view was of the clouds breaking open above the Chilkat Mountains. They parted, not to dump more rain, but to expose sun and patches of blue. The eyes of every Juneauite on the boat turned from a surfacing whale to the lightening sky.5

This morning it is raining hard as Aki as I start walking up the Brotherhood Bridge Trail. In the first meadow we spot two patches of crushed grass where a bear slept last night. Later I photograph a caramel-color slug feasting on a devil’s club stalk. On a normal day I’d turn away from the slug and search for the bear. But today, under low. gray skies, there is little competition for the lovely slug.1

Bridge Builder

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Downtown Juneau in summer often has more visitors than locals. This morning Aki and I meet two couples. One man and woman are from the British Isles, the other couple from Atlanta. As she usually does, Aki acts as an icebreaker. She reminds the woman from Atlanta of the little poodle-mix that waits for the woman to return home. Her voice breaks describing that dog. The Brits are more reserved but melt as we watch two bald eagles resting on an abandoned wharf. It takes so little to bridge social gaps. Sometimes, you need a little dog. Sometimes it just takes a couple of eagles on an aging wharf.2