Category Archives: Dan Branch

Winter, Please Come Home

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A little sulky, Aki was slow to meet me at the front door this morning. We both squinted against the rain while walking to the car. She was keen enough at the trailhead. But now she starts up every trail that would lead back to the car. The little poodle-mix wants our winter back. Two days ago it rode the jet stream down to the east coast of America where only school children in hope of a snow day welcomed it. Winter’s gray cousin, autumn, has back fill the hole with rain and wind.

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We walk through a thin stretch of old growth spruce forest between Auk Bay and the main road out of town. The woods offer filtered views of the bay through which I watch the resident raft of harlequin ducks dive in unison on bait fish. A larger raft of Barrow goldeneyes works nearby waters. Ducks don’t need sunlight or snow to feed.

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Down beach a line of gulls work the surf line and the rolls of seaweed formed by the last flood tide. Once in the air, the gulls are the most graceful things on the beach. But they must lumber through their takeoffs and almost always splash their landings.

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Hunting Seal

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Four gulls relax on their own floating island—a cork of dense snow that was carried from the beach by last night’s flood tide. You might say they look smug. Snow islands populate much of the bay. Some host gulls. Groups of others provide a harbor for a group of jumpy mallards.

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The ducks explode off the water, fly back and forth along the beach and return to their spot before the water has had a chance to calm. Aki didn’t scare them. It’s a seal quietly swimming between the snow islands. In minutes the seal surfaces near the three gulls’ island, using an oblique angle to shorten the distance between itself and the possible prey. When the gulls stir, the seal slips beneath the surface until the birds calm down.

 

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Before the Snow

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Aki and are back on the moraine, taking a trail that offers filtered views of the glacier. Between frosted spruce tree limbs I can watch a line of worshippers walking on lake ice to or from the glacier. Some drag sleds full of toddlers behind them. Part of me wants to join them. They are walking to the ice cave. But Aki is happy with the company and the many chances given to her this afternoon to chase after her beloved Frisbee.

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Thick swirls of frost cling the trailside alders like Monarch butterflies on an eucalyptus trunk. Enjoy your day in the gray frost butterflies, tonight it snows.

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Happy New Year.

Harsh Winter Beauty

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It’s 8 degrees F. Aki dashes toward the warm car that we left just a minute ago. She has explored on colder days. I wonder if she is aging out of real winter like some one from the Iron Range who moves to Florida after retirement. Ready to wait for warmer weather, I am about to give up on today’s walk when Aki sniffs a patch of frosted grass, pees, and gallops back to me. False alarm.

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Reunited, we join one of Aki’s other human friends to walk down the Eagle River on a trail softened by frost feathers. They slush, rather than crack or snap when stepped on. While some light still reaches the mountains and a slice of meadow we walk in dusk conditions even thought it is only 1:30 P.M. Some water still flows in the river but much of it is covered with ice. Five-inch-thick pans of it, all sharp-sided puzzle pieces, are marooned on sand bars until the next flood tide.

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I am glad I am wearing an old beaver hat made for me by a Yupik woman from the Kuskokwim River. The weather’s too cold for wool caps. Today’s harsh winter beauty, the kind produced by mixing cold, light, snow and ice, is rarely formed by the rain forest. These ingredients are as common as ravens during the Kuskokwim winter. But gray skies are more common than blue along the Eagle where the temperature rarely drops this low.

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Aki has no problem appreciating today’s rare gift. She patrols along without concern and seems put out when I lift her over sea ice that has yet to set. She must not know that her feet could freeze if they became wet in the slush. I take many pictures, keeping my camera inside my parka between snaps. But this precaution doesn’t prevent the shutter button from stinging my finger each time I push down on it.

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Snow and Ice

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Today we went higher up the mountain where Aki could find some snow. I wanted to see if the current stretch of cold weather had finally frozen a favorite mountain stream. We both got what we wanted.

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Aki’s snow covered a sloped mountain meadow with a two-inch carpet. Frost butterflies added another five. Even though the trail was empty of dogs and other people to welcome, the little poodle-mix galloped with purpose for 100 meters. Then she turned to run back at top speed.

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Once reunited, we dropped down onto my creek. It still ran free. But crystal-ice had turned rounded rocks into grey jellyfish and trolls.

Surviving Frost

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Aki, these deer trails are untrustworthy. The little dog gives me her “you can’t be left alone in the woods” look and leads me through a maze of frosted pines and onto a muskeg meadow. More pines dot the meadow. Unlike their healthy-looking brothers we just walked through, these pines have led a tough life. Some are only skeletons. Wind has carried away their exhaled moisture before it could form into frost crystals. But beneath the trees, fragile frost feathers shaped like butterfly wings, cling to every blade of grass.

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Mountains surround the meadow. They are in the light. We are not. That may change soon. The sun is curling around the curl of a southern hill. Already it’s light is flooding the next meadow over where frost butterflies may already be taking flight.

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Crossing the Moraine

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Even though the glacial moraine looks like it is posing for a Christmas card, I would prefer to listen to Irish rather than holiday music while crossing it today. A Carolan harp piece would work best, maybe “Bridget Cruise” played on a hammer dulcimer. That gentle love long would calm down the excited caused by the sparkling beauty driven by sunlight on frost.

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Without a quiet waltz we are racing on trails through alder thickets that offer occasional views of mountains or the glacier. Aki trots at the heals of a human friend while I follow close behind.

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Our friend stops to touch a willow branch coated with dense crystals and tells me that they are formed from condensed vapor released by the willow. I place the tip of the branch in my mouth and pull off its icy coat. It tastes faintly of willow.

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While the vapor crystals are almost clear, like water from a mountain stream, nearby hoar frost feathers are white and striated. They form patterns on dead grass stalks and other things on the moraine that can no longer breathe. Some are scattered on patches of clear ice as if they fell from the wings of a winter bird.

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We push on, crossing recently frozen streams, to Mendenhall Lake. Ice covers it and has almost silenced the nearby Nugget Falls. Across the lake, a low hill of rock rounded by the retreating glacier is white with new frost. Above all is a cloudless blue sky offering a simple background for winter’s multifaceted work.

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Going on Alert

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“Boom, boom, boom” and a hunter whistling in his dog interrupt the nattering complaints of Canada geese. Then, the smell of cordite arrives on a light breeze. Aki cringes and moves cautiously ahead, choosing the iciest path. Her little paws slip and then regain a purchase and she is on surer ground. I think about turning back but we are almost to the mouth of Fish Creek. I’ll just peak around the spit to see if the hunter is there. I end my search after spotting gulls strutting along one of the diminutive inlet that drains the wetlands.

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The hunter must be working another part of the wetlands, one upwind from our position. Aki returns to her survey of dog sign. It’s 9:30 and the sun is brightening the snow on the Chilkats and Mt. McGinnis. No light will warm the little dog or sparkle the thick, trailside frost today. But we are used to enjoying the sun’s work from afar.

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On our return to the car I stop to study a long, thin raft of Canada geese that has formed just off shore in Fritz Cove. Each has its beak tucked into its feathered body. It’s 19 degrees F. and they still chose water over the warmer land for their bed.

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We hear a mother and two small boys as we approach the pond. Only a thin layer of ice covers it. The boys, both dressed in heavy winter gear toss rocks onto the ice to hear the sound of it breaking. I think of the admonition of a Tlingit elder I once knew in Ketchikan not to break the stillness of water by skipping stones on it. What would she say to these two boys? They slide down some hinge ice to reach the slanted pond beach. They could slip on the ice and slide into the pond if they edged any further forward. I think of the mother and child who drowned after breaking through ice on this very pond twenty years ago. The boys’ mom saves me using the story as a warning by calling them back from the edge.

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Solstice

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Happy Solstice little dog. Tomorrow we start the climb toward midsummer. Aki pauses in her investigation of a yellow spot on the snow and looks up at her human. Her kind never fears the dark. Our low-light winter days do not depress her. She just takes what nature offers. Does she ever worry, like I do, that one winter the earth may not tilt south after solstice?

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It’s high noon. Sunlight bathes Mt. Juneau and the other south facing peaks that line Gastineau Channel. But sunshine will never touch the mountain meadow that Aki and I cross. Even the mountains’ time in the sun will be brief.

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Without pesky sunshine, frost builds thick forests of feathers on the meadow grass. Cold firms up the boggy muskeg, opening up areas closed during thaws. Aki flies across the meadow, changing direction without concern about watercourses, ponds, or bogs. For a brief moment I am tempted to lead the poodle mix to the Southern end of the meadow where our combined weight might stop the earth’s tumble north. But only for a moment.

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Aki the Scavanger

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The weather whipsaw continues to create uncertainty this winter. Yesterday we had cold, calm skies with sunshine. Last night it snowed. Now sleet falls on Aki and I as we climb up the Perseverance Trail. Soon it will rain. Then it will snow again. Tomorrow we are promised more sun.

3                  Aki, the master scrounger, is following a trail of treats dropped by other dog walkers. She manages to down the goodies before I can intervene. If I could, I would stop her scavenging ways. But the little dog should be fine. She, like most of her kind, has a cast-iron stomach.

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