Category Archives: Dan Branch

Higher Percentage Play

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An adult bald eagle, white head feathers damp with rain, perches on a pond-side spruce tree. It appears to study two new additions to the pond—large net pens full of fingerling king salmon. A net covers the pens, placed there to protect the natal fish from eagles and the resident river otters.

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It’s low tide so the other resident eagles are out on the exposed tidelands scrabbling for scraps. That’s the higher percentage move for predators on this rain-soaked day. But if the eagle that Aki and I are watching manages to overcome the pens’ protective net, it would be in an avian fiddler’s green.

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We won’t see much else of interest during this visit to the Fish Creek delta. A couple of dog walkers driving a herd of large bred canines will have already flushed out the birds. As we walk toward the creek mouth, a yellow lab will break away from its owner and splash over the creek and wetlands to play with Aki. But these dog antics will have no effect on the newly arrived tree swallows, that will arc over and around the little dog and I as they hunt for mosquitoes.

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Empty Beach

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Aki is the smart one. Rather than fight the wind blowing down Sandy Beach, the little dog is moving through protected woods on a parallel course. When she does join me on the beach, the breeze flattens her fur against her face. Less than a minute later she is back in the woods.

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Left alone, I scan the channel waters for life. But no ducks or even gulls float there. The two eagles that often perch on the roof of the old ventilation shaft are also absent. In a few weeks killer whales might be just off shore hunting the king salmon returning to their hatchery. But during my walk only a Coast Guard pursuit/rescue boat appears on the water.

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I press on to the collapsed glory hole where the grouchy belted kingfishers hang out. One flies across the water-filled glory hole to chit in anger at the little dog and I. After putting us in our place, it returns to its alder perch.

Weighing the Risks

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I am walking along the shore of Mendenhall Lake. It just stopped hailing. Now a gentle rain dimples the open sections of water between pans of rotting ice. Aki has disappeared into the woods. For the first time in awhile, I am worried about the little dog. Last week on a nearby trail, another dog walker watched his pup take a one-way trip into the woods. The wolf that killed his dog emerged carrying part of a freshly dead deer. Fish and game investigators reported that the wolf was only protecting its food and would not otherwise have harmed the dog.

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When the little poodle-mix fails to answer my whistle call, I start wishing that I had kept her on a lead. Turning my back on the glacier, I head into the woods and find her casually walking toward me.

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While spending most of my adult life in semi-wild areas of Alaska, I’ve had to weigh the ups and downs of living in place where bears and wolves might walk past your house in the dark. A recent trip to the Low Countries, where we cycled past swans and a great blue heron flew over the train taking up to the Brussels Airport, reminded me of how well wild animals are able to find their niche in human communities. I hope this is always the case, even it means increasing the risk of a walk in the local woods.

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Searching in the Rain

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Aki was warm and cozy, maybe even asleep while I gathered her leash and harness. She might have been dreaming of breakfast or the small chunk of goat cheese that we wrap around her morning pill.  I know she was slow to stir. Eventually she joined me at the front door. Together we walked through heavy rain to the car.

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We drive into the mountains to a meadow recently covered by snow. I have two goals. One is to find snow for Aki to enjoy. The second is to harvest things that rested all winter under that snow

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Medium weight rain flies on the wind into Aki’s face when she leaves the car. After evacuating her bowels, she gives me her, “Okay, let’s go home” look. She still follows me at a distance, freezing every time I turn around. If I don’t find snow for her soon, we might have to turn around. I decide to drop down a little hill in search of the white stuff. At the bottom, we find a strip covered with snow. Aki dashes up and rubs her face on it. Popping up she trots along, tail wagging. But when we leave the snow she starts again to drag her paws.

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When I turn around and head back to the car, the little dog perks up. I check the trailside muskeg for bog cranberries. They ripened last fall and spent the winter lying on top of wet moss. Months of freezing and thawing softened the berries and enhanced their sweetness.  They are at their most flavorful now, during the pre-summer famine. I imagine the local bears sucking them down after breaking out of hibernation. I imagine what it would be like, a hundred years ago, for an Alaskan to spice up his normal spring breakfast of dried salmon with a bowl of the red berries. Aki throws me an impatient look so I stop dawdling and head back the car.

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Back Home

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Aki begs to be picked up every time I lower her to the floor. We’ve been separated for the past three weeks. She spent most of that time hanging out with an English lab and her humans. I’ve just returned from a hike and bicycle excursion in northern Italy and the Low Countries.

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After reuniting with the little dog, I drive with her out to our favorite trail where there are few signs of spring. A few skunk cabbage leaves have climbed above the surface of the beaver’s pond and thankfully, many of the forest’s blueberry plants are setting blossoms.

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The beach is still exposed when we reach it, but the tide is on the flood. We walk out to the end of a spit that will soon be covered with water. Normally Aki, always cautious in eagle country, would sulk at the forest edge when an on the spit. But today she trots along beside me. An eagle flies just off shore, making nervous a large raft of scooters that swims between Shaman Island and us. It’s good to be home.

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Sheep Creek Heron

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Aki hesitates at the grass line, her yellow coat not quite blending with the color of last fall’s straw. Around her sharp-edged green shoots of new growth muscle through the dead growth.  The little dog wants to walk south down the beach toward where miners have anchored their thrown together gold dredges. The trail is rich in dog scent.

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I turn my back on the poodle-mix and walk out onto the gravel and sand lands now exposed by an ebb tide. The sun is yet to make over the shoulder of Sheep Mountain. Blue sky shows through holes in the cloud cover. It’s too early to know whether the day will be blue or gray.  After stopping to study the reflection of clouds in a tidal lake, I look for Aki and find her at my feet.

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A small raft of ducks fidget at the opposite end of the lake, circling around what looks like a thin and tall piece of driftwood. As the sky lightens I see that what I thought was driftwood is really a great blue heron. The little dog and I swing in a wide arc around the lake until I can make out the grey-blue of the birds chest feathers and the long, pointed beak so useful in plucking small fish from the shallows.  I think the heron might be my favorite bird for it’s movie star good looks and it’s graceful walk. This bird looks as peaceful as a sleeping child until it shoots downward with its killing beak to snatch a salmon smolt.

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Movements

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It’s a flat light day on the Fish Creek Delta. Aki’s other human and I are willing the little poodle-mix to drop into the crouch she assumes when making a bowel movement. That, we hope, will signal an end to her lower intestinal problems. When she finally does, I scoop up her product into a plastic bag and relax. She must be on the mend.

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Thinking that we may have witnessed the most exciting movement of the day, I follow the trotting dog along the edge of the Fish Creek Pond and then onto the wetlands. A mating brace of common mergansers swims along the opposite shore of the pond, passing a clutch of mallards asleep on the point of land that separates the pond from Fish creek.

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Nothing but windblown grass is moving on the wetlands, and that still the dead tan color of straw. But at the point we can spy on two American robins snatching and shaking blades of grass. Along the shore three sandpipers (greater yellowlegs?) march in the shallows. Down stream they go in a straight line, hunched over like the Marx Brothers. They turn and march back up stream. They turn back down stream and then burst into a flight that ends thirty meters away. Aki missed the whole show because she was being encouraged by her other human to pose for a selfie with the glacier.

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Avian Marriage Counseling

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I hear the eagle’s scream the moment we start down the Treadwell Ruins trail.  Aki is too pre-occupied with her scent survey to bother with eagles. With her front legs spread wider than usual, the little dog shuffles down the trail keeping her nose just millimeters about the ground. We can make little progress until she finds the mother lode of the scent she follows. I am worried that we will miss seeing the eagle. Aki does one of her signature handstands, raising her entire rear end into the air as she rains pee down on top of another dog’s scent trail, then drops into a quick-step trot. The eagle screams again.

 

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It had been raining but that has stopped. A low layer of clouds hangs over the channel when we reach Sandy Beach. Little can be seen of the mountains across Gastineau Channel. In the foreground, the old mine tunnel ventilation shaft pokes up through the waters of the channel. A mature bald eagle occupies each corner of the ventilation shaft’s roof. I try to read their body language to determine whether they are friend, foe, or sufferers in a dysfunctional marriage. I’m guessing it’s the latter.

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Each eagle has its back turned to the other. The one facing me looks like it just tasted a sour lemon. If either attempted to expand the distance between them, it would fall into the channel. I’ve heard that eagles mate for life. These two look like they could use couples counseling.

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Someday There Will Be Whales

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The writer’s retreat at the Shrine ends this morning. I’ll be back home with Aki soon. But first I must try to see the whale. While I was looking at geese along the Eagle River, one of the other writers on this beach was startled by a surfacing killer whale. First she heard the whale’s exhale, a burst of water forced at high pressure through the orca’s blowhole.  She turned in time to see the whale’s black dorsal fin glisten in the sun and then disappear beneath the waters of Lynn Canal.

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I am walking the same stretch of beach where my friend saw the whale. Earlier this morning on this beach I watched two juvenile Stellar sea lions porpoise through the water, flushing three golden eye ducks to flight. There are no sea lions now and I wonder if the whale ate one of them. Last night I stood here and watched the sun set behind the Chilkat Mountains. But now, I see only a clutch of mallards fishing offshore.

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I tell myself that the important thing is that the whale was here, not whether or not I see it. Then I remember the other times I’ve seen killer whales. There were the times pods swam by as I paddled a kayak off of Marmion or Portland Islands. Off of Marmion an adult female orca swam to within 10 meters. Another time Aki and I watched a pod of them chasing king salmon just north of here. It doesn’t resolve my desire for another whale sighting. But it justifies my belief that if not today, then sometimes in the future, there will be more whales.

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Cat Among the Pigeons

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Aki wouldn’t like this. It’s seven in the morning. The temperature drops a degree each mile I ride my bike out Glacier Highway. Now it hovers at 27 degrees F. The temperature didn’t stop the Hermit Thrush from singing its spring song when I mounted my bicycle at the Shrine of St. Theresa. The cold might have silenced the eagles because I can’t hear their territorial scream as I head out the road. But the Stellar’s jays are warm enough to scold me as I ride over the Peterson Creek Bridge.

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The sun lights up Shelter Island and the snow-white Chilkat Mountains that line the other side of Lynn Canal. But I ride in pre-dawn grey until Eagle River where the sun shines on the gang of Canada geese in a mid-stream gravel bar. The birds cackle away as if plotting mischief.

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I push on another half-mile and then drop into the picnic area where a smaller group of geese hunt and peck near the picnic tables. If my presence bothers them, they don’t show it. Pleased for not being their cat among the pigeons, I ride to a trailhead where a man on a mountain bike greets me. After we exchange hellos, he rides down the trail toward the plotting Canada geese. In seconds they explode off the meadow and fly low over my head, flushed by a cat on a cycle.