This mountain meadow has different appeals for Aki and I this morning. For her, its the fresh two inches of snow through which she bounds as if it were a foot deep. (little dog/big drama queen).  I like the snow well enough but am glad that wind keeps it from obscuring the pond ice that formed quick enough to capture things in a translucent shield. 

My favorite ice captives are bubbles, perhaps because my favor Yup’ik mask honors the bubbles or Walaunuk caught in river ice. It spent a winter in the State Museum as part of a Smithsonian exhibit of Yup’ik Eskimo masks.  Knowing I would miss it when it returned to Washington D.C., I carved a copy to hang in our home.

Ice bubbles provide tangible proof of breath, therefore life. The Walaunuk mask may really honor the animals that created the captured bubbles with their breath. I honor the pond ice captives as signs of the life and decay in these shallow ponds: unfurled lily pads caught unaware by the sudden freeze, the flowering British tobacco plants of summer, especially the long legged bugs that used the water’s surface tension to move rapidly across their diminutive kingdom. 

The battle has begun. Winter struck last weekend, driving temperatures low enough to cover Mendenhall Lake with ice and whiten the evergreen forests with fresh snow. Fall fought back yesterday with southern wind and rain that melted the snow cover.  Aki must root for winter. She rarely shows much enthusiasm for walks in the cold rain but she enjoyed winter’s short visit. 

I wonder what fall fights for, now that the forest colors have mostly faded to brown. Shapes? We found many graceful ones on this mornings old growth walk to the beach. My favorites were formed by spruce and hemlock roots, distorted into wrapping curves when their nursery logs rotted from beneath them. The absence of snow allowed us to find a small pile of mammal bones—multifaceted knuckles and a digit damaged by a scavenger. I thought of Henry Moore’s sculptures and the sea lion carcass pushed high up the beach years ago by an autumn tide.  Were the found bones all that remained of his presence? 

No seals swam Eagle River when we walked along it this morning. No eagles huddled in the rain, complaining about our invasion of their privacy. There was a heron and one duck flying fast and low over the river, offering little more than a glimpse before disappearing into river born fog. With sand bars bared by an ebbing autumnal tide, the table was set for birds and wolves but no one took advantage. 

Our path across the tidal meadow was greasy with rain water and the decomposing flesh of this year’s salmon—an image as comforting in the rain forest as water and fertilizer being poured onto crop land is for a farmer.  I didn’t mind the greasy ground, the absence of animals or even the little islands of salmon jaws, gill covers, and backbones we found scattered at random on the meadow grass.  The latter are fitting fall decorations for land along a salmon stream.