Category Archives: Dan Branch

Alders

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Another gray day on the moraine but one spiced up with two inches of pure white snow. A good day to reflect on the humble Sitka Alder and the drab willow. They were the first plants of size to gain a foothold on the moraine, tough witnesses to the the glacier’s retreat. Normally something to cut out of a photograph, with today’s topcoats of fresh snow providing counterpoint to dark bark they make excellent frames for greater beauty.

These pioneers laid the groundwork for Aki’s Troll Woods—building soil for the poplars and spruce even though the big trees would eventually rob them of light and nutrients; force them to carry out a holding action on soggy lake edges and bogs; make them dependent on the bowels of birds to carry their seeds to newly disturbed ground.

P1100408On the edge of beaver flooded land we find an alder displaying signs of spring, summer and fall under a coating of winter snow. On one supple twig cling a well formed leaf from last fall, spent cones, and spring bright pollen pods. Almost hidden by snow are this year’s tightly wrapped leaf buds.

Red Alder, the largest of the clan, provides excellent material for carving. I learned to work with it from master carvers at the Totem Heritage Center in Ketchikan. They helped me make the tools—alder handled adzes with blades fashioned from re-tempered car springs, crooked and not-so-crooked knives ground from cross cut saw blades. They taught me to work with wood from a tree freshly fallen and how the adze could be used to quickly transform a piece of firewood into an abstract figure. They encouraged me to cradle the new form in my lap while using crooked knives to mimic my model.

With the help of another master carver, an Italian American from New York City, I used adze, crooked knives, and not-so-crooked knives to carve a mask of my recently deceased father. The intimacy of the experience helped me grieve. Here is the result.

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Geese Chasing Away Solitude

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We hoped to purchase some solitude and views of Canada Geese by taking this ice covered trail during a rain storm. As expected rain water covers the ice in a glistening clear blanket that would have made the trail unusable but for the  winter’s worth of dropped hemlock needles allowing my boots purchase.

L1190843Getting it at a bargain price Aki and I find solitude here broken only by the snuffling of her searching nose, the sound of rain drops hitting my parka hood, mallard chuckles, eagle complaints, and the near hysterical song of geese being driven off shrinking sand bars by a rising tide.

Reaching an open meadow we find a clump of the calming geese feeding alongside the trail ahead. They are all business at first but then one of their unit stops feeding to watch our approach. Aki, no fool she, is not interested in messing with these big wild birds.  Even though we try skirting them at a distance, the geese eventually take flight and move on to the next tidal meadow. Now we hear geese warning calls coming from across the river, giving advanced warning of the approach of several formations of Canada Geese that fly overhead to join their just departed buddies 300 meters away on the other meadow.

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Moving across the meadow we reach a gently sloping beach of sand bordering the perfectly still waters of Lynn Canal now reflecting a murder of crows flying toward the river.  A smaller gang of the black birds have assumed station at the top of a beach side spruce to wait for the abundance of low tide.

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Spotlights of Spring

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Seamus, the digital display on our electronic thermometer, has dressed himself in shorts and sunglasses and promises an outside temperature of 45(f). Seamus sometimes lies but not today. From our kitchen window on Chicken Ridge I can see sunlight bouncing off the waters of Gasteneau Channel, bringing the whitest highlights out of the snow covering Douglas Island.

Aki, who has spent her morning inside contemplating the unfairness of a poodle’s life, throws all sadness aside to bounce around the living room as I collect the paraphernalia of adventure—water bottle. camera, dog leash. In a half and hour we are dropping through the old growth forest on one of her favorite trails— the one leading to a wide curving beach between False and True Outer Point.

L1190745Sun may be driving cold from beach and ridge but beneath the thick forest canopy winter holds on making me wish I had worn a wool rather than cotton hat. Shafts of light do penetrate down, mottling the forest understory like the floor of an old barn. In the beaver manufactured swamp one shaft spotlights a yellow knot of emerging skunk cabbage plants while the surrounding dark water forms a mirror for the surrounding trees.

The beach is empty of dog, man and bird when we emerge onto it. There is sun light to stand in and to bring a rich mixture of lights and darks to the snow covered Chilkat Mountains across Lynn Canal. Aki wants to keep to the beach with its sun and promise of dog encounters  but follows without protect when I return to the cool forest drama.

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Escaping from Winter

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This morning’s sun has strength enough to warm my face and soften the meadow snow at my feet. We stand next to a open creek with waters dark enough to hide the young salmon heading to sea and the few sea trout (steelheads) that make a propagation pilgrimage here each spring. All we see today is the reflection of Lion Head Mountain and a few Golden Eye ducks fishing downstream.

P1100370Later we will spot Canada Geese skulking under a spruce growing near the creek bed. For now the sun is enough as we follow the stream to where it cuts through a meadow on which spruce trees form evergreen islands.

The snow cover ends at meadow’s edge where Aki finds some interesting smells to investigate. Here the adventurous plants, no longer cut off from light by snow and ice swell in size and color, turning a rich yellow-green. They draw the eye as does the wine red berries that survived the winter, still attached to the stems that sustained them last summer—a sweet late winter treat.

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Last Fall a sudden freeze trapped gas bubbling up from this shallow stream bed to form little ice bound globes. Today they escape as sunlight melts away their transparent prison.

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The Ice Holds

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The moraine during a late winter thaw like this offers some danger but also some award. A firm crust covers the snow pack to offer easy access to places normally blocked by beaver ponds. The thinning ice covering the ponds injects the danger.  Several times today we chose between safe but cumbersome passage through softwood thickets and sliding freely over ice that may yield over very cold water.

L1190620Ice and men have a complicated relationship. If young and passing in a group near an ice covered lake in spring or fall, they will urge the bravest or weakest willed to test its strength. Aki sniffs the tracks of one who ventured alone 50 meters on thin ice then returned to shore. I, young once, recreate the experience—fear making each step lighter than the last, friends still on safe ground urging speed, the delicious mix of trill and fear that fades to just fear at the ripping sound of a crack forming under foot, radiating out brothers in sisters in every direction you could take.   Sometimes the crack opens to drop you into a lake or slough where the shock warms you enough to crawl onto firmer ice. Most times the ice supports your embarrassed, but dry retreat to shore.

L1190655Since Aki is nonjudgmental, we don’t test the lake ice but move to the river with plans to follow it to the glacier fronted lake.  Others have worn a deep path in the snow cover trail. It’s walls block Aki’s view of the moraine. Rather than dash about as usual she follows in my skis, which find a good balance between slide and grip on the firm surface snow. We make good time to the river but I have to take off my skis to cross where recent washouts denuded the trail.

If true winter doesn’t return, this magic door of firm snow will close. Today we hope to pass through before the frontier closes leaving these wilder parts of the moraine to the wolf and snowshoe hares.

Turning into the moraine I lead us up a snow blown creek bed until Aki finds a wolf track winding through an alder thicket.  We follow it to the edge of a beaver pond. Aki dashes onto its smooth flat surface while I look for a safe but rough passage through the tangle of willows lining the pond. L1190664

It’s above freezing and the pond ice has that milky translucence of still solid covering. I follow the little dog onto the ice and gain easy passage, no fear, no cracking, expecting no swim at the end. Then I remember that spring ice gave no warning when I fell through it in the past. Like that time on the Aniak Slough when I dropped through an invisible trap door into the mild current until only my right hand, gripping a canoe paddle remained above water. There, stretched out to full length, I didn’t feel fear or panic, just a detached appreciation for the lovely light penetrating through thinning ice and the wisdom of the elder that made me always carry a canoe paddle  on spring crossings of the slough. The canoe paddle, extending from my little circle of open water to firm ice made it possible to escape the water and reach the wood stove warmth of our cabin. Today we need no warm place to dry out. The ice holds.

Precious Sun Break

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As precious water is to a man in the desert, is sun to dwellers of the February rain forest. Today the gray gave way to sun shine for a half hour, sending brightening beams through the old growth canopy to light up acid green moss, paint sunny pools on the snow covered forest floor, bring the blue and reds out in Aki’s new sweater.  Over a muskeg meadow a smile shape tear in the gray emits a powerful light—as if from a smile of God watching our funny little dog trot along in patterned wool.

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A Summer Place in Winter

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The sign warns swimmers that they enter the water at their own risk, there being no lifeguard. Only one, and that a labrador retriever, ignores the warning; splashing to chest deep water, finding nothing for his efforts but an unobstructed view of Gasteneau Channel, something easily obtained by standing at the water’s edge. Aki ignores the now soaked bird dog to crisscross Sandy Beach, passing back and forth over the high water line demarking a snaking edge of snow covered sand.   Together we explore a summer place in winter.

P1100237 2Formed by pulverized mine tailings rather then true sand, the beach is salted with mine relics—electrical insulators, weather softened bricks, stumps of wooden pilings. Down beach a windowed concrete

air shaft rises above the channel water— an Alaskan version of a Martello Tower, hard edged, partially covered with rotting tin roofing, surrounded by aging pilings. With no dry place to live or even descend, it offers no hope of hearing a stately plump person mutter church latin. We do hear the pleasing disharmony of complaints from two mature bald eagles guarding opposite ends of the tower’s roof. Their song mixes with small wave noise as a shower of heavy snow flakes partially obscures the horizon.

P1100253Passing beyond the tower we reach the small but deep cove formed by the collapse of the old Mexican Mine. Aki winds around more rotting pilings and over snow covered beach rocks to the cove, barking at ghosts the whole way. There are always ghosts haunting summer places in winter, here where a mine collapse forced the abandonment of a vibrant mining community, we have ghosts all year round.

Silkie or Just a Seal?

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I am leading Aki away L1190530from  this shelf with its balcony seating over a productive pocket bay when we hear the harsh sea lion complaint. (Think a string pulled through the small hole in a tin can). Aki is already to escape under the old growth canopy. Her fur and fleece wrap soaked by snow melt, finished with her nosy examination of the shelf, the cold little dog wants out of this steady shower of snow. The strangle sound coming across the water just encourages her.

Before the sea lion announced its presence, we wandered over the little bench, Aki sniffing and scratching over land otter smells, me taking care not to slip on the smooth snow covered L1190533rocks, stopping to honor the beauty produced by happy accidents—-striated rock with rich contrasting colors, hieroglyphs formed by simple erosion, ladle shaped stones carved by tide and harden pebbles. After the sea lion call I take a comfortable if wet rock seat and wait for the singer to appear. Two sea lions swim into view, forcing their pointed noises just above the water, exhaling, then slipping beneath the surface.  All business they don’t take time to pose or even raise their huge bulk out of the watch for a better view of the dog and I.  Taking the hint I lead Aki off the bench, cross a little headland then drop onto a large gravel beach.

L1190581Here the building snow shower wrestles with an emerging sun for weather domination. The battle, soon won by snow, casts the beach in apocalyptic light. Beneath the drama a harbor seal swims slowly toward the dog and I. Unlike her bigger cousins the sweet faced seal acknowledges with with a concentrated stare, a lonely child watching from her bedroom window the neighbor children enjoy a game of hopscotch .  With binoculars I focus in on the seal, recognizing the same intense melancholy offered so freely by my little gray dog. Is this the Silkie of Irish legend, Aki’s water borne soul?

Clouds of Crows Not Snow

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I hoped to see snowflakes melting into the sea; was willing to suffer the clinging weight of wet dungarees; was surprised to find Outer Point a dry, gray place. We left behind a squall at Chicken Ridge, fat flakes forming blankets over parked cars, trimming bare limbs of our apple tree. Here away from the storm catching mountains backing Juneau, rocks revealed by the retreating tide slowly dry in the wind.

L1190405Scanning for whales or even ducks, I find an empty channel. With the exception of a nervous cloud of chickadees we see nothing on the crescent shaped beach that forms the approach to False Outer Point.  Around the point a bald eagle scans the same water but flies off when we approach his observation point.  Later I see him streak low over the water targeting something hidden behind a toothy rock formation.

A stony arm thrown seaward then abandoned by nature, False Outer Point must be seen at ebbing tide low enough to open a level path around the line of steep cliffs that form the point’s headlands.  Composed of hard and soft layers of rock twisted 180 degrees by geological forces, the point is most interesting where most exposed to the sea. Wave action breaks awayL1190455 to nothing the soft then sculpts the hard into aggressive teeth.  Around the corner, small dunes of mussel shells collect at the high water mark.  Rounded stones animated by the tide carve impressions into softer rock.

Down beach we find only a lone black crow to share the beauty. He flies away after spotting us. There is a raven in the woods making almost conversational sounds to himself. Great mimics, our ravens copy the sounds of dripping water, cats, and even electrical transformers. This one appears to be practicing lines for the part of Raven in the Tlingit creation story, “The Box of Daylight.” (Here is a link for a video telling of the story:  http://vimeo.com/5221802)  He reminds me of the time my daughter, when at Sunday School, told her teachers and four year old classmates the Box of Daylight story when asked who created the world.

Leaving raven to rehearse, we move down to a portion of beach offering a good view of Shaman Island from which a cloud of black birds erupts — northwest crows. At first they move toward us but then turn to drop out of our sight behind Outer Point. Instead of the expected wall of snowy white we receive briefly this black specked sky.

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Small Ball

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Trying to dig out beauty from this rump winter day; one washed clean of snow and most ice by a springlike flush of rain, devoid of winter drama or spring promise, Aki and I walk toward the now ice free Fish Creek Pond.  With clouds blocking mountain views and a minus tide revealing the muddy grass underside of the wetlands we move past the pond and toward the mouth of Fish Creek.

We hear but don’t see eagles and complaining fish ducks while walking the spine of a berm that turns a spruce covered island into the tip of a peninsula.   The trail breaks in two at the island to offer alternative ways to circumnavigate the island.  I look without luck for a third path leading into the trees.

P1100179Playing the photographer’s version of small ball (winning at baseball by combining   a series of good but unimpressive plays) I look down rather than across the open tidelands. Freshly revealed by retreating snow is a death scene.  Predominantly gray or white gull feathers lay where scattered without care by scavengers. We find no bones or skin or organs—nothing eatable.

At another rain washed place we find a confusion of porcupine quills spread on dead grass. Nearby just fallen leaves, dead since last fall, lay about on some remaining snow—pushed off the mother tree by swelling buds. (Our first sign of spring).

P1100166After reaching island’s end we enter an opening at its tip formed by a recent windfall.  Where once huge spruce stood we find 70 year old trees growing out of their stumps. Here before the second world war men fell the big trees with whip saws then manuveoured the fallen giants to tidewater where others loaded them on shallow draft ships. The evidence survives here and at the island’s edge where rotting piles from an old wharf stand like drunks waiting for the last bus home.

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