Category Archives: Dan Branch

All in the Timing

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Timing is everything on these foggy mornings. The sun blinks in and out of the cotton-wool clouds, turning the sky pink at sunrise, surrendering to the gray, and then returning briefly to flood the Gastineau Meadow with light. Aki and I are enjoying the sunlight on the meadow. Fine frost covers the trailside plants and glazes fallen leaves. Seconds in direct sun is enough to melt away the beauty. A few minutes before our arrival, fog still covered the channel waters and probably reached into the northern edge of the meadow. But that’s all gone now and for a half-an-hour we can walk in full sunshine. After that Clouds will move in to return us to a soft world of gray.

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After the Storm

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While making morning coffee I am shocked to see sunshine. Without bothering Aki, who is still asleep, I slip outside. A block away, Gold Creek roars at near flood, charged with rainwater from Typhoon Lan. Yesterday the storm lost its fight with Mt. Juneau. During the battle the typhoon dropped eight inches of rain on our town and washed the streets clean. Trees that managed to retain their leaves during the storm sparkle like stream water hit by a sunbeam. Low angled light makes it easy to spot the long lines of spider silk that form thin bridges between plants and fences. Down channel, fog still covers the water but it won’t last long under this morning’s strong sun.

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Typhoon Lan

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Five days ago, Aki’s other human and I just managed to escape Typhoon Lan in a jet that took off from Osaka’s Kansai Airport bound for Seoul. Last night, the typhoon forced its way up Icy Straight to slam into Juneau. We can’t escape this guy!

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I delayed this morning’s walk as long as possible in hope that they typhoon would rain itself out. But Aki has needs so the little dog and I headed out to the Mendenhall Lake where forest surrounding one of the trails offered a little protection from the storm. The poodle-mix must have sensed my reluctance. She took a long time to answer my summons.

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We had to drive a different route to the glacier because high water made one of the bridges unsafe. Rounding Auk Lake I spotted a large raft of Canada geese and mallards tucked into a quiet bay, hunkering down in the storm. Beside a couple of people smoking marijuana in the lee of Skater’s Cabin Aki and I wouldn’t see anyone or anything on our walk except one duck too far away to identify. It slowly paddled back and forth across a small kettle pond as it was on a search and rescue mission.

Thanks for the Color

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Like most dwellers of lands closer to the poles than the equator, people in Juneau tend to paint their homes in bright colors. Walking past a rose-colored Craftsman house on a stormy day, like this one, can lift your spirits. I’m thankful, this morning, for all those in Juneau who paint their homes or businesses in pastel colors. I am grateful to those who long ago planted the trees of fall color, like maples and birch, that seem to give off  light on this gray day.

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Aki and I are conducting her standard downtown patrol. As usual, she is all business. It’s been weeks since she has checked the trail of scent left on the streets by other dogs. Other than a trio of house dogs allowed out for a quick pee on their lawn, my poodle-mix will have no opportunity to sniff other dogs on this walk. We will pass a scattering of homeless in donated raingear. One, already smelling of stale smoke, will ask me for light. Others will pass head down as if to avoid getting rain in their eyes.

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Before the Mirror Shatters

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After enjoying our first sunrise for what seems like months, I drive with Aki out to the one place without morning sun: the Mendenhall Glacier. The sun will have to rise above the shoulders of Thunder Mountain before it can warm the trail we walk on or make Nugget Falls sparkle. That won’t be much before eleven, when we will be back on Chicken Ridge.

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Why then, Aki might ask, are we out here shivering in the twilight? If she did, I’d remind her that she is not shivering and there is light striking the glacier and the Mendenhall Towers that rise above it into blue sky. But we are both too distracted by eagles for conversation.

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Attracted here by spawning sockeye salmon, five eagles bicker near the waters of Steep Creek. One with better luck or eyes tears away strips of flesh from a dead salmon. Behind the feeding bird, the calm waters of the lake reflect the glacier and Mt. McGinnis.

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When the sun clears Thunder Mountain to bath everything in strong light, it will also bring a wind to riffle the ice-free portion of the lake, shattering the glacier’s mirror.

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Between Fire and Ice

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Yesterday, the clouds that pounded the little dog and me with rain decorated this mountain meadow with snow. We are here to enjoy the resulting white blanket. While Aki catches up on weeks worth of pee mail, I watch ghosts of fog climb the whitened mountain ridges. A scattering of tiny ponds reflect the scene, breaking up the mountains’ image with still-green lily pads. There are other signs that winter’s snow caught out the meadow plants.

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Islands of strong, still green clumps of grass dot the snowy meadow. Many plants, like the sparse-leafed Labrador tea and blue berry bushes are still in fall color. At least they aren’t being crushed by the heavy snow like the low-growing sorrel.

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A friend recently saw a hummingbird and a warbler, both summer visitors to the rain forest. Are they delaying their southern migration to avoid the current heat wave in California? It is 100 degrees in Los Angeles today and the Santa Anna winds are pushing wild fire through bird habitat. If things don’t change soon the birds will be caught between fire and ice.

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Pink Pumpkins

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When I look up from the field of pink pumpkins, I spot a mountain goat feeding on the Southern slope of Mt. Juneau. Later, at home, I will enlarge the photo I took of the goat and realize that it is starring down at Aki and me. We are doing a circuit through Downtown Juneau. Already I followed the little dog up the gentle Gastineau Avenue grade to where we could look down on the docks, now cruise ship free. Then we dropped to South Franklin Street with its shuttered tee shirt and jewelry shops.

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A line of gulls lined the superstructure of the cruise ship docks, dozing in the sun. A handful of smokers had spaced themselves along the dock. Some stood alone looking without much interest at the Douglas Mountain Ridge. Two talked, heads almost touching, as steam rose from their take-away coffee cups. One man, dressed in the business casual shirt and slacks of our commercial classes, lit up a long, smooth Cuban cigar. In short, the goat had plenty to look at from its mountain perch. But it broke off feeding to study a little poodle-mix sniff among a field of pink pumpkins. I suppose it makes sense. The man who painted and planted the pumpkins must have hoped to draw attention to his little field.

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Eagles and Corvids

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Corvids and eagles, mallards and gulls, that’s what dominate the skies above the Fish Creek Delta. For corvids, Aki and I spot the grumpy ones—those without the raven or crow’s sense of humor: Stellar jays and magpies.

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Near the pond, four jays rip up chunks of the wet ground and flip them in the air. They make it seem like work, not fun although I can’t imagine what the blue and black birds get out of it. A mature bald eagle perches on a creekside driftwood log, its eyes unfocused. The wind ruffles it rain-damp feathers. Weeks ago salmon thrashed the waters in front of the eagle. Today only rain runoff animates the stream.

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Another eagle turns away from us as we approach the spruce tree in which it rests. Two long tailed magpies, black and white, land on the trail ahead of it. Seeing Aki, they fly onto alder branches six feet above the trail. One is shy, but the other magpie lets me approach close enough to recognize the cruelty of its beak.

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A Kind of Seasonal Death

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On gray, flat-light days like this my eye is draw to contrasts. Sometimes I am stopped in my tracks by soft moss crowding over a rough stump. But today, it is the push and pull of color that holds my attention.

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The little dog and I are on one of the Gastineau Meadows. She refuses to leave the dry trail to join me out on the spongy meadow where clumps of golden grass grow on fields of their yellow-brown cousins. She isn’t unhappy. There is pee mail to check. But her eyebrows rise with concern if I venture too fare off the trail. So, even when a clump of now-scarlet sorrel would only require a few more steps for a good viewing, I turn my back on it.

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It’s hard not to witness the meadow’s fall color without thinking about seasonal death. While people and dogs continue life through the winter, these colorful plants will die back to their parent plant’s roots. It’s a practical way to extend life for the plants but it is hard not to see the end of fall color as a kind of death. I certainly feel its absence during the brown time that comes between colorful autumn and white winter.

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A Gang Line of Kids

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Aki and I are climbing the gentle grade of Perseverance Trail being pursued by a gang of day care kids. We have sunshine on a day the weather guys predicted it would rain. Ghosts of fog rise suddenly off the stream only to die quickly in the strengthening sun. I should be ecstatic. But I in frustrated in my efforts to put some distance between the kids and my little dog. I am living out this line from “Listening,” a poem by Jennifer Grotz: “the dog walker vectors from here to there, frustrated by his little lingering inspector.” That’s the little dog and I in spades—she stopping to sniff every few feet while the kids gain.

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The kids are cute and relatively well behaved. But I know Aki treats all kids that size as puppies ready to engage in sometimes rough play. They are charming, this assemblage of pre-schoolers dressed in their bright outdoor gear, each gripping a loop that is tied to a long web line. At the head is a teacher, struggling like a lead dog to keep the gangline straight. They climb up a one of the steeper grades on the trail, turn around and run screaming down the hill. When we can only see their abandoned gangline on the road, I am finally able to relax into the hike.

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