Category Archives: Dan Branch

Hilda Meadows Spiders

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I’m on our highest ladder knocking the last golden delicious apples from our tree. Otherwise a bear will break the tree trying to climb up to get them. Last night Aki chased away one before it could climb after the apples. Even though it outweighs the little dog by a factor of 15 or 20 I felt sorry for the bear. It can’t enjoy having its sensitive hearing assaulted by poodle yapping. I don’t.

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This morning, while the sun burned night fog from the surface of Gastineau Channel, Aki and I drove into the mountains. After yesterday’s long boat ride to the lighthouse, we both needed to stretch our legs on the climb to Hilda Meadows.  I expected no animal drama. Wolves and bears roam the mountains but in such small numbers there was little chance of an encounter.

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There was drama from surprising sources—spiders. Every September our spiders release their children into the world. They young climb stalks of grass and fly off on glistening strands of spider silk. Many spiders must have landed in the meadows.

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Spiders had already constructed angular webs between grass stalks and over miner’s cabbage red with fall cover. Some even suspended their silk nets between the banks of narrow watercourses.

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Aki, who doesn’t care about spider webs or even fall color, surveyed the meadow for danger while I chased after webs. I wanted to tell the little dog to relax.  This time of year the meadow bears must be down in the Fish Creek drainage getting fat on incoming salmon. Then she led me across a patch of shooting stars flattened recently by a sleeping bear.

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Aki or the Whales

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Aki’s back on the water. This morning she and her humans boarded a small landing craft to visit an island lighthouse. We bounce up Favorite Channel and into the deep-water fjord called “Lynn Canal. Having just having finished reading a book about John Muir’s visit to these waters in the 1800’s, I try to imagine the bearded naturalist helping to paddle a cedar canoe up the canal and into the Chilkat River. His neck must have been sore by the end of each day since he must have spent hours staring up at the steep mountains left behind when the glaciers retreated north.

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Muir made the trip in October, a time of storms and rain. It’s sunny and warm today. When she is not hunting the boat deck for snacks, Aki climbs up into someone’s lap where sunlight coming through a window could warm her curly fur.

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A small pod of killer whales hunt off Point Bridget as we pass. One of their young flings itself out of the water and then knifes back through it, splashing its parent. All the humans on the boat go out on the deck to watch. Aki wanders around our feet, waiting for someone to come to his or her senses and pay attention to her rather than some big wet whale.

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Aki has to wade in chest deep water to reach the beach of the lighthouse island. Everyone but the little dog carries picnic stuff and other supplies up the lighthouse, which sits on top of a low volcanic plug. After lunch the humans split up. Some explore the lighthouse building. Others relaxed in the sun. I went onto the beach to watch a group of quarrelsome oystercatchers and swimming seals. Aki ran back and forth checking up on every one of us.

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Quiet Times

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This is a low-cruise-ship day so Aki and family head out to the glacier. No buses idle in the parking lot when we arrive.  No line snakes out of the bathroom. Without the crowds, the visitors that did make the trip out from town look relaxed and happy. They don’t even seem to mind the rain.

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Aki carries her Frisbee in her mouth. The emergency-services-green disk flops back of forth as she trots along. We try to talk a back path to Nugget Falls but find it flooded.  But that doesn’t matter much today since the crowds are small and happy.

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Two newly calved icebergs have come to rest in the lake. I stop to enjoy them. In a few years the glacier will have retreated away from the lake too far for launching bergs. At this point no amount of wishful thinking or even good environmental practices can stop the retreat.

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Glacial melt and recent rains have swollen Nugget Falls so it is really pounding into the lake. The crashing water forces water spouts and sprites to rise twenty feet into the air, obscuring our view of the glacier. Ignoring the noise and fury, Aki begs her other human to throw the Frisbee. When it is tossed into the direction of falls, she charges after it as if on a sunny beach on a quiet day.

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Breaking The Calm

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It’s peaceful in the rain forest this morning.  No sun threatens the clouds. No wind challenges the calm. It is so different from yesterday’s whale watching tour. Aki would have loved the attention she would have received from the other passengers when they were not photographing orcas. When they were distracted by whales, the little dog would have hunted around lower deck for dropped food. But I think Aki enjoys these mild days with me, alone on a trail, more than a party.

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It takes little to shatter a calm, even one as profound as this one. Like a drop of accumulated rain falling from tree branch onto the beaver pond, a small thing can send out disruptive ripples.

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As we pass the pond on the way to the beach, a tour guide walks up. He speaks in the quiet tone of a person who prefers silence. I am waiting for my crew to arrive. Thinking a crew of soft-spoken people would almost go unnoticed, I wish him well.  The little poodle-mix and I walk on, reaching the beach as the tide starts to cover the Shaman Island causeway. The usual eagle guards the causeway from his usual rock. Two gulls bicker than settle into silence. Even the waves seem careful to hit the beach with a whisper. Then a child cries out like a tattletale gull as the guide leads a group of cruise ship tourists onto the beach.

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Working Whales

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I watch with envy a large pod of killer whales working the reefs protecting North Pass.  Several large males have already entered the pass. The adult females and juveniles tear up the water on the Favorite Passage side of the reefs. With an empty freezer at home, I hope that they leave me some salmon to harvest. When a female slams her tail onto the water one of the other passages in this whale-watching boat giggles and tells her friend the orcas are playing.

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I am not inclined to point out the orca’s bloody purpose, which is to kill and consume every silver salmon in the pass. There is an open bar on the boat and the remains of a good meal litter a large table on the lower deck.

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We have already seen a humpback whale breach three times—leap straight out of the water and crash back like a fallen tree. I envied that whale as well and would like, my fellow passenger, to come up with some warm and fuzzy explanation for whale behavior. But these these whales are all business. Now is their time to build for the salmon-less winter.

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Dying Fog

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This morning fog hides the sun and blocks the view sheds of the Fish Creek Delta. Cruise ship fog horns mix with the panic honks of unseen Canada geese. Aki is nervous. The high-pitched screams of eagles hidden in nearby spruce trees put her on guard.

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The sun breaks through the marine layer and starts to deconstruct fog covering Fritz Cove and the surrounding mountains. That touching forested hills seems to tear itself apart on the old growth trees. Ocean fog moves up and down the bay like a hunting animal.

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While focusing my camera on a patch of fog flowing up and over a clutch of spruce, I spot two male deer on the foreground. One stands guard while the other one lies on meadow grass. The trailside grass prevents Aki from seeing the two deer. She will never know they were so close. Both deer are grazing in the meadow when we leave their view shed.

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Quiet Time

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Grey clouds dominate North Douglas Island this morning but some shafts of light manage to reach the glacier. This promises a sunny day ahead. But I don’t mind the low contrast lighting, which increases the chances for solitude. For the nose-dominated Aki there is little difference between blue or gray skies. She rarely looks above the horizon.

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Two ravens spar like fighter pilots above the beach. One drops onto a rock near Shaman Island. When it curls its wings back for landing, the finger-like wingtip feathers curl back like an eagles. For a moment I believe that the raven has transformed into one of the big predators. Then it croaks, spoiling the illusion.

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Down the beach, a mature bald eagle eyes us from its spruce tree perch. I walk out onto the beach for a better view of it while Aki waits on the trail. The sound of a surfacing humpback whale surprises me. When I turn to look, it is throwing up its flukes for a shallow dive.

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While Aki and I wait for the whale to surface again, a walker approaches on the trail. He waits with us for the whale. He is old, but not stooped. With one hand he touches his beard. The other seems to grip an invisible cigarette. We talk of fishing the river that Aki and I visited yesterday. He points out the eagles strutting along nearby Peterson Creek. We agree that they are there for the returning salmon. The whale surfaces again but only long enough to toss its tail up for another dive.

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Fishing in Brown Bear Country

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Aki has temporarily abandoned me for my fishing partner.  She stayed with him when I drifted downriver to try another spot. When we hike with another human the little dog trots back and forth between people, urging us to close ranks. This morning I expect her to show up after I have made a few casts. When she doesn’t, I remember the pile of brown bear (grizzly) scat that I had to step over to reach this spot. We are in prime bear country. They are also here to fish for silver salmon.

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Aki has bluffed down several black bears in the past but the larger brown bears can’t be bluffed. I quickly reel in my line and start back to where I last saw the little dog. She is not there. Neither is my fishing partner.  I look at the swift water undercutting the bank where they stood when I last saw them and start back down river.  They could have easily passed me. I wouldn’t have heard them over the roaring river.

Aki appears at my heels, tail wagging. Should we head downriver or up? The little dog points her nose up river. I follow her to a barely discernable side trail now being used by my fishing partner to regain the main trail.

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Alder Dominance

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Alders dominate this morning’s walk across the moraine. They line almost every trail we take. If left alone, the tough shrubs would colonize the trail gravel, leaving us nowhere to walk. Grumpy sounding Stellar’s jays jump around inside the trailside alders as if to get a better view of Aki in case she is about to break some law. I’d like to ignore these forest police but the alders provide little to divert my attention.

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Aki loves these alder lanes because they offer the best chance of dog contacts. But I need a different view shed. Reluctantly, the little dog follows me down a lesser-used trail to the edge of a beaver pond that is rapidly transforming into a grassy wetland. Before the beavers built the pond dam, spruce and cottonwoods thrived in the flooded area. Now their dead-gray trunks rise from beds of reeds transforming into fall colors.

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On the way back to the car, I spot a blueberry growing alone on a bush. That’s right little dog; we have to stop at the store on the way home. Aki’s other human needs domestic blue berries for a low-sugar pie. We pass a great blue heron sulking in the rain. When I stop the car to take a better look, the big bird stretches out its neck and uses its long wings to lift up and away across a field of grass already the color of straw.

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Ropes

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Aki sniffs at something washed up on Sandy Beach by last night’s tide. Every high tide leaves a rope of rockweed along the length of the beach. I’m walking down this line of seaweed, taking an inventory of gull and eagle feathers, bits of crab shell, and sometimes whole salmon bodies. Thankfully no plastic objects or bags peak out from under clumps of the rockweed.

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The last storm tide that ripped down Gastineau Channel sucked away from the beach several inches of the finely pounded gold ore that we call “sand.” This exposed rusted machinery and fragments of ceramic bowls too thick to be fashionable today. What was once garbage we now considered relics of a time before the collapse of the Treadwell mine tunnels in 1917.

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We pass the partially restored tower that once ventilated the mine tunnels that ran beneath the channel. The usual pair of bald eagles roost on the tower’s metal roof, apparently obvious to the approach of the inbound Norwegian Jewell.  The mega cruise ship spews up two thick ropes of pollution from its stacks as it motors towards Juneau.

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