Category Archives: Dan Branch

Bones on the Beach

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The world would be white or grey if not for this morning’s tidal surge. It swept the beach clean of snow to the high water line, revealing flat stones moist from rain, gentling rotting seaweed, the iron bones of a failed mining effort. Ninety years ago seawater broke through the Ready Bullion and Mexican mine tunnels here to end forty years of gold mining, forty years of transforming old growth forest into a miniature Manchester England.

Nature still works to heal the land. Trees—alders mostly, fill in the spaces between the stout roofless buildings and cover the abandoned ironworker art with shed leaves.  Graceless monuments of hand hewn rock squat near the tree line with iron forged rings which must have once provided tie offs for ship lines.

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Snow now covers the impressive gears, baffles and pipes made to order at the Treadwell foundry.  Here on the beach they lay naked to twice daily seawater baths, rust and rot giving them a twisted beauty. An oversized piston rod transforms into a monster’s leg bone,  a drive shaft mimics a giant’s fractured backbone.

Snowing Within but not Without the Forest

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Hoping to spot the river otters that hunt the Fish Creek Pond I lead Aki onto the downstream path rather than head directly into the old growth forest that starts just above the North Douglas Highway bridge. Many feet and animal paws have stomped the snow on the path into a thin slick surface.  Only the track of a traveling beaver scout marks the snow covered creek—a narrow trough that could have been made by a tiny man pulling a tiny toboggan sled. He explored each small section of open water before making a purposed march upstream.

P1090908Not seeing otter or otter sign we backtrack to the trailhead and move onto the upstream trail. Recent snow still flocks the stream side willows some of which block the trail.  We soon find deer tracks and follow them past the urban style graffiti covering the bridge pillars and into the old growth.

Here ice replaces snow on the trail so I pull on boot cleats while Aki dashes up and down the trail to read the sign. The deer stopped here recently, digging about in the softer snow before continuing up the trail. To our right Fish Creek runs under diminishing ice, ever widening the patches of open water.

Snow high in the canopy loosens as the temperature rises then falls like a new storm when a breeze rises. It falls with beauty but still soaks Aki’s fur and darkens my rain gear. In minutes we hear a collection of chickadees chirping out their winter work song and I wonder if they are hunting insects recently hidden under the snow.

The trail moves us away from the creek and deeper into the forest where only the sound of plopping wet snow breaks the silence. Preferring the rushing of a moving stream I take a shortcut back to the creek and find a Water Ousel bobbing up and down on a small rock above open water. The bird can walk under water on stream beds but flies away today when it spots us.

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The beaver scout must have turned around before Ousel rock because the snow covering this part of the creek remains unblemished except for the tracks of a river otter that recently emerged from a open water pool and climbed to the high spot on a drift before returning to the stream. We have to figure out a way to move with some silence through the woods.

Skiing to the River

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We approach every river with caution this time of year when ice thinned by mid-winter thaws may or not may not hold our weight.  Today no ice covers this portion of the Mendenhall River where greenish water runs almost free of glacier silt, sliding around snowcapped boulders before entering a channel still covered with ice.  Sticky snow slowed our progress across the moraine so I am surprised when just a few feet from the river’s bank it suddenly releases my skis to glide quickly toward the water on a downward slope.  Aki watches passively as I manage to just stop in time.

Turning up river I use the now cooperative snow to slide along the bank and drop down onto firm ice covering a calm portion of the river. Knowing that only inches of water separate the river bottom from ice I enjoy skiing over the smooth surface with its thin covering of last night’s snow.  Aki skirts the ice, trotting through the deeper snow above the river bank. I soon join her and move along a portion of the river where the current boils and sings out a warning.

P1120565We reach a place where the trail offers a narrow and uneasy passage between fast water and an impenetrable willow thicket. Even though a confusion of small boulders fills this tiny space between river and forest we could ski through it on a quickly disappearing blanket of snow. Twenty minutes more would take us to the lake, now covered with thick fog. Looking down I see that Aki has no heart for it today’ so we return to the moraine to find that the skis now slide easier in warming snow.

I don’t long for sun on these gray days until light breaks through to ramp up the contrast and amp up the earth tone colors of winter. When it happens at day’s end the sun can flood our cloud cover with warm pastels before letting night settle things back to winter normal.

 

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Heard but Barely Seen

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I’ve been waiting until bird hunting season closed to walk this trail because the sound of shotgun blasts make Aki nervous. Except for floatplanes on their way to the villages this beach along the lower stretches of the Mendenhall River is quiet. Gone the bird hunters and the birds from this beach and the sand bar across river which provided a refuge during hunting season. Now they can spread out on the wetlands without risking an unnatural death.

P1120495We hear an eagle complain, not from the top of a nearby spruce but from out over the salt water bay between here and Douglas Island. A raft of Mallard ducks occupies the river shallows while gulls half heartedly search the recently exposed beach for scrapes. Only cliff rocks decorated with party colored lichen and frozen seepage the color of a tea shop’s run off offer interesting subjects for a photograph in this flat gray light.

Far off comes the sound of Canada geese taking off in panic from the wetlands. We would have witnessed it had I chosen the wetlands trail. Hundreds of geese fly across the Douglas Island side of the wetlands and splash down half a mile away from us where they form a noisy community along a sandbar. A Stellar Sea Lion begins to complain in a bass voice. The powerful if a little impolite sound carries easily across the water from Douglas Island. “We could have watched the sea lion sing if we had walked around the False Outer Point.” I tell Aki.

P1120517In minutes the sounds of surfacing humpbacks join the chorus of geese and sea lions and by straining I can make out whale spray off Shaman Island as well as a seal swimming in mid channel apparently ignoring a tasty brace of laughing ducks cruising just behind him. All these things heard and barely seen. It produces wonder rather than frustration, a chance to appreciate the sounds of things without being blinded by their beauty.

Happy New Year

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Aki loves this trail for the abundance of scent left on it by other dogs.  What enhances the experience for her diminishes it for me—-soft snow melted down by rain to reveal dog droppings and yellow stains. She rushes about, tail stiffly pointed at a 60 degree angle to sink her nose into the richness of dung.

P1120476I brought snowshoes and plan to take the lesser traveled path that leads deeper into Gasteneau Meadows, forking off the main trail just before it enters the hillside spruce forest. Finding it untracked I veer onto the path when Aki is already 25 meters up the main trail. Usually happy to join me in any adventure the little dog forms a statute of disbelief on the well traveled route as I move deeper onto the meadow.

Its like snowshoeing on well cooked oatmeal but I push on. Without me breaking trail Aki would have a hard time making progress in the stuff but she has me making a way for her majestic self. In minutes she is following close behind as I climb the gently rising meadow to a ridge that provides my favorite view of Mt. Juneau.

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The ridge, covered with a scattering of stunted pines blocks the view of Juneau Town and Gasteneau Channel so the mountain appears to rise from a windswept plateau. It’s a place accessible only in winter when the meadow ridge and Mt. Juneau both carry burdens of snow.  Aki stands by patiently in this place too clean to interest her as I take a picture of the mountain.

We drop down the backside of the ridge and follow the fresh tracks of a walking wolf on top of the older ones left by a lone skier. Aki leaves both a message that yellows the snow.  “Happy New Year?”

Dusk at the Glacier

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Yesterday’s rain storm continues unabated downtown. Here at the glacier it moderates to gentle mist like drops that kiss rather than slap the surface of my rain gear.  Just freed from ice, waters from Steep Creek carve an uncertain channel through snow to Mendenhall Lake where they lose cleaving power after escaping the creek channel.  Aki and I struggle in the rain softened snow along the creek channel. She’s the first to find the firm track made by earlier visitors.

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It’s 2 P.M.—dusk. Soft and grey with a rare touch of solitude granted by the rainy weather that keeps most folks inside, the day offers much to anyone willing to look toward the glacier. There’s the lake ice, thin and grey-blue near the shore and then snow white to the glacier. A dying band of cloud wanders above the lake looking to join the community of its healthier brethren congregating above Nugget Falls. We can’t see the Alp like Mendenhall Towers or Mt. McGinnis through the marine layer but the glacier’s there, snow muting its blue ice.

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Old Growth After the Storm

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Aki tears down the trail as if the skiers who made it at the end of storm set the track just for her.  As she disappears around a stand of old growth spruce giants I admire how this old forest friend has been made new by 8 inches of new snow.  Only a heavy storm could force enough flakes through the canopy to blanket the trail. Such a storm ended last night. Now the temperature rises and gentle rain reaches us in the open spots.

Here my skis glide easily down trail so Aki trots behind, dimpling the trail with tracks somewhere in size between those made by the short tailed weasel and those of the wolf that planted his front paws so deeply in the snow while snatching an unfortunately snowshoe hare. Aki confuses the crime scene by walking over it to sniff at the bloody snow.

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The old growth forest is cozy on this grey, warming day. While heavy snow drags down their limbs, the spruce still stand at attention as we pass. It’s different when we cross the muskeg meadow dotted with stunted pines and spruce. Snow wraps over their rounded shoulder and weighs down their tips to turn them into refugees fleeing a winter battlefield. The snow starts sticking to my skis and to Aki, slowing our progress.  Picking up the dog, I pluck large snow balls from her fur before scraping the buildup from my skis. Rather than return to good skiing in the old growth we push on to the river meadow and find more sticky snow.

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A narrow flood channel cuts across the meadow that fills with river water at high tide. Seeing many exposed sand bars in the river where we enter the meadow I don’t worry that the sticky surface slows our progress toward the channel crossing. I should have taken note when ducks huddling on the bars burst into flight without apparent provocation. They could feel the tide race upriver.

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Solstice Sacrifice

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This tiny dead spruce, flocked by sun sparkled frost stands alone in the meadow, holding my eye away from its still green neighbors, the blue sky, and mountains rising above the spruce forest.  Dead among so many living things, the diminutive tree stands like a solstice sacrifice, life given up to the sun so it won’t crash to earth in winter exhaustion.

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Nearby run the tracks of a loping wolf and those of its prey, the snow shoe hare. Last weekend’s storm coated trees and meadow ground with thick wet snow that hardened in the following temperature drop. Here, where the Taku winds don’t blow, frost feathers form each night on exposed ice, tree and meadow snow. The frost buildup on stiff snow allows me to ski with ease where I please and forms a parchment upon which the forest creatures write their stories of the night.

P1120404I’ve already mentioned the wolf and hare. The hare tracks start in willow thickets and pour out onto the meadow in confused trails. One crisp trail made by a least weasel run straight across open ground, while thick concentrations of mice tracks form two foot thick bands between protective spruce trees.

When the sun sets at 2 P.M. Aki whimpers a little from boredom or the growing cold so we turn and I ski away from my tiny spruce, adding our own story in tracks on the meadow.P1120411

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Cold and the Taku winds bring a harsh beauty to the rain forest and I want to experience it by seeing False Outer Point at first light. Aki is slow to join me at the door this morning where I wait dressed in full winter regalia—insulated overalls, heavy coat, the wool hat with ear flaps that I only put on in times of wind driven cold.

The road takes us through a mixed spruce and hemlock forest then runs along Lynn Canal where the sun, still below our horizon paints the glacier in pink alpine glow but leaves the sea gap between it and Douglas Island in darkness. Sunrise colors dominate breaking clouds to the east at the trail head. Slick compacted snow and ice cover the trail and I’ve left the ice grippers at home.

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While Aki charges ahead I move slowly through old growth woods ignoring the beauty being revealed by a rising sun to concentrate on where boots meet ice. It’s 10 degrees but seems colder because of the breeze reaching us here in the forest. With feet already numbing and my right camera hand losing feeling I can’t afford a debilitating slip on the ice.  Reverting to the careful tundra walk I learned up north I safely follow Aki to the beach where thick ice covers tide pools and spray delivered in a series of high tides has frozen thick on any rock of size. Little chunks of ice ride ashore on waves, their still sharp angles providing counterpoint to the icy roundness of the beach’s permanent residents.

Rounding a point we find a gang of gulls and two ravens. The gulls ride waves just offshore while the ravens huddle nearby. They and all the beach are in a gloom made darker by the bright whiteness of the glacier and its consort mountains now standing in full sun.  This is one of the few places the birds find food during the winter famine.

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n days the world of man will indulge in the wonderful excess of Christmas while these birds, like the eagles and deer will continue their annual search for survival scraps. The thought deepens my appreciation of family and the gifts given and my admiration for the creature of sea and forest so well equipped to thrive in this place of cold beauty. I call Aki into the woods, leaving them peace and space to get on with making a living.

I May Never Know its Name

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While Aki charges in and out of the spruce forest I stand stunned by the sunlight  on fresh snow and this tree that never photographs well. Other things evade the camera’s telling—fair surf sounding where this salt chuck drains into Lynn Canal, the absence of others, Aki’s paws pounding the snow crust, a surprising absence of wind.  I should approach the tree to determine if it is ash or a homesteader’s maple but that it seems wrong to dimple its surrounding snow with snowshoe prints.

A slough protects the tree’s privacy in other seasons so the recent hard winter freeze offers my only chance to investigate.  Thinking that the next good snow shower will cover our tracks I start forward, then ask Aki whether identifying it’s species will rob the tree of its magic. Aki charges back into the woods leaving me  to wrestle alone with the question.

Whether motivated by laziness or inspired by wisdom I into the tidal meadow keeping the tree a nameless thing of white and light and pleasing shape.

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This close to the solstice, light is fleeting visitor to the salt chuck area. For two short hours a day the sun moves over the chuck and connecting tidal meadow like a spotlight as if providing selected trees with 15 minutes of saturated fame.  With no one else around they have an audience of two, one distracted by the scent of otters, mice, and squirrels left in tracks across the meadows.

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I enjoy the play of lights and darks then climb a low hill separating salt chuck and a pocket beach where frozen sand makes walking easy. Aki and I sit in the sun trying to conjure up a whale or even a sea lion. The whales are in Hawaii and the sea lion must be sunning on their haul out rock.

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