Category Archives: Dan Branch

The West Shore

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The promise of sunshine on ice and yellowing trees induced me to bring Aki out to the west shore of Mendenhall Lake. By the time we arrive, the sun is ghosting behind a thickening cloudbank. But clouds don’t obscure the glacier or the sharp peaks that poke through the river of ice. They frame the beauty of cottonwood and willows that line the lakeshore.

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Other rain forest dwellers are here, all apparently giddily from lack of rain gear. We can hear their happy noise until it is masked by the booms from the Sunday morning service of the church of powder and shell. My little dog freezes each time one the parishioners fires a high-powered rifle. When they stop shooting so they can safely check their targets, we can hear the yelling of children at play in an impromptu day care. I find myself channeling an old bachelor uncle and lead Aki into the woods where the ground moss softens the noise.

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Wise Tourists

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Sealed up in high-tech rain gear, I lead Aki up Basin Road and overt the wooden trestle bridge that connects town with the Gold Creek valley. Tough little dog, Aki pulls ahead, an occasional body shake her sole acknowledgement of today’s storm. Ahead, four tough tourists walk up the road, their only defense against the rain are the whisper-thin ponchos they bought at a tee-shirt shop on South Franklin Street. One wears shorts and flip-flop sandals. Not one has a hat. Standing across the valley from a swollen waterfall, they discuss whether to press on or return to town. Normally, I’d encourage them to take the Flume Trail loop back to town but it’s only 45 degrees and a suddenly intense rain shower is defeating their cheap ponchos. If they give in to the storm, I’ll have to make sure that they recognize the initial symptoms of hypothermia. Wise, as well as tough, the tourist turn back to town.

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Another Moraine Bear

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Aki and I are back on the glacial moraine. It’s early in the day—too early for wind to raise a ruffle on the Dredge Lakes. It’s also too early for other dog walkers to appear. On our last visit my little dog discouraged a black bear that must have been attracted by the herring scent floating off my coat. But since then I’ve washed the coat and we are on a different section of the moraine.

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We drop off a raised trail to where we have an unobstructed view of Moose Lake. A white strip of fog separates lakeside cottonwoods in full fall yellow from a spruce-green mountainside. Reflected in the lake, the fog underlines the cottonwood trees. I take several photos of the scene and look at them on the camera view screen as we return to the trail. “This is why we are here, little dog,” I tell Aki and then say, “Uh-oh.” Aki, who apparently knows the meaning of “Uh-oh,” goes on alert and looks down the trail where a 100-pound-plus-pound black bear has just stopped walking toward us. With fluffy, shinny back fur and round belly, he has the just-moussed look of a bear full of fish fat. When Aki growls, it slowly turns around and trots away from us down the trail. “That’s it, little dog, I tell the ten-pound poodle mix, we are not coming back to the moraine until hibernation time.”

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Light Before the Storm

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Even as we enter gray autumn, Nature can splash Chicken Ridge briefly with sun. It usually happens when night gives way to day. This morning we had the added bonus of a double rainbow that arced above Gastineau Channel from Douglas Island to Mt. Juneau. It faded as the wind rose and rain began to spit. With the windshield wipers engaged, Aki and drive out to North Douglas to get a feel for the coming storm.

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We walk along a boardwalk trail protecting a fragile muskeg meadow from foot strikes. This is not a popular dog trail so Aki has to make do with the scent markings of wild things. When not sniffing, the little dog walks at my heals, stopping when I stoop to test the ripeness of lingon berries.

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The trail leads to a beach where small surf breaks on the rocky shore. Light fog softens the profile of Admiralty Island but we can clearly see an adult bald eagle trying to fish. It fights for hovering position over a fish and then flies over to a beachside spruce with nothing in its talons. If the wind rises any more, we will have to hunker down.

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Jewelry

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I came for the fog but am stopped in my tracks by spider webs. Arachnids have cast their sky nets over many of the mountain hemlock and shore pine on this muskeg meadow. A necklace of translucent fog pearls decorates the trunk of a hemlock. Aki attempts to move me along to the beach with a stare. We can both hear gulls bickering, a malcontent eagle and the stage whispers of sea lions. I yield, as she knew I would and we descend into the gray as a foghorn announces the Norwegian Jewel delivering 3500 more customers for the jewelry stores and tee-shirt shops on South Franklin. None will see the spider’s fine work.

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Chipping

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This time of the year I expect to see waterfowl on the wetlands. There are none today. But little seedeaters are everywhere. They rise from the standing dead grass blades like grasshoppers from a wheat field. In the flat light it is hard to distinguish one of the little brown jobs from another. But I identify several song sparrows and a savannah sparrow. Then a rare chipping sparrow settled on a nearby root wad. While a thrush shares a spring-like song, the chipping sparrow strikes a series of poses for my camera.

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Well Adapted

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Aki, fur plastered by a downpour to her nose, whines. It is a pleading whine, not one expressing misery. Even though rain pounds down on this mountain meadow from clouds that make day seem like night, the little dog still wants me to play catch with her Frisbee. The orange saucer lies at her feet. I pick it up and toss it out over a wet, undulating blanket of fall colors. She dashes after it, sounding her predator growl.

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Aki is not the only thing on this meadow adapted to inclement weather. Round, red cranberries lie by the dozen on top of crimson beds of moss. The rain enhances their beauty as it does the yellowing deer cabbage and blood-red bear berry plants. I head over to a pocket pond to check how this heavy rain affects the water skimmers. They ride their’ home water’s surface, bobbing slightly as the rain ripples pass under them.

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Soaked

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It’s raining again on Chicken Ridge. It wasn’t this morning when Aki and I walked the old mining road up the Gold Creek Valley. The waterfalls coming off Mts. Juneau and Roberts struggled to carry last night’s storm load down to Gold Creek, itself swollen almost to flood stage. We passed a couple of prospectors searching the stream edges for gold flakes that might have been dislodged by the high water. Above, the now nude cottonwood boughs looked tormented or like the limbs of witches twisted by challenging evil. Little dog, is it time to head south for a little sun?

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Calm from the Storm

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We can’t escape the wind and rain, even in this beachside forest. But the trees take most of the gale and protect us from sideways rain. As often happens, the adverse weather conditions discouraged other hikers and have apparently grounded the helicopters and other machines of Juneau’s tourism industry. So instead of airplane noise, we hear the surf-like roar of wind through the old growth canopy and hollow pops of raindrops hitting broadleaf devil’s club and skunk cabbage. In between gusts, raven’s clucks carry over the forest.

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Approaching the beach during a break in the windstorm, I look forward to a chance to do some bird watching—maybe spot an oystercatcher or one of the belted king fishers diving on a fish. But the bay is empty of birds and even waves. Rather than disappointment, I feel peace—the calm that only an empty, quiet, wild place can deliver.

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Not Sandburg’s Fog

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1Last week’s storms surges dumped a mass of rockweed onto the False Outer Point beaches. Severed from their holdfasts, the rockweed turns from living cadmium orange to the color of iodine. The weed fills the air above the beach with the smell of iodine and my mind with the memory of my mother saying, “you know it is working if it stings,” as she brushes the dark-brown antiseptic on my cut finger.

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Aki hunts for interesting smells among the rockweed blankets as fog thickens between the glacier and us. It pours out of the forest, over North Douglas Highway and onto our beach. This is not Carl Sandburg’s fog that comes on little cat feet. This fog slithers onto the water like a snake.

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If we were on a boat, I’d be concerned, if not scared. But here on solid ground, with a headland providing a reference point, I can enjoy how the fog snakes around islands and cuts us off from everything with its white wall, carrying the sounds of growling sea lions and scolding eagles.