Category Archives: Dan Branch

Red Sky At Morning

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Red sky in morning, sailors take warning. Look at that sunrise, little dog. Know any sailors we should warn? Aki gives me her “don’t mess with me” stare and curls back up into a comfortable sleeping position. Down channel the water glows with an angry glare. I sip coffee and watch the fierce light fade to grey as clouds descend to block the sun.

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Hours later and we are walking the beach in front of the old Auk village. Even through it is just past noon, the sky is already yellowing like it does at sunset. A long strip of light reaches across Favorite Channel from the Chilkat Mountains to our feet. A rising wind raises small waves that slap the beach. As if the light could provide them heat, a small raft of harlequin ducks paddles into the thin strip of sunlight.

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We walk out to Pt. Louisa, the site of at least one killing shipwreck and watch a fishing boat move without difficulty towards the Auk Bay harbor. So much for the “red sky at morning” warning.

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I wonder if the boat carries home red king crab. Harvest of the once abundant crustaceans has been banned until this winter due to a population drop. But Fish and Game just opened up a season for them. Now fishermen who pulled their boats at the end of September’s silver salmon season are rethinking that decision. They ask around in bars or the vegetable section at Foodland if anyone has a boat they can use to go after crab on days when the sun doesn’t color the morning clouds red and the Taku winds don’t send water sprits dancing across Gastineau Channel.

Moraine Moose

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Aki and I are out on the glacial moraine with one of my oldest friends. He is also one of the little dog’s favorite humans. She follows close at his heals as we walk on soft snow to the Mendenhall River. Our mutual friend is a gentle man. Maybe that is why Aki is so excited to hike with him.

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In order to reach the river we need to pass through a field of willow and alders. The local beavers have logged off many of the larger cottonwood trees and lots of willows. We find their large den embedded into the bank when we leave the woods. I can’ t find any of the rodents’ tracks but we do find recent evidence of a moose. Aki has never seen a moose but her two human companions have seen many of them when living in the bush of Western Alaska.

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I’ve never spotted a moose in the Juneau area. Last fall two of them were photographed while browsing along the river. Everyone assumed that they had moved back north to their home range along the Antler River. But at least one has stayed. We think it is a young moose, maybe last year’s calf. I wonder if it’s decision to winter on the moraine signals the start of a new migration made possible by the colonization of the moraine by willows, a moose’s favorite food.

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Downtown Blues

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Tlingit elders pass on the Box of Daylight story on to each new generation. It explains how Raven brought light into the world.  There was a dark time when a shaman kept the sun, moon, and stars in bentwood boxes. Through cunning, Raven brought light to the world by opening the boxes. Carvers often illustrate the story by showing Raven holding in his beak a disk representing the sun. Today, with its dusk-at noon light, reminds rain forest dwellers of the value of Raven’s gift.

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On our walk through Downtown Juneau, Aki ignores the ravens even though they croak at her for attention. The melting snow reveals too many tempting smells for the little dog to focus on anything else. The snow and ice are mostly gone but I still have to skip and hop behind her to avoid the piles of soggy dog poop that spot the sidewalk. I think we need a new law of thermodynamics: dog poop can created but it cannot be destroyed, just carted off the to landfill in black plastic bags.

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Blue Skies or Gray

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Aki and I are walking on a trail just a few miles from yesterday’s snowy paradise. This place received rain while the moraine was blessed with more snow. But it has beauty and even a little drama to offer. There’s the sound of eagle complaints from raptors perched on riverside spruce. Three other eagles fly in tight circles over the river. I suspect some late arriving silver salmon are drawing the crowd. It could be a deer carcass. We followed the recent tracks of one to the confluence of Montana Creek and the river.

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All the eagle activity makes Aki nervous. She stands, almost touching my leg, and squints down river. She calms down when we return to the forest where snowmelt drops rain on both of us. Aki is as excited today, as she would be on a sunny summer Sunday. The little dog uses her nose to discover smells buried under the snow. I have to wait often for her to catalogue the best ones. Gray skies or blue, pee smells the same to her.

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Still Snowy

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Aki and I are back on the glacial moraine where only pioneer plants grow. A second ago in geologic time, the Mendenhall Glacier covered the area where we walk. Now willows and alders work to covert poor soil to good. In areas where the moraine has been ice free longer, spruce and cottonwood trees grow close together like they would in a forest recovering from clear cut logging. The path we take has been compacted by previous hikers. If we step off it, we’d sink into deep, soft snow. We stay on the path.

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Snowshoe hare tracks cross the trail in many places. Last night a deer struggled through the deep snow to reach the trail and then used it to speed up her trip to a foraging area. Otters left tracks of their undulating movement through the woods. I look for recent wolf tracks but find only those of wandering dogs.

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Downtown, where Aki keeps her kennel, rain and warm temperatures have already stripped the trees of snow. But here they still carry heavy burdens of white. The glacier keeps the moraine cool while downtown thaws. Every turn of the corner provides another greeting card image to enjoy. We detour down a side trail that provides a view of a frozen slough. Before it retreated, the glacier dropped a dozen small boulders on the slough in a pattern that would please a Japanese gardener. In summer the rocks rise above water like an archipelago of islands. Snow now blurs the boundary between rock and ice. Odd shaped rocks have become pyramids or domes.

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Despoiling the Crime Scene

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Three eagles stand still as hunting herons at the edge of Fritz Cove. Between the eagles and me, fat flakes of snow fall, softening the birds’ outlines. A cloud of ravens flit in and out of the scene. Food, and lots of it, must be near. Otherwise the eagles wouldn’t tolerate my presence or that of the ravens. Just offshore a harbor seal treads water, only its head shows above the surface. I remember a stripped deer carcass that Aki and I stumbled on when walking by this spot last year. Then a far off shot reminds me that it is still hunting season.

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Wanting to leave the birds to their cleanup work, I drive on, passing a large raft of surf scoters moving in unison to form shapes on the waters of the cove like a high school marching band between half of a football game. From a distance they look like a group of composed individuals. But with the help of the telephoto lens, I can see the frantic efforts they make to maintain the group’s shape.

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After watching the scoters, I drive to a North Douglas Island trailhead and take the little dog for a walk. So little snow makes it through the forest canopy that I wonder if the storm is tapering off. I stop wondering when we reach a pocket meadow where falling snow collects on the gnarled bark of mountain hemlocks and bull pines. I try, once again, to take a picture that shows what my eye can see: tens of thousands of snow flakes floating down against a background of dark evergreens.

 

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA                  We pass back into woods where the blood of a recently killed animal stains the snow. Small bits of the prey animal remain so the kill was recent. Canine prints trample the area making it difficult to determine if this is the work of a wolf or raptor. While I bend low to search for clues, Aki urinates on the evidence.

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Thank You Frost

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I didn’t expect much to come of this cross country ski trip. The temperature had dropped to below freezing yesterday to end the thaw and solidified the mushy snow. My skis shouldn’t be able to gain a purchase on the resulting concrete. But I hadn’t figured on the frost that built during the calm, cold night. It changed the ice-slick snow to ski-friendly stuff.

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Aki, her other human and I are traveling along the shore of Mendenhall Lake on frost covered snow. It provides perfect skiing. The skis of those who tried the same thing before yesterday’s freeze sank deep into soft, wet muck. So did the paws of a wild animal that left a compact line of parallel tracks from the woods, through overflow, and onto the lake. I am still trying to identify the critter that made them.

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The glacier and surrounding mountains rise above the refreezing surface of the lake. Low angle sun throws deep shadows on fractured sections of ice. But clouds obscure most of Mt. McGinnis and Thunder Mountain. In a short time we reach the still-ice-free Mendenhall River and ski along its shore. Thin fog vapors rise from the water to be turned almost painfully white by backlighting sun. The mist separates long enough to reveal a lone merganser paddling across the river.

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I stop often to photograph the shiny beauty. A gap opens up between Aki’s other human and myself. The little dog dashes back and forth between us, taking advantage of the hard trail. She is still running when we reach the car and find two ravens policing the parking lot for dropped snacks. Aki is displeased.

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More Like Early Spring

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No No No No November, tomorrow brings December. The calendar claims that we are sliding into winter—that it is only three weeks away. But as rain continues to melt November snow, it feels more like early spring. Aki and I walk through the Treadwell mining ruins. The lovely snow is almost all slush on the trail. The little dog works to avoid stepping into the little swimming pools of melt water that fill each boot print on the trail. But neither the rain nor the slush discourages her. When I feel the cold water soak my socks I check to see if the poodle-mix wants to make it a short day. She is already down the trail, smelling more signs left by her dog buddies.

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To avoid the slushy trail, I lead Aki out onto the beach of crushed gold ore that fronts the ruins. Here the trail is drier but we’ve lost the protection from the wind driven rain that the ruin’s trees provided. I’d like to stay and enjoy the harsh beauty of storm clouds above the channel but retreat back into the trees before my hands are too cold to operate the camera.

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Later, from a protected spot at the edge of the woods, I will watch two bald eagles circle above the channel as if it were summer. Nearer, a brace of loons will dive on baitfish that have collected in the collapsed glory hole. Aki will play tag with a wet wheaten terrier. But when we reach the trailhead, she will be the first to the car, waiting with impatience, for me to open the door.

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Home and Wet

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Our plane arrived to late last night to allow us to bring Aki home from the neighbor who cared for her during our trip to Washington D.C. When her other human and I enter their house this morning, the little dog yipped with excited and ran back and forth between her temporary caregivers and us. Outside a light rain melted through the snow like it was sugar. Because of the thaw, most of the trails are covered in slush. So I let Aki lead me up Basin Road and onto the Perseverance Trail.

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When we left to fly south, the roofs on the Craftsman homes that snake along Basin Road had heavy snow loads. This morning they are wet with rain.

A human friend joins the little dog and I on the hike. When he bends down to secure an ice cleats to his boot, a dog treat drops out of his pocket. Aki stares at it but doesn’t gobble it down. Even after he said she could have it, Aki wouldn’t eat it. But after that, she kept close to my friend. Sometimes she would leap up until she was waist high on him in case he was holding the treat in his hand. But he never was. She never tasted the snack.

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Where have you been?

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It’s 13 degrees. The cold is messing up my camera. I am skiing alone, asking other cross-country skiers if they have seen a toy poodle in a knit sweater. Where has that little dog gone? We were together just minutes ago at the base of a small hill. She was inclined to take our usual trail, the one that loops around the hill. But, I have grown used to winning such battles so I started up the slope, figuring that she would pout a minute and trot after me. At the top I was alone.

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We had already been skiing for more than an hour. Most of that time was spent on a back- country-style trail. Aki stopped often to roll or dig into the fine-grained snow. I worked out a way to take pictures without removing my mittens. Unlike yesterday, where the tracks of snowshoe hares, squirrels, and a fox crisscrossed our trail, we don’t spot any evidence that dog or wild animal had passed this way.

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At the end of the back-country portion of our ski we crossed Glacier Highway and slipped onto a groomed, tracked trail that winds through a dormant campground. Aki stopped often to roll in the snow, check scent or chase about with another dog. Then, while I was on the hill, she disappeared.

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A bit dehydrated. I can barely manage the whistle I use to call her home. She must have heard, because she sprints toward me from the opposite side of the hill, looking putout. At the same time we silently ask the same question: “Where have you been?”

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