Category Archives: Kwethluk

Nature

Sulking in the Rain

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Two teenagers, each weighed down by a large backpack, sulk at the junction of Dan Mollar Trail and the Treadwell Ditch. They must have spent the night at the Forest Service cabin with family members who are still up the trail. Aki usually draws “ooooo’s” and “ahs” from woman of this age. They ignore the little poodle-mix and her humans. I have to ask them to move so we can have two meters of space when are pass. 

            While walking up the plank trail that leads to the cabin, I wonder whether the backpackers were upset about the rain currently soaking into their fashionably bare heads or were going through no-phone withdrawal. They seemed happy to move out of our way and weren’t worried when I told them about the fresh pile of bear scat steaming nearby. Perhaps we had just crashed a counseling session. 

            Aki normally takes point on this trail. Today, she is content to follow at a slow pace. We cross wildflower meadows that look like threadbare carpets due to damage done last winter by snowmachines. A dark-eyed junko hops between magenta-colored clumps of bog rosemary and the yellow blossoms of large-leaved avens. 

It’s All About Attitude

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We pass a yearling bear on our way to the glacier. Grazing on meadow grass, it gives off a contemplative vibe, like a pastured Jersey cow. It’s brown like a grizzly, but lacks the shoulder hump of one. I suspect it is a cinnamon black bear. Being able to view the bear at a safe distance is cool. But this trip is about arctic terns.

While I get out her leash, Aki trots along the Mendenhall Lake shore. I need to get her on lead but the terns distract me. They hover over the lake, whipping their wings back and forth like a hummingbird and then dive into the glacier-silted water. Few catch anything. Those that do fly with it over to their nest. 

By jogging, I catch my little delinquent and snap on the leash. Now tethered, she stops every few feet to sniff and pee. Does she know that I am in a hurry to reach the Picture Point overlook for a better view of the terns? I try not to fume and remind myself that the little dog needs to take it easy or she won’t recover from her muscle strain. 

We take it very easy on the trail to Nugget Falls, stopping once to watch a tiny tern divebomb a raven. The raven, easily ten times larger than the tern, is hiding in a clump of willows. I suspect that the raven had been caught robbing the tern’s test. When the tern flies back to her eggs, the raven cruises over to a cottonwood tree and harasses a large bald eagle to flight. Attitude is clearly more important than size on the glacial moraine. 

The Experiment

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The editors of a literary journal called “The Dewdrop” were kind enough to publish one of my poems. Here is the website address, if you like to read the poem. Thank you.

http://the dewdrop.org

This is an experiment. Rather than restrict Aki to a short neighborhood walk. I’ve driven her to the False Outer Point trailhead. We will walk the trail while keeping Aki on her leash. This will keep her from running. It will also keep me pinned down each of the many times she will stop to pee or sniff. 

            Yesterday she paced about the house, letting me know that she needed more exercise than what she received during the short neighborhood walk. It takes twice as long as normal for us to reach the beaver pond. The resident mallard hen stands exposed on a tiny island. The remains of this year’s chick brood hides near her in the grass.  A bald eagle circles over the scene. Last summer she lost most of her chicks to an eagle and a great blue heron. I hope she has better luck this year. 

            We wander past the hen and move as slow as a geriatric drill team to the beach. Just offshore a belted kingfisher hovers fifteen meters in the air. Then, it drops like a dive bomber into the water. In another second it bursts skyward with a captured fish in its beak. 

Walking Over the Bones

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Tide and current often expose bones on the Sandy Beach. This morning Aki and I step over deer bones tumbled smooth in Gastineau Channel. They will soon breakdown into white specks to become lost in the pulverized gold ore that gives the beach its name. 

The little dog and I also step over bones made of iron, or ceramic—train rails, machine shop pulleys, slabs of ore cars, and pottery shards. These 100 year old relics of a collapsed mining community won’t be disappearing soon. 

Nature is working hard to reduce our human detritus to its base components. Mussels and barnacles have colonized the iron train rails and wooden wharf pilings. Wind, rain and sun work then over after the tide ebbs. Currents rub the rails together, scarping and scratching away tiny bits. But the relics will be rusting or wearing away long after Aki and I are gone. 

Shattering Reflections

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Today, we need to rely on reflection for beauty. The flat light lacks the strength to brighten colors on the moraine. But the lake water sharpens the lines of that it reflects. A breath of wind could take that away. I hurry the little dog down the trail to where I can photograph the glacier in the calm waters of Moose Lake. 

            Even though the trail offers a rich pee mail exchange, Aki doesn’t try to slow me down. I blame the birds singing concealed in the dense trailside foliage. I waste previous minutes trying to spot them. Then there was a robin that had managed to pluck a dragonfly out of the air. 

            The wind punishes me for doodling. Just as we arrive at the before reflection spot, a breeze ripples the surface, cutting up the glacier’s reflection into thousands of little pieces. 

Song Sparrow

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If Aki could choose a spirit animal, it would be the wolf. Today she powers ahead like one, ready to meet any danger or exploit any opportunity to feed. She doesn’t need wolf-like skills on this walk along the Auk Nu beach. We will hear an eagle but not see it. No crows or gulls loiter on the beach. No ducks float offshore.


If I could choose a spirit animal, it would be the great blue heron. Patient and quiet but able to move quickly when needed, the heron would make a good human. No heron has ever shown interest in me.


I’ve locked eyes many times with the song sparrow. Each time I’ve had the impression that the diminutive bird was taking my measure. This morning, I caught one bathing in a shallow stream, just where it curves away from a collection of flowering thimbleberry bushes. It bounced up and down in the water like an ousel and then plunged its head under the surface, filling the air around it with water drops. It stopped to give me a hard stare before splashing some more.

Manufactured or Invasive

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I am having a hard time keeping up with Aki this morning. She is powering ahead, as we walk along the edge of one of the Twin Lakes. It’s a major dog walking trail but the little poodle is the only canine in sight. She must be hoping to run in to a friend. 

Much of what we see is either man made or landscaped. An expressway borders the east shores of the lakes. A well-used highway mimics the curves of the other shore.  The lovely but stubborn knot weed once dominated the trail. But city gardeners, considering the plant invasive, have almost eradicated it. 

The red blooms of hawkweed and white daisy flowers color the areas once dominated by knot weed. Hawkweed is on the local list of invasive species and the cartoon-like daisies probably should be on it. Finding either plant thriving on a wild beach fringe would upset me. But here, on this manufactured park space, they just look pretty. 

Rich Colors

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The rain forest is enjoying a civilized summer. We get good soakings of rain followed by days of party cloudy skies. Gastineau Meadows is benefiting from the Goldilocks weather. The humble willows and alders lining the meadow trail exhibit greens and yellows so rich they could give Aki a stomach ache if she consumed colors.

            I click my camera’s shutter button and click again, as if each click is a spoon of chocolate gelato heading toward my mouth. Normally Aki would object to the delays caused when I stop to take just another picture. But today, she shows great patience. 

            The little dog even joins me when I walk off the gravel trail to get an up close view of the meadow wildflowers. Charged with sun and rain, Labrador tea plant have pushed their blossom balls over a foot in the air. Chocolate lilies and British tobacco (buckbeans) do the same. 

Frozen in Place

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Aki is giving me her “Don’t Expect Me to Follow You!!!” look. She intends to finish the Rain Forest Trail loop and be home in time to mooch cheese from her other human. I want to walk down a beach still wet from the retreating tide. We will see more eagles than dogs, little dog, but I’m feeling selfish.

            The dawn broke clear and the sun is still low enough in the sky to bathe the ocean in intense light. Bald eagles come and go from their spruce roosts, making sorties over Lynn Canal. Most return with empty talons. Each time an eagle returns to its roost, at least one crow drops onto a nearby limb to harass it. None of the eagles show the least interest in Aki. 

            The poodle-mix follows closely behind me when we approach False Outer Point. A scattering of crows leave the beachside forest and land on rocks recently revealed by the ebbing tide. One of the black, crow-sized birds has an orange beak. It’s an oyster catcher. I haven’t seen one this year. Even though it is as noticeable on its sun-soaked beach rock as a flashing traffic barrier, the oyster catcher freezes in place as if camouflaged.  

            Nothing startles the oyster catcher into flight, not a salmon leaping just offshore, the growl of a Steller seal lion, the shadow of a cruising eagle, or two belted kingfishers engaged in aerial combat.

First on the Trail

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I am rushing to be first today on the Outer Point Trail. It has become crowded later in the day since the pandemic hit the rainforest. This morning I want to share it only with Aki. Telling myself that we soon be at the trailhead, I stop near a boat ramp to allow Aki a chance to relieve herself. 

            A seal splashes nearby while the little dog does her business. At first, I doubt that it is a seal. Normally, they never make a sound, even when diving on a fast-moving salmon. Just before it crash dives again, I make out the sad dog face of a harbor seal. Every minute or so, the seal surfaces for a second and then makes a splashy dive. When it spots me on the shore, the seal returns to stealth mode and moves quietly towards the little dog and I. 

            I’ve seen seals drive salmon toward other seals by slapping flippers on the water’s surface. But this guy is working alone. Is he bored, or is he scaring herring into a right ball that will make them easier to eat? After the seal disappears, I hustle Aki into the car and drive to the trailhead parking lot, which is empty. I rush to the pond but find  no ducks or geese sheltering the in the reeds. The beach, when we reach it is empty. All the fish ducks must be working the waters of out the outer coast.  

            The panicked honking of Canada geese breaks morning silence. Coming from the direction of the beaver pond, a wedge of geese skim over the beach and fly toward the Chilkat Mountains on the opposite side of Lynn Canal. I wish that Aki and I had lingered at the pond long enough to have spotted the geese and witnesses the attack that drove them into the air.