Category Archives: Dan Branch

Free Range Dog

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I was disappointed to find so many cars in the trailhead parking lot. But most of their occupants had already formed an ant-like line on the lake ice pointed toward the glacier’s ice cave. Aki and I keep to the eastern lake shore and wander toward Nugget Falls. Fog and low clouds form a grey and white ceiling above the lake, revealing only the lower half of Mendenhall Glacier.

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Aki usually keeps pretty close to me but today she ranges like a cattle drive scout, returning for a checkup and then dashing in another direction. No dogs or people draw her away. I blame interesting smells, entertain the possibility of ghosts. One time I spot her far out on the lake where she has acres of ice to herself.

3The flat light emphasizes the blue in the glacier ice and turns ice encasing the waterfall a gentle turquoise shade. Water still forces it way through the ice it created to push beneath the lake surface. Even diminished by its turquoise sarcophagus, the falling water intimidates me with its powerful song. Mesmerized, I almost miss a brief reveal of glacier and mountains provided by the sun.

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Fog

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Aki dashes around Sandy Beach, one of our most popular dog walk. She ignores the old mine air shaft, a tall, rectangular battlement with a pitched roof now appearing and disappearing in the fog. As I try to focus my camera, the fog appears to grow thousands of feet in height until it obscures all but the top of Mount Juneau. It deflates as quickly, as if it is being eaten like cotton candy by the sun. In a minute it is barely taller than the airshaft.

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All the miners who were served by the airshaft managed to escape before water from Gastineau Channel flooded the tunnels of the Mexican Mine. Before that day, even the sharp-eared Aki would not be able to hear my summons over the sound of ore crushers that ran 24 hours a day except for Christmas and the Fourth of July.

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I imagine the miners moiling in lantern-lit depths while fog shrank and expanded over the channel on sunny January days. They would never know the bright beauty that Aki and I share unless they took their lunch above ground. They entered their tunnels in the dark of morning and left long after the sun disappeared behind the Douglas Island ridge. Maybe, during their dinner after a day like this, their children told them about the fog and how an eagle emerged from it with talons lowered to snatch food from the channel waters.

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First Light

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The sun rising over Gastineau Channel this morning makes Juneau look like a tropical paradise by flooding the tidal flow with orange light. Aki and I know the truth. Its early January in Alaska and the temperature is yet to rise above 12 degrees F. We head north out the road to visit a large meadow where wolves hunt, beavers sleep through the day, and otters play.

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My skis barely crack the crusty snow that covers the meadow. Aki just trots on top of it. The snow won’t be a challenge for the little dog. She dashes about, checking the pee mail. I break through a screen of willows to reach the beaver’s home stream and then follow the tracks of a single wolf to their door. Aki sniffs tracks made by the beavers last night and heads further up stream.

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Several nights of clear, calm, and cold weather have allowed frost feathers to build on the meadow’s alders, pines, and spruce trees. The feathers on a nearby stand of trees flash from inanimate gray to flashing prisms when struck for the first time by the early morning sun. I pull off my mittens and make many attempts to capture the richness and sparkle until my hands numb. If I my hands are cold, what about Aki’s unprotected feet. But the little dog seems fine. She doesn’t even lift a paw off the snow while she waits from me to return to the skiing.

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Good Movie

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There is nothing I can do about the clouds over Gastineau Channel, no way I can improve the sunrise. But the little dog and I, wanting to enjoy another day in paradise, head out to False Outer Point. We will have to race the tide around the point and cross by the tiny headlands before the beach floods.

As it has since we woke up this morning, the sun illuminates the mountain peaks but leaves all else dominated by clouds except for the Chilkat Range on the far side of Lynn Canal. They shine from ridge top to seawater.

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A sea lion near the point surfaces for a few quick breaths and then makes a shallow dive. He spy hops when Aki barks, then disappears, leaving us alone except for the raft of harlequin ducks just offshore. In minutes they take flight. I spot a kingfisher hunkered down on a large beach rock that leaves when I try to photograph him. Maybe he moved to avoid a bald eagle that flies over our head and the kingfisher’s perch, extends both talons and rocks toward the sea like a parachutist.

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The sun has gained full purchase over the glacier and its surrounding mountains but we remain in shade. This time of year, we can’t expect daylight on the east side of Douglas Island. I enjoy the pull of this bright land that we cannot touch. It’s like watching a movie in the dark.

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Last Crisp Day of 2016

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Nature’s timing is off this weekend. Rather than prolong the wet, gray storm that washed though the rain forest for much of the last week, the sun returned on this last morning of 2016. At 8:30 it started a low arc over the Douglas Island ridge and plunged behind the mountains about 2 P.M. Even through a playwright would have scheduled sun’s reappearance tomorrow, when the New Year begins, I’d rather end the year with a day of crisp light rather than one dominated by flat gray. It reminds me that 2016 had sparkle as well as darkness.

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Before the sun can disappear, the little dog and I climb to Gastineau Meadows where we look from shadow at the bright-white flanks of Sheep Mountain and Mt. Juneau. The meadow crossing gives Aki a chance to demonstrate her ability to scoot across the top of the snow pack even though as one of my legs plunges through the crust every four or five steps. Early this morning several deer and many snowshoe hares had crisscrossed the meadow, leaving tracks on last night’s snow. The deer had the roughest passage but even their slender legs didn’t pierce as deep as my size 10.5 boots.

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Promising Light

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The snow stopped but soon we will have rain. Aki and I walk the crescent-shaped beach in front of the old Auk Village site. Blaise gulls crowd the deltas of small steams draining into Auk Bay. Just off shore a knot of harlequin ducks bob in small surf. Further out, between Point Louisa and us a small pod of Dahl Porpoise dance along the water surface. But is it the light breaking out above the Chilkat Range that holds my attention. After days of wet, gray skies, fingers of light reach through the marine layer to explode on the surface of Lynn Canal. Each seems to promise a better day or two of weather, maybe a better year than the one just ending.

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Winter Feed

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Aki is already wet from the snow. It falls in fat flakes that soften the edges of the glacial moraine. But the storm that delivers the snow has grounded planes and apparently discouraged the guys at the firing range. It brings silence that lasts until we are within 30 yards of the Mendenhall River when a raven croaks twice. At this point I am tired from a mile of slogging along the soft trail and ducking under trailside alders bent over with snow and ice. So, I am unprepared for the cloud of ravcns, bald eagles, and magpies that form on my right as I tried to photograph the river.

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Around the corner I spot blood on the snow and a deer skeleton. Its rumpled skin is nearby. The eagles escape across the river but the cabal of ravens hold station in some nearby trees. Only two magpies return to the carrion, picking the deer bones while the presence of Aki and I keep the bigger birds away. In this time of famine along the river, I can’t justify remaining near the bones. When we pass the raven sentry on our way home, it croaks the all clear.

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Auk Lake

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It’s raining. We are walking around Auk Lake. The trail takes us through the little university campus where totem poles and a large raven sculpture carry burdens of snow. The lake looks like a Nordic skiers ideal. No tracks mar the lake’s thick snow covering except those made by a passing deer and, of course, the ravens. I don’t dare Aki to leave her paw prints on the clean white sheet. Even she might fall through the hidden spots made soft by current or warm water up swells.

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It’s not raining when we reach the spruce forest that crowds the lake’s southern shore. But snow flakes falling from overhead tree limbs flutter onto the little dog and I. The snow that still clings to the trees and covers the ground brightens the woods with a gentle light.

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Waiting For the Storm

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Aki and I are trying to get in a rain forest walk before the promised Christmas blizzard. A gentle breeze caries the scent of snow but otherwise it is just another flat-gray December day. I stop to photograph muskeg water over white ice on the beaver pond. Light filling the space between standing spruce animates the tea-colored water and brightens moss clumping on the limbs of a half-submerged deadfall.

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When we reach the beach, the little dog and I find the birds jumpy. Harlequin ducks are quick to flight. The ever-present raft of surf scoters paddles close to the beach rocks. I suspect the eagle that flies towards us from Shaman Island. But the big bird veers off course when it spots us. Even in its absence the birds remain alert. I watch the scoters as the wind rises, looking hunting sea lions. None appear. Beyond, a band of darkness slides over the Chilkat Mountains and moves down channel toward Juneau. I know it is already snowing heavy in Hoonah. Soon we will have the permission to be lazy always granted by a storm.

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The Shoulder of Mt.Roberts

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We probably should not have taken the Mt. Roberts trail today. Ice formed since the last thaw has made it treacherous. We don’t have any problem on the climb up but I know there will be some falls during the descent. Trusting my old ice grippers, I follow Aki until we reach the place where winter still survives. While last week’s storm washed away snow from the lower mountain, it covered the upper shoulder with a couple of feet of snow. My little dog softens some with her paws so she can rub her muzzle in it.

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A thick icing of snow weighs down the branches of the spruce at the tree line. Each twig is further stressed by small icicles that form prisms in the late afternoon sun. The life we temporarily left behind along Gastineau Channel rushes on. People crowd Foodland, making last minute purchases for their Christmas Dinner. Some haunt the downtown stores in hopes of rescuing their holiday morning with the perfect present. Here, on the snowy shoulder of Mt. Roberts, is the peace promised, but often not delivered by the holiday season. All we have to worry about is trail ice and the dying light.

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