Category Archives: Dan Branch

Holding a Place in Line

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Joined by the the other permanent human resident in her her house, Aki and I confine ourselves to the cross country ski track set on a riverside campground. The little dog happily dashes between her humans, one moving faster on skate skis than me on old school gear.

P1120576Skiing on a set track, where you can reduce life to the kick-slide-kick Nordic rhythm, drives thoughts inward during these empty times in the riverine forest. That will change next month when the salmon smolt leave Windfall Lake to start up the big, brutal engine of life, priming it as prey for the fish and animals trying to eek out a living at winter’s end. The game fish, Cutthroat Trout and Dolly Varden Char follow the baby salmon to the river’s mouth, concentrating in such hungry numbers that it is illegal to fish for them there.

At ski’s end Aki and I walk to the edge of a small bluff and look over the river now  swollen by a massive high tide. What normally is a landscape of sand bars decorated by drift wood logs and the occasional fish duck becomes almost indistinct from the sea it feeds. Only the root systems of the largest drift logs rise above its surface. On one a mature bald eagle perches on a root, facing seaward, looking miserable in the rain, as if resenting the feckless friends for whom he saves a place in the line of life.

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Choosing Peace over Depression

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Robbed of drama by low clouds and snow melt temperatures, this beach walk could bring depression or peace to those sharing it with Aki and her master. Those looking forward to many years of rain forest living find peace; the rest a depression that they will try to stem with overindulgence at tomorrow’s Super Bowl party.

P1100013Aki enjoys the thawing weather for the exiting smells it releases from the trail side snow. She leaves me these naked alders, limbs twisted into awkward patterns that frame gray-brown beach, blue-gray sea, and a raft of party color harlequin ducks. The ducks float just beyond a diminutive surf line, their leaders suddenly slipping underwater then popping up to the surface to swallow their catch.

The trail takes us past the old Tlinght village where thimble berry brush covers the old canoe haul outs in summer. Today it’s all snow except for three alder trees, grown large where the fish drying racks must have been. Overhead one raven performs acrobatics on a rising wind.

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Shared Memory

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Memories float off this beach like fireweed down in August

fleeing from hiding spots in eagle feathers and fish bones

now abandoned by life

In one an eagle flies from an overhead spruce bough

circling then dropping to the sea

submerging talons that pull skyward

a herring dinner. My daughter, then toddler

silently watches as others clap amazement.

I want to dive into the memory

surfacing just after the capture

to ask if my baby feels pity or admiration

this child of forest and beach

where nature forms the outlines of our lives

where she falls asleep to the music of

wind and tides.

Tradeoffs

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Aki loves the bouquet of dog poop newly revealed by melting snow.  This is a taste we do not share, nor do I care for walking on this heavily used trail, now greasy from boot and paw tracks pounded into rain softened snow.  Making an executive decision I veer us off the main track and onto a back way into the beaver village.

The light boned dog trots over the top of the three feet of snow covering the trail, ducking under willows dent double by winter storms, making good time. I plod along, driving booted legs up to the knee in soft snow, still savoring the clean solitude, willing to pay the price charged for manageable pain like a masochist handing a charge card to his hired tormentor.

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When discomfort drains off the fun I cut back to the main trail, enjoying solid tread, avoiding piles of dog poo pockmarking the dense snow all the way to the beaver’s dam complex. There Aki checks out the slide they have fashioned for access to the lake over dam number one. The beavers recently dined on a downed cottonwood tree, ripping off dark brown rippled bark, leaving us a view of shinning light colored wood beneath, scattering the snow beneath with their woody crumbs like messy toddlers left alone with a box of Cherrios.

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Dr. King’ Dream

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Thousands of miles away an African American president inaugurates his second term. Across the country we remember a slain civil rights leader who fractured the back of American racism.  Here in this old growth forest capped by low gray clouds, carpeted by still skiable snow, I carry Dr. Kings’ remembered words down the trail.

He had a dream that became ours 50 years ago. A dream still unfulfilled except for moments when we forget our prejudices in a wash of communal love that fades into self interest at crisis end.

“Will we ever reach Dr. King’s mountain top Aki?”  The little dog looks up from a wolf’s recent tracks. giving me the puzzled look I deserve.

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Sleeping Monsters

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L1190178The forces of destruction in these mountains sometimes build stages for beauty.  The forces, in the form of runoff from last week’s rain filled dormant stream drains until they overflowed their banks and blasted narrow but deep ditches in snow, ice and frozen soil.   Silenced when the rain stopped and the temperature dropped, the wild water courses are now raw scars in the steep mountainside, a monster returned to sleep. A dusting of snow covers some of the damage as do these paper thin ice crystals reaching out in beauty to each other until translucent dome covers destroyed ground.

L1190164Other things should be also be asleep in this hillside forest.  One of our neighborhood black bears appears to have woken during the thaw for its winter months den. Aki find an unusual set of animal tracks crossing the trail—roundish depressions separated by those mimicking the prints of a human child with narrow heels. Only a bear makes such tracks.

We follow the tracks to a snow covered ravine where their maker entered and then used the open water course to move up mountain. After having a look around the bruin must have headed back to bed.

L1190165There are other sleeping dangers in these mountains like the avalanche chutes we crossed to get here.  This year’s snow storms have already loaded the Mt. Juneau snow fields to near capacity. Someday soon they will release their loads to roar down the avalanche chutes in a white tsunami, crossing the trail before collapsing where the creek valley flattens out.  But, not today.

 

Deer Sign

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Purity of air brings many benefits — crisp views of mountain peaks, ease of breathing, confidence that the fresh snow decorating this spruce branch will melt safely in my mouth. It carries the pitchy flavor of spruce and the freshness of mountain water.  I worked up a thirst skiing with Aki on a large meadow broken up by islands of spruce trees.

L1190100One section of the meadow, drained by a small stream, houses a gang of river otters. Aki found their slide first, charging down the deep “U” shaped trail, stopping just before gravity would have thrown her into the tannic stained water of the stream bed. The little dog ignores all the otter tracks leading from the slide into some small tree woods  Agreeing to leave them at peace I follow Aki up stream to the beavers’ dam and their house now covered with snow except for a small shaft apparently providing air to the resting inhabitants below.

We find many small animal tracks while transiting the meadow—weasel, snowshoe hare, troops of mice, those of a struggling deer. Last week the temperature climbed well above freezing while heavy rain softened the meadow snow. Only yesterday did snow replace rain and heavy frost firmed up the snow enough for us to move freely over it. Before that a large deer wound his way across the meadow, hooves sometimes plunging 2 feet into the soft, wet snow.  I look for fresher tracks of deer, made after the temperature drop facilitated travel, relieved to find them in a small thicket of trees and brush at the meadow’s edge.

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War Zone Funeral

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Somewhere in Afghanistan

the covering power of snow restores

beauty to scarred ground.

Drifting down through thickening skies

flakes loiter on frozen earth but

undone by pumping hearts

melt on

bare skin of the new widow

entwined hands of generous lovers

cooling coffin wood.

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Croaking out a Sermon

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On this wet dark day in the darkest month our local Canada Geese feed on the  wetlands near Walmart. What could they find to eat on these dead brown grasslands? The birds work hard, long necks curved toward dead grass bent low by a heavy snow load then shaped by equinox tides.  They move slowly away on foot when we join them on the wetlands then take off in a noisy cloud. Exploring the vacated ground Aki and I find long fingers of geese scat decorating newly sprouted grant shoots. Do these plants act wisely or have they fallen for the false promise of spring delivered by this mid-winter thaw?

ImageFragments of clouds appear to catch on the spruce covered hills that form a barrier between sea and the Juneau Ice Field. One mimics a human face.

Moving closer to Gasteneau Channel we pass tiny sand or gravel beaches randomly spaced over bent grass, each rode here locked in ice that once formed over nearby Lemon Creek then melted in place. Their random placement breaks the grassland flow, robbing the place of its tiny beauty.

ImageThe rain picks up as does the wind so I am drawn to a small spruce covered island rising just above the grass flats.  Pushing between two spruce limbs we enter a hollow space formed by a circle of spruce, its dark flat floor dotted with worn  feathers of a juvenile bald eagle. A four foot long spruce log, stripped of bark, given perpendicular edges by a saw, tipped on end, offers an altar for any presider. Outside a raven croaks from driftwood perch as another keeps watch. Image

Skiing over Wolf Tracks

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Bad weather doesn’t discourage Aki or prevent us from taking an adventure each weekend day. When the ice or snow make the roads impassible we walk up the Gold Creek drainage toward the old glory hole mine in Perseverance Basin. Today the soft rain drifting onto the Chicken Ridge snow pack won’t keep us from driving. The rain falls from clouds so low they block our view of the mountains, so thick we can’t see Douglas Island across Gasteneau Channel.  Driven more by smells than sights, Aki happy charges through the mist and into the car while I fill the car top carrier with skis.

The temperature climbs to 37 then 39 degrees as we drive North to Eagle River on icy roads. We see few cars on the way so I am not surprised to find the trailhead empty but pleased that a well defined ski track leads into the old growth

L1180980The house’s other resident human skis ahead of me. Aki dashes between us before taking up station behind our leader. With wet packed track we move easily into the forest and then onto a muskeg meadow. At the edge a single file wolf track arcs down onto a small snow cover stream. Someone is still thinning out the local snowshoe hare population.

I think of the almost tame black wolf that hunted our glacial moraine and the time he accompanied Aki and I on a ski to Mendenhall Lake. Seeking canine companionship the wolf would hang around the lake, sometimes playing like a puppy with local dogs.  He would howl over the lake on moonlit nights.  Once we skied to the sound, Aki searching for clues with her nose and me trying to keep down the primal fear that rises when a predator howls.

Someone shot the wolf, not far from where we ski today. The police seized the pelt, as black as the Mendenhall Lake wolf. When it didn’t return to the moraine we knew it was dead. I miss the black wolf and the chance to see it frolicking on the lake but its end was inevitable.  I pray that the creature single tracking this meadow won’t try to bridge the world between his kind and man.

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