Category Archives: Dan Branch

Racing

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Aki and I race through Treadwell to reach the beach before Sheep Mountain loses the afternoon light. It’s our first walk since her other human and I flew down to Seattle on Friday. Since then I’ve been racing—to board our flight, rent a car, avoid rush hour traffic (failed effort), catch multiple ferries, and to make a wedding on time. On San Juan Island, we watched two people we first knew as children race into their adult lives. Then we raced back to Juneau. I’m tired of city traffic, crowds, and airports. Mainly, I am tired of racing.

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Storm Respite

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It’s been raining in Juneau since Election Day. The forecast calls for more of the same for the next week. Today, it is also windy. Aki and I enjoy a calm respite on the forest trail near Outer Point. We pass several new downed spruce, all toppled by recent storm winds. One floods the trail with resin perfume. The usual gang of gulls occupies the beach when we reach it. Just off shore surf scoters and harlequin ducks fish in a protective storm lee like they did yesterday, last week, last month. Nothing short of a shotgun blast can disturb them. Aki wants to return to the dark woods and then home. But I still linger in the calm.

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We are walking on a desert-like stretch of the Sheep Creek Delta where current and salt-water soakings make it almost impossible for anything to grow. Aki would rather be on the large beach that borders the old ore house. She loves to run across the sandy expanse and sniff for dog sign left above the high tide line. But there is bird action here. A great blue heron flies a low trajectory in front of us and lands a hundred meters away. Harlequin ducks, mallards, and goldeneyes paddle into the channel just far enough to ensure safety from charging Labrador retrievers. They don’t have to worry about Aki. She ignores waterfowl and refuses to swim.

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Out the Road

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I’ve seen sea lions on these offshore rocks, but never people. The rocks form a spit that juts out from the island that will block our view of Lynn Canal during most of today’s hike. Goldeneyes, mergansers and other ducks usually feed in the channel between the mainland where Aki and I walk. Here, we have seen harbor seals, eagles, and of course, sea lions. But today only raindrops touch the water.

 

The trail takes us along beach tide lines and across a series of headlands until we drop down onto a pocket cove. Now we can actually see across the canal to where the Chilkat Mountains form a fuzzy line of bumps. The little dog and I take seats on top of a rocky point and let rain shower us. The two gulls break the silence by bickering over something floating in the water. It looks like driftwood with a blood-red gash.

3            The little dog looks as content with the quiet isolation as I feel. I won’t recognize the driftwood for dead meat until later, when I enlarge photographs of it on the computer. Looking for the best path to the trail, I spot clumps of pale-white globes that hang on leafless branches near the beach brush line. They turn out to be stink currents, one of least desirable local fruits. But they are the brightest things in the forest.1

 

Wind Fall

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Aki slept through last night’s windstorm. She didn’t react when the neighbor’s trash bin slammed into his house. As I tried to ignore rain hitting the bedroom window like it had been shot form a water house, she stretched and yawned. This morning, during a storm break, the little dog and I head out to North Douglas Island to count the newly downed trees.

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Normally the trees along the Outer Point Trail drip on us during rain breaks. Today they don’t—something I attribute to the wind, which must have blown the branches clean. Shattered limbs of alder sheared off during the storm are scattered on the trail. Near a headland, we find the only new windfall—a hundred-year-old spruce that ripped up part of the boardwalk trail when it toppled. I ask Aki if the tree made any noise when it fell without witnesses last night. She shared no opinion on the matter. But I could see the ripped-up roots and shattered trunk sections—visual evidence of loud sounds made in the night.

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Treadwell

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Treadwell in the rain is a peaceful place. Thanks to the hardwood forest already established among the mining ruins, storm winds can’t reach Aki and I. She tends to spook on days like this and I wonder, again whether dogs can see ghosts. There should be plenty of them here where just over 100 years ago tunnels running under Gastineau Channel collapsed and flooded out the mine. Before that, it would have been a place for me to avoid—crowded and dominated by the pounding noise of machines crushing the gold out of ore.

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I would have mourned the clear cutting of the original old growth forest and felt sorry for the Chinese immigrants who struggled to dig the ten mile long ditch needed to deliver mountain water to the mining town. I would also have admired the iron workers who cast the large gears needed to process ore. Today, the gears lay sprawled at the base of spruce and cottonwoods, mining cars waits for the forest to close in, and the only noise is made by a bossy Stellar Jay.

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Old Friends

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Today, Aki and I walk with an old friend on a beach trail we have taken many times. The little dog likes it that the friend always walks by my side. We are the perfect charges for a herder like Aki because we heard ourselves.

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A strong autumn sun lights up the dog wood leaves and the party colors of an ever-present raft of harlequin ducks. My friend and I talk about people we know and those we knew who have passed. Mostly, it’s a conversation as bright as the sunlit dogwood leaves but when we stop to watch a hermit thrush watch us, the mood darkens. Words, not the bird’s appearance bring the change: those that acknowledge loss. But they are followed by shared, happy memories of the man who would have loved seeing the thrush. 3

Winning the Bet

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Aki isn’t allowed in Juneau’s graveyard. No dog is. So, we walked the parameter streets. Small stone rectangles reset into the ground mark most of the new graves. Modest marble markers stand at the head of the older ones. Darkened with age, most of these gravestones lean toward the ground. A stone angel prays at the foot of a maple, like it is giving thanks for the fall color.

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Aki delays our progress by checking pee mail left on this unfamiliar ground. One of the messages must have been rude because she sulks as we walk along the waterfront and turn up Main Street. The little dog strains at her lead as I try to photograph a raven preening in a birch tree. The raven looks smug, like it just won a bundle by betting against the Seattle Seahawks. That American football team was winning when we left the house. Three young guys walk toward us from the Viking Bar with booze breath and somber faces. The raven makes a sound that I would find offensive if I’d just lost money betting on the Seahawks.

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Squirrels with Attitude

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It’s late October, the feisty time for squirrels. A big grey one runs down the slanting trunk of an old growth Sitka spruce to stare me in the eye. I want to tell him that neither the dog nor I are here to rob his cache. Aki would rather eat cheese than the contents of the winter store of spruce nuts and mushrooms.

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All through today’s walk squirrels drop from their tree perches to challenge Aki. She falls for it every time, dashing a few feet into the forest and then stopping to assume a rigid, tails-up pose very like that the big grey squirrel showed me. I know the little dog has no interest in harming the noisy rodents. Last year, on the moraine, a squirrel actually turned to face Aki’s charge. The poodle-mix stopped abruptly and wagged her tail like she does when meeting a friendly dog.

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Fallen Pride

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While Aki slept less than ten feet away, someone rifled through our car. Nothing was taken. Nothing was broken except the little dog’s pride. Apparently, to rebuild her reputation, Aki growled at everyone we passed during our descent from Chicken Ridge. I apologized and chastised until she finally stopped. She could have spoiled the otherwise beautiful morning with its low sun milking remaining fall color for beauty. But, the ravens came to the rescue, mooching and hopping and giving Aki the eye. One climbed on top of an outdoor receptacle for spent cigarettes and tried to grab a butt. It hopped off when I tried to take a picture then affected interest in a nearby patch of grass.

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