I swore that I wouldn’t come here— this crowded ice cave that pierces the side of Mendenhall Glacier.  But— our long stretch of clear cold weather is about to end. When it returns, a warm, wet storm could soften the lake ice that now provides an easy walkway to the glacier’s face.  Even if we took the alternative route, with its scree scrambles, in overcast we wouldn’t see this strong winter sun shining through crevasses that have opened in the cave’s roof. If I didn’t go today, I might never see the glow. So this morning we joined the stream of dogs, toddlers, ancients, the over weight, the stooped, the fit, the ill prepared— all walking over groaning lake ice to our Disneyland. To eyes use to seeing vacant trails, the pilgrims appeared as thick as cars on a motorway. In reality, I never counted more than thirty or forty at one time.

A 100 meters from shore, we began to hear the submarine booms of settling ice. It didn’t stop until we reach the glacier. I wondered if a guy pushing his child in a high tech pram could hear the booms over the babble. When we passed those returning from the cave, they showed us blank faces. I turned to ask one if he had been transfixed by the experience and was almost blinded by the sun.  They wore not the look of the transformed but of those that forgot to wear dark glasses.

We climbed onto glacier ice and followed a boot pounded trail to the cave, listening to the squeal of grade schoolers rising from a communicating crevasse. The cave spreads out from a narrow tail recessed in glacier ice to a wide, almost oval opening like a cornucopia. Sunlight pours through broken crevasses in the roof like water will during the thaw. The cave’s multifaceted aquamarine walls glow dimly as if we are inside a gem stone. In spite of the excited children, barking dogs, and camera flashes, it feels like a holy place—one that inspires awe in the cynical and in the unwashed. 

Nothing is as expected this morning.  A well defined trail stomped into the snow by a small horde of humans ends for no apparent reason in a meadow clearing much like five others passed through to get to the spot. The wind that hammered Chicken Ridge all night decided not to join us. Surrounding mountain ridges look fuzzy, not crisp in the cold morning light. I find beauty in small things —dunes of drifted snow, tree remnants, my shadow looking like it belongs to Pippi Longstockings.  My beaver hat is to blame. Made for me by a Yup’ik grandmother thirty-five years ago, the hat takes years off my shadow. It’s the one that accompanied me on dog rides over tundra trails and on walks across Bethel to visit the love of my life.  A scruffy time traveler, like me.  

This morning Aki and I ski along Montana Creek through shadows pierced by random shafts of sunlight; silence shattered by rifle shots. At the start, the little dog handles the patterned blasts better than I, her attention distracted by a group of young women skiing with a oversized Labrador.  Aki has alway found solace in the arms of my daughter’s friends. Thinking it is the kind thing to do, I push past the ladies to put some distance between us and the outdoor range that shares a cul-de-sac with the trail head. She hangs back, waiting for her new girl gang to catch up. They manage it two kilos up the trail, while I try to capture the now silent river on a media card.

 Skiing along the bottom of a steep sided valley means skiing in shadow occasionally brightened by sunlit snow on bare branches and the now frozen over river.  When the tall stream side trees allow it, mountain peaks appear in full sun like a Puritan’s city on the hill. My old digital won’t give fair play to the darks and lights of this mottled scene. It either washes our the lights or reduces the shadows to black spaces. Aki tires of my snapping routine—stop, ogle, plant the poles, slip off the mittens, pull the camera from under my jacket, point, focus, click, and repeat in reverse. She dreams of running with the women and their big happy dog, hoping that their spirited chatter will block the sound of gun fire.  

I like being lost in the mixed forest between Peterson Creek and Stephens Passage. Calmed by knowledge that I’ll eventually stumble onto the ocean shore if I keep the sun over my left shoulder, I follow Aki down ill defined deer paths, somethings choosing my own way when her’s leads into impenetrable brush.

I felt overdressed when we left the car, warmed by the sun shinning down from another cloudless blue sky. It’s light sparkled on hoar frosted limbs of otherwise naked shrubs when we crossed open swamps. In the deep forest it can only glitter circles of ground.  Excited by the soft snow in the woods and the scents of four legged critters that passed through it during the night, Aki porpoises along, then dives head first into larger drifts. Driven into the forest by the sun, last night’s cold settles around me as I watch the little dog.

We cross the ice covered creek above a beaver dam and plunge into the manageable chaos of confusing ground. A deer wanders with us. We follow her tracks to where she sheltered in a snow free hollow and return to the open meadows. I post hole across them. Soon my jeans are soaked to the knee and I have to remind myself that soon we shall be on the beach. We make it there, a quiet place this time of year. A crisp wolf track points a way through some drift wood to the water. Aki follows on my heals as I wander among the beach rocks, stopping to photograph the white peaks of Admiralty island rising just across Stephens Passage. I find a hollow, carved out of the flat side of a rock in the shape of a modernist’s candy dish. Inside, a new generation of mussels line the lower side, sleeping (if mussels sleep) in the sun.

Remembering an afternoon appointment, I leave the beach, no longer having the time to indulge in ambiguous travel.

After dropping Aki’s other resident human at the airport, the little dog and I take a pre-dawn walk on the wetlands.  The day will break clear, free of clouds. With the rising sun still blocked behind mountains, the sky can only manage a pale pastel blue. 30 or 40 Canada geese huddle in a patch of open water surrounded by river ice. They cluck and complain. It won’t take much to scare them to flight.

Aki runs up and down the empty trail, reading the pee mail. Feeling my gloved hands going numb, I wonder how she thrives in the cold (11 degrees) and wind. I want to photograph a line of mountains on Admiralty Island, now pink with alpine glow. It will mean cold fingers that could become temporarily useless if exposed to the wind for more than a quick snapshot. I risk it. The beauty is too seductive. My index finger loses feeling until it can no longer depress the shutter trigger.

While my right hand warms up in its glove, I’m forced to simply watch the mountains’ faint pink glow brighten and whiten. Aki sniffs at lines of tiny rodent tracks in the snow as I move along the river’s bluff, both. After looking down at the thin river ice to my right, I take extra care not to slip. Behind us, the top half of  McGinnis and a companion mountain stand in full sun above the shadowed glacier.   A seal riding up the river on the flood tide ripples the mountain’s reflection when it surfaces. Now partially thawed, my index finger returns to work.

Yesterday’s high winds, some gusting 65 miles an hour, scoured this meadow of the lovely frost I enjoyed during our last visit. The winds also blasted the trail to a porcelain  smoothness. Even Aki slips and slides on the steeper sections. I expected to be pushed quickly off the meadow by more strong winds but they haven’t appeared. Perhaps they wait for the sun to stop hiding behind a cloud bank the color of dirty fleece.

Nothing in the gray invites us to linger on the meadow so I take a faint trail into a sheltered valley. On rock hard snow we drop into onto a gentle plain dotted with old growth mountain hemlock trees, some a foot across at their base. I would have passed through without much thought if this morning I hadn’t read a chapter of  Lynn Schooler’ “Walking Home.” By counting its growth rings of a 12 inch thick mountain hemlock, Mr. Schooler discovered that the tree was 299 years old. Standing before two similar sized mountain hemlocks, I realize that they started their struggle in this weak, poorly drained soil before europeans discovered Alaska, before Russian started decimating its sea otter population, before England’s Capt. Vancouver had his first violent run-in with Tlingit warriors, when the ice of the Mendenhall Glacier touched the salt water of Gasteneau Channel.  One tree still thrives but its neighbor is bare except for a unkept cap of green still pulling energy from the sun. I wonder which I should honor more—-the damaged older soul, or it’s thriving neighbor? I chose the damaged one for its optimistic green bonnet.