Category Archives: Kwethluk

Nature

Alders

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Another gray day on the moraine but one spiced up with two inches of pure white snow. A good day to reflect on the humble Sitka Alder and the drab willow. They were the first plants of size to gain a foothold on the moraine, tough witnesses to the the glacier’s retreat. Normally something to cut out of a photograph, with today’s topcoats of fresh snow providing counterpoint to dark bark they make excellent frames for greater beauty.

These pioneers laid the groundwork for Aki’s Troll Woods—building soil for the poplars and spruce even though the big trees would eventually rob them of light and nutrients; force them to carry out a holding action on soggy lake edges and bogs; make them dependent on the bowels of birds to carry their seeds to newly disturbed ground.

P1100408On the edge of beaver flooded land we find an alder displaying signs of spring, summer and fall under a coating of winter snow. On one supple twig cling a well formed leaf from last fall, spent cones, and spring bright pollen pods. Almost hidden by snow are this year’s tightly wrapped leaf buds.

Red Alder, the largest of the clan, provides excellent material for carving. I learned to work with it from master carvers at the Totem Heritage Center in Ketchikan. They helped me make the tools—alder handled adzes with blades fashioned from re-tempered car springs, crooked and not-so-crooked knives ground from cross cut saw blades. They taught me to work with wood from a tree freshly fallen and how the adze could be used to quickly transform a piece of firewood into an abstract figure. They encouraged me to cradle the new form in my lap while using crooked knives to mimic my model.

With the help of another master carver, an Italian American from New York City, I used adze, crooked knives, and not-so-crooked knives to carve a mask of my recently deceased father. The intimacy of the experience helped me grieve. Here is the result.

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Geese Chasing Away Solitude

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We hoped to purchase some solitude and views of Canada Geese by taking this ice covered trail during a rain storm. As expected rain water covers the ice in a glistening clear blanket that would have made the trail unusable but for the  winter’s worth of dropped hemlock needles allowing my boots purchase.

L1190843Getting it at a bargain price Aki and I find solitude here broken only by the snuffling of her searching nose, the sound of rain drops hitting my parka hood, mallard chuckles, eagle complaints, and the near hysterical song of geese being driven off shrinking sand bars by a rising tide.

Reaching an open meadow we find a clump of the calming geese feeding alongside the trail ahead. They are all business at first but then one of their unit stops feeding to watch our approach. Aki, no fool she, is not interested in messing with these big wild birds.  Even though we try skirting them at a distance, the geese eventually take flight and move on to the next tidal meadow. Now we hear geese warning calls coming from across the river, giving advanced warning of the approach of several formations of Canada Geese that fly overhead to join their just departed buddies 300 meters away on the other meadow.

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Moving across the meadow we reach a gently sloping beach of sand bordering the perfectly still waters of Lynn Canal now reflecting a murder of crows flying toward the river.  A smaller gang of the black birds have assumed station at the top of a beach side spruce to wait for the abundance of low tide.

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Spotlights of Spring

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Seamus, the digital display on our electronic thermometer, has dressed himself in shorts and sunglasses and promises an outside temperature of 45(f). Seamus sometimes lies but not today. From our kitchen window on Chicken Ridge I can see sunlight bouncing off the waters of Gasteneau Channel, bringing the whitest highlights out of the snow covering Douglas Island.

Aki, who has spent her morning inside contemplating the unfairness of a poodle’s life, throws all sadness aside to bounce around the living room as I collect the paraphernalia of adventure—water bottle. camera, dog leash. In a half and hour we are dropping through the old growth forest on one of her favorite trails— the one leading to a wide curving beach between False and True Outer Point.

L1190745Sun may be driving cold from beach and ridge but beneath the thick forest canopy winter holds on making me wish I had worn a wool rather than cotton hat. Shafts of light do penetrate down, mottling the forest understory like the floor of an old barn. In the beaver manufactured swamp one shaft spotlights a yellow knot of emerging skunk cabbage plants while the surrounding dark water forms a mirror for the surrounding trees.

The beach is empty of dog, man and bird when we emerge onto it. There is sun light to stand in and to bring a rich mixture of lights and darks to the snow covered Chilkat Mountains across Lynn Canal. Aki wants to keep to the beach with its sun and promise of dog encounters  but follows without protect when I return to the cool forest drama.

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Escaping from Winter

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This morning’s sun has strength enough to warm my face and soften the meadow snow at my feet. We stand next to a open creek with waters dark enough to hide the young salmon heading to sea and the few sea trout (steelheads) that make a propagation pilgrimage here each spring. All we see today is the reflection of Lion Head Mountain and a few Golden Eye ducks fishing downstream.

P1100370Later we will spot Canada Geese skulking under a spruce growing near the creek bed. For now the sun is enough as we follow the stream to where it cuts through a meadow on which spruce trees form evergreen islands.

The snow cover ends at meadow’s edge where Aki finds some interesting smells to investigate. Here the adventurous plants, no longer cut off from light by snow and ice swell in size and color, turning a rich yellow-green. They draw the eye as does the wine red berries that survived the winter, still attached to the stems that sustained them last summer—a sweet late winter treat.

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Last Fall a sudden freeze trapped gas bubbling up from this shallow stream bed to form little ice bound globes. Today they escape as sunlight melts away their transparent prison.

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The Ice Holds

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The moraine during a late winter thaw like this offers some danger but also some award. A firm crust covers the snow pack to offer easy access to places normally blocked by beaver ponds. The thinning ice covering the ponds injects the danger.  Several times today we chose between safe but cumbersome passage through softwood thickets and sliding freely over ice that may yield over very cold water.

L1190620Ice and men have a complicated relationship. If young and passing in a group near an ice covered lake in spring or fall, they will urge the bravest or weakest willed to test its strength. Aki sniffs the tracks of one who ventured alone 50 meters on thin ice then returned to shore. I, young once, recreate the experience—fear making each step lighter than the last, friends still on safe ground urging speed, the delicious mix of trill and fear that fades to just fear at the ripping sound of a crack forming under foot, radiating out brothers in sisters in every direction you could take.   Sometimes the crack opens to drop you into a lake or slough where the shock warms you enough to crawl onto firmer ice. Most times the ice supports your embarrassed, but dry retreat to shore.

L1190655Since Aki is nonjudgmental, we don’t test the lake ice but move to the river with plans to follow it to the glacier fronted lake.  Others have worn a deep path in the snow cover trail. It’s walls block Aki’s view of the moraine. Rather than dash about as usual she follows in my skis, which find a good balance between slide and grip on the firm surface snow. We make good time to the river but I have to take off my skis to cross where recent washouts denuded the trail.

If true winter doesn’t return, this magic door of firm snow will close. Today we hope to pass through before the frontier closes leaving these wilder parts of the moraine to the wolf and snowshoe hares.

Turning into the moraine I lead us up a snow blown creek bed until Aki finds a wolf track winding through an alder thicket.  We follow it to the edge of a beaver pond. Aki dashes onto its smooth flat surface while I look for a safe but rough passage through the tangle of willows lining the pond. L1190664

It’s above freezing and the pond ice has that milky translucence of still solid covering. I follow the little dog onto the ice and gain easy passage, no fear, no cracking, expecting no swim at the end. Then I remember that spring ice gave no warning when I fell through it in the past. Like that time on the Aniak Slough when I dropped through an invisible trap door into the mild current until only my right hand, gripping a canoe paddle remained above water. There, stretched out to full length, I didn’t feel fear or panic, just a detached appreciation for the lovely light penetrating through thinning ice and the wisdom of the elder that made me always carry a canoe paddle  on spring crossings of the slough. The canoe paddle, extending from my little circle of open water to firm ice made it possible to escape the water and reach the wood stove warmth of our cabin. Today we need no warm place to dry out. The ice holds.

Clouds of Crows Not Snow

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I hoped to see snowflakes melting into the sea; was willing to suffer the clinging weight of wet dungarees; was surprised to find Outer Point a dry, gray place. We left behind a squall at Chicken Ridge, fat flakes forming blankets over parked cars, trimming bare limbs of our apple tree. Here away from the storm catching mountains backing Juneau, rocks revealed by the retreating tide slowly dry in the wind.

L1190405Scanning for whales or even ducks, I find an empty channel. With the exception of a nervous cloud of chickadees we see nothing on the crescent shaped beach that forms the approach to False Outer Point.  Around the point a bald eagle scans the same water but flies off when we approach his observation point.  Later I see him streak low over the water targeting something hidden behind a toothy rock formation.

A stony arm thrown seaward then abandoned by nature, False Outer Point must be seen at ebbing tide low enough to open a level path around the line of steep cliffs that form the point’s headlands.  Composed of hard and soft layers of rock twisted 180 degrees by geological forces, the point is most interesting where most exposed to the sea. Wave action breaks awayL1190455 to nothing the soft then sculpts the hard into aggressive teeth.  Around the corner, small dunes of mussel shells collect at the high water mark.  Rounded stones animated by the tide carve impressions into softer rock.

Down beach we find only a lone black crow to share the beauty. He flies away after spotting us. There is a raven in the woods making almost conversational sounds to himself. Great mimics, our ravens copy the sounds of dripping water, cats, and even electrical transformers. This one appears to be practicing lines for the part of Raven in the Tlingit creation story, “The Box of Daylight.” (Here is a link for a video telling of the story:  http://vimeo.com/5221802)  He reminds me of the time my daughter, when at Sunday School, told her teachers and four year old classmates the Box of Daylight story when asked who created the world.

Leaving raven to rehearse, we move down to a portion of beach offering a good view of Shaman Island from which a cloud of black birds erupts — northwest crows. At first they move toward us but then turn to drop out of our sight behind Outer Point. Instead of the expected wall of snowy white we receive briefly this black specked sky.

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Through a Glass Darkly

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Judging by the way she streaks across the crisp snow of this big meadow, Aki doesn’t mind living in the gray. The uniform overcast above provides a flat light for the meadow where a fog patch at the far end provides the only distraction for my the human eye. Stretching out I begin skiing to the now free running stream that drains the land of river otter and beaver.

It’s like cheating, moving over the meadow, each glide carrying me forward an extra six inches. When we last visited the meadow surface was covered with the tracks of predators and prey, the sad deep hoof prints of a struggling deer, it’s following wolf, the clueless snowshoe hare. The daily freeze-thaw cycle of last week softened the evidence of battle and reduced my old ski trail to a rounded wound that winds into a grove of spruce, the track of a giant’s finger across the top of a just frosted cake.

L1190329Leaving the meadow I lead Aki through a willow screen to the stream. Without a breath of wind to disturb it, the water course’s surface forms a dark glass reflecting lambs wool clouds and winter bare willows. Someone has dug a vertical two foot deep tunnel that appears to make a 90 degree turn toward to creek. I think river otter club house or escape route.

Up creek water again pours over the little beaver dam but not enough to disturb the almost perfect reflection of their house still insulated by snow.

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Holding a Place in Line

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Joined by the the other permanent human resident in her her house, Aki and I confine ourselves to the cross country ski track set on a riverside campground. The little dog happily dashes between her humans, one moving faster on skate skis than me on old school gear.

P1120576Skiing on a set track, where you can reduce life to the kick-slide-kick Nordic rhythm, drives thoughts inward during these empty times in the riverine forest. That will change next month when the salmon smolt leave Windfall Lake to start up the big, brutal engine of life, priming it as prey for the fish and animals trying to eek out a living at winter’s end. The game fish, Cutthroat Trout and Dolly Varden Char follow the baby salmon to the river’s mouth, concentrating in such hungry numbers that it is illegal to fish for them there.

At ski’s end Aki and I walk to the edge of a small bluff and look over the river now  swollen by a massive high tide. What normally is a landscape of sand bars decorated by drift wood logs and the occasional fish duck becomes almost indistinct from the sea it feeds. Only the root systems of the largest drift logs rise above its surface. On one a mature bald eagle perches on a root, facing seaward, looking miserable in the rain, as if resenting the feckless friends for whom he saves a place in the line of life.

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New England: Please Return Our Winter!

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I am tired of writing about rain, not the rain itself, just describing it. Today we decide to ignore the wet wall we walk through on the way to the moraine. This is easy for Aki as long as recent dog dropping distract her; harder for me since my handkerchief is already wet from wiping drops off the UV filter.

P1100125The place is empty of people, as if they got the memo warning of the toxic effects of today’s flood inducing deluge. We travel alone over packed snow through a screen of young alders to the Mendenhall River and a view of the glacier under storm clouds. A tall cottonwood tree leans stiffly over the river, as if righting itself after a near fall. We’ve seen eagles roost there during late summer, scanning the river for a spawned out salmon; hoping to be the first scavenger to greet its arrival on that gravel bar just down river from the tree.   In this time of famine on the moraine, the eagles hunt the tidelands.

The beavers have been busy. We find evidence of their recent logging activity along the shore of Moose Lake, a moss covered willow laid out on wet snow, its stump sculpted by the beaver teeth, the surrounding snow covered with willow chips. Why do they rise from their dens during mid-winter thaws; do they fall trees for food, dam material, or entertainment?

P1100120Near the logging operation, where a small creek keeps part of the lake ice free, a small mud flat has formed. Somethings— dog or beaver or both— have tracked clean snow with the reddish mud from the flat. Dogs, capable of extravagant silliness are the most likely culprits. If it wasn’t raining so hard I’d bend down to inspect the tracks.

Choosing Peace over Depression

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Robbed of drama by low clouds and snow melt temperatures, this beach walk could bring depression or peace to those sharing it with Aki and her master. Those looking forward to many years of rain forest living find peace; the rest a depression that they will try to stem with overindulgence at tomorrow’s Super Bowl party.

P1100013Aki enjoys the thawing weather for the exiting smells it releases from the trail side snow. She leaves me these naked alders, limbs twisted into awkward patterns that frame gray-brown beach, blue-gray sea, and a raft of party color harlequin ducks. The ducks float just beyond a diminutive surf line, their leaders suddenly slipping underwater then popping up to the surface to swallow their catch.

The trail takes us past the old Tlinght village where thimble berry brush covers the old canoe haul outs in summer. Today it’s all snow except for three alder trees, grown large where the fish drying racks must have been. Overhead one raven performs acrobatics on a rising wind.

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