Last night’s windstorm littered the Treadwell ruins with broken branches. But now only rain falls on the little dog and I. The place seems empty. A croaking raven hides in the woods and the neighborhood eagles and ducks have been blown off the channel. Only a seal breaks the monotony of green and gray. He holds his head above the channel surface, like us, looking for some action.
This morning’s soaking rain has turned the path down to Mendenhall Lake into an Olympic-grade bobsled run. At its base a young women in white tights, black leotard, her hair in a dancer’s bun, strikes an arabesque on a patch of snow. She seems as unaffected by the cold and rain as the glacier that provides her backdrop. Aki peers at the apparition, charges to a point a few feet away, then sniffs. I want to take the young woman’s picture or at least watch her dance. But whatever is going on, it has the feel of a private moment. So we slip and slide down to the lake where a raven leads us toward the glacier with that breed’s little hopping dance.
I don’t expect much drama on our Downtown walk. Because it offers a banquet of smells and even the odd chance for a scrap of food, Aki loves our route. I enjoy the way Gold Street plunges from Chicken Ridge and then jams into Gastineau Street, with its views of the channel, the backs of the Alaska Hotel, and the ruins of the old AJ Mine.
Even with the tourists ships in warmer waters, the whales in Hawaii, and our bears asleep, I find some visual drama. But, not from he Gastineau Street ravens, who drip casualness from their alder perches above the homeless shelter. But those that cruise the empty docks are jumpy and quick to fly. So are the gulls.
After climbing Main Street, past the capitol building, to Chicken Ridge we stumble on an aerial dog flight between our neighborhood eagles and ravens. The eagles look like they are hunting. Above then, four ravens make spiral climbs and then dive on the poachers. As is almost always the case, the ravens drive the eagles from their sky.
This morning, Aki and her two humans cruised the semi-frozen wetlands. At the grassland’s edge, the ebbing tide revealed great expanses of sand over which the poodle-mix chased her Frisbee. A great gathering of Canada geese cackled together near Sunny Point, a name made ironic by the flat gray light and clouds that distributed snow pellets on Aki’s gray curls. Eagles, chased from the dump by cracker shells flew over the geese, set some to flight. Most of the Canadians stayed on the ground as did a single swan, its white-feathered body drawing my attention like a candle flame would on a dark night. The geese are local boys, commonly seen on this broad stretch of grassland. But a swan alone in mid-winter is a weather omen, sign of climate change, or just a confused bird.
Rain and slick-ice trails must be keeping everyone else out of the Gold Creek valley. Aki doesn’t appear to notice the solitude. For a dog with sensitive nose and an inquisitive nature like her, this mid-winter thaw is magic—as stimulating as Disneyland or an overturned meat truck. Nose impaired and cocooned in waterproofs against the rain, I look inward, rather than out today.
We cross a young forest growing over the rubble of hydraulic mining. A century ago, I couldn’t walk over the wasteland created here by men moiling for gold. The old growth forest they destroyed fed hunters and gathers and offered a peaceful place for the rest. But the gold extraction efforts that destroyed it provided jobs for the people in the nescient Juneau town. Without them, there would be no Juneau. Without them, I might still be living in California. I guess I owe them a debt but refuse to share responsibility for their destructive acts.
The thought of seeing a whole meadow sparkling in frost feathers got me out of the door before first light so we could arrive at Kowee Meadows in time for the show. Frost and sunshine can turn the dullest clump of alders into a crystal fantasia. Aki and I picked up a mutual friend on the way, someone I have known for forty years. Aki loves him as a hiking companion and a carrier of cheese, which he has been know to share with the little dog.
The trail first crosses a small muskeg with the usual assortment of living and dead pines and then drops into swampy woods. We brought snowshoes but found them useless on the hard packed, icy trail. Through thin woods we could see the meadow turning pink with sunrise but were forced to remain in the dark woods by a barrier of partially frozen wetlands. Aki dashed back and force between her human charges as I walked slowly, head down, to avoid a tumble onto the icy trail. My frustration grew as the sun climbed high enough to throw long shadows on bright-white meadow snow.
The trail led us onto Kowee Meadow just as full sun turned frost feathers on the trailside alders into tiny prisms. I forgot all my frustrations and just enjoyed the bright meadow that appeared to run all the way to the base of Lion Mountain. We found the trail made by a skier during the last thaw that would keep us out of the trees on the return hike to the trailhead. Except where the trail crossed newly refrozen watercourses, we could relax and enjoy sunlight streaming through the frost-covered alders we passed between—A rich way for rain forest dwellers to consume this rare day of winter light.
First appearance of sunshine after days of snow. Aki and I spend the best part of it wandering over the moraine. Normally, I wonder why hikers block out natural sounds with ear buds. But today, I wish the air would fill with a Townes Van Zandt song, maybe “For the Sake of The Song” or “Tecumseh Valley,” and then a Corelli concerto. Aki dances down the snowy trail like she hears her own rich sound track.
We edge around Moose Lake and then take a spur trail to the Mendenhall River. It’s a narrow way, today partially blocked every 100 feet by trailside alders that lean over the path under a burden of fresh snow. At first, Aki lets me break trail for her. Then I hook one of the overhanging alders and it releases it burden on the little dog and I. After she shakes off the result, Aki takes point.
We reach the river a little damp from melting snow. With the 14 mm lens that I usually bring to the moraine, I could share a picture of the scene at the end of the trail: the snow-banked river making a sharp, green-colored bend beneath the forested slope of Mt. McGinnis. Pearl-colored clouds obscure a swatch of the mountain while a blade of sunlight outlines one of the mountain’s sharp-edged ridges. I have a telephoto zoom that only allows me to pull chunks of beauty from the scene. But, if not for the lens problem, I might not have noticed a little world of forest and sky trapped in a shrinking patch of open water on the fast moving river.
This morning the sun popped unencumbered by clouds from the waters of Gastineau Channel. In minutes the marine layer swallowed it. I watched from Chicken Ridge, smug in my modern-man knowledge that today’s winter solstice will end the time of diminishing light. Men without that knowledge once prayed to their pagan gods to stop the disappearance of light. On this day they’d be kneeling next to me in the snow. I can almost hear their beggar’s voices call down channel to the newly risen sun.
I call down channel with excited praise for the sunrise’s beauty. Later I take the little dog north of Juneau where fresh snow covers one of our favorite ski trails. We start skiing just after noon and find sunset colors already streaking clouds above the Eagle River. We don’t need sunshine to brighten the forest—the new fallen snow that covers the forest floor and weighs down the trees seems to radiate peace and mild light. Such peace in the forest almost makes you believe that there can be peace on earth.
What calms me has the opposite effect on the little poodle mix. Lacking the patience to trot by my side, Aki tears out and back, sometimes leaping so high that no feet touch the snow.
Aki and I climb the old mining road along Gold Creek. It’s snowing—nothing dramatic, just lazy flakes the drift like confetti. Aki loves the trail because it offers a lot of dog on dog interactions. I love the way the snow collects in irregular lines on the top edges of cottonwood limbs. Above, the Perseverance Trail marks the slope of Mt. Juneau like a poorly healed wound. It provides a point of interest on a white hillside.
Today’s snow provides a welcomed, if temporary makeover for the moraine. It settles in fine lines along the branches of otherwise bare alders to emphasize their strength and grace. It hides mud and decaying leaves under a thinning white blanket. Aki and I walk to the moraine’s edge where it abuts Mendenhall Lake. Each beach pebble is wrapped in a coating of snow that can’t quite reach the underlying sand.
When we first broke through the trees to the beach sunlight muscled through clouds to shine off some of the glacier. It also reached the top of the surrounding mountains. That changed in minutes as a snow squall moved over the lake to block our view.
Back in the thin moraine woods, we slip and slide on a muddy trail and listen to heavy drops of snowmelt plop onto puddles. After a bad muddy stretch the little dog detours through the snow cover woods to clean her paws. The wet trail reminds me that this is just a taste of winter beauty. One storm off the pacific will wash it all away. One from the Bering Sea will bring the cold and more snow to free us from autumn’s purgatory.
Walking with Aki 