Category Archives: Kwethluk

Nature

Slouching Storm

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As Aki and I round Fish Creek Pond, a kingfisher scolds us, what Poet Wendall Berry describes as the sound of the bird closing its rusty hinge. Out of the corner of my eye I see a stiff twig still vibrating after the kingfisher launched from it. The bird with attitude hovers for a moment over the iced-over pond and flies off. 

            The little dog and I walk out onto the spit that parallels Fish Creek. We can hear the high, also hysterical cry of an unseen shorebird. From nearby woods comes an eagle scream. But all if can see is a small raft of bufflehead ducks and a handful of gulls. We will watch two eagles before the walk ends, but both will fly high and straight out of sight. 

            Down Stephens Passage Blue-grey snow clouds slowly close a sucker hole through which a sun had spotlighted a patch of the slope of Mt. Stoller White. I expect the clouds to close over us like fog but they hand over the passage. A sparse shower of snow gives us a taste of what is slouching our way. 

Bluebird Snowday

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Last night, after the last snowfall, we saw the moon for the first time in weeks. This morning the sun replaced the moon. As it arced across a bluebird sky, the little dog and I headed out for a walk in the sunshine. 

            As the temperature hovered in the low 20’s F., I parked the car near a wetlands access trail. Normally the little dog hangs back at the tree line when I walk onto these wetlands. Something once scared her here—an eagle or gunshot. Today, apparently unaffected by the memory, Aki trots along beside me. She must have caught my “snow day” mood. 

            An incoming tide floods the wetland channels, breaking up the thin sheets of ice that formed after the last ebb. Ice-free areas of water reflect the snow-white brilliance of mountains across the channel. 

            After her initial enthusiasm fades, Aki starts edging back toward the tree line. Reluctantly, I follow her back to the trees and then to the car.  We drive up to a mountain meadow where fresh snow weighs down the boughs of bull pines. I had planned a long wader around the meadow but muskeg has yet to firm up. Aki can’t do her usually race, drop, and roll in the new snow. After soaking in the sunshine, we head back to town. 

Getting Her Way

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 Aki starts to whine after I sit on a driftwood stump. She raises the pitch of her plea as I rest my telephoto lens on the trunk of another driftwood log. Across the Mendenhall River, the great blue heron that I have been stalking turns its head to find out who is raising a ruckus. I take several pictures and abandon the perfect hide. 

            Aki, who had been shivering while she whined, leads me back to the trail. She goes into a tail-dropping cringe every time I turn to look at the heron. The blue-gray water of the river captures the reflection of the long-necked bird like it does the surrounding mountains. Just upriver from the heron, a female bufflehead duck swims across the reflected avalanche chutes of Blackerby Ridge. 

            Downriver, a bald eagle stands on the top of its own driftwood stump. It watches 100 Vancouver Canada geese fly by. Rather than climbing, the geese glide to land just out of our sight. . Imagining how the chestnut and black birds would standout against the newly snow-covered wetlands, I lead the little dog toward them. At the end of the trail, we spot the geese on a snow-free sandbar on the opposite ride of the river. They blend in. If they hadn’t been cackling, we would never have found them. 

Winter White

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Today, winter white has replaced rain forest gray in the skies above Douglas Island. It’s the kind of sky that dominated winter days in the Western Alaskan towns where I once lived. The sky littles contrast to the snow-covered ground. 

            When the little dog and I enter an old growth forest, we seem to move from winter to fall. The forest canopy captured most of the snow that fell here during yesterday’s squalls. Today, it blocks our view of the white skies. 

Paper-thin triangles of ice form a puzzle on the surface of the beaver pond. Since beavers keep hidden during the day there is no reason not to follow Aki down the trail to the beach. There, a small raft of golden eye ducks ride the swells. No sunshine reaches the beach or the offshore waters. But on the other side of Lynn Canal, the Chilkats look like they are posing for a Sydney Lawrence painting.  

On the drive home we stop at a roadside waterfall where spray has coated the branches of every tree and bush with a half-inch of ice It’s 25 degrees F., cold enough for freezing spray but too warm to stop the flow of the waterfall. The ice is more gray than white and would turn translucent if sunshine could reach it. I almost expect to find ferries peeking out from between the icy spruce limbs, or at least a cautious jay. 

Finally, Some Snow to Track Up

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The land is finally white thanks to last night’s snow. It sticks to every surface, no matter how vertical. I’d hoped that we would be the first to track up the snow covering Eagle Beach. But raven got here first. He wandered above with no apparent purpose but to pattern the snow with its talon prints. 

            Every twenty feet or so, we cross a line of red squirrel tracks. Animals that left the tracks scold us from safe perches in trailside spruce trees. The ravens that tracked up the trail croak out the progress of our passage. One lands just above us in a cottonwood tree, turns its head, and studies us with one eye, as if he was using a monocle. This raven and another will leap frog over our heads from tree to tree, squawking all the way. 

            When we started the hike, Aki rolled in the snow and then plunged her face into it. She emerged blind until she set the snow flying by twisting her head. Now the snow is fighting back. Balls of it cling to her lower limbs. When one grows too heavy, she chews it off. 

When we started, I could see the Chilkat Mountains rising on the other side of Lynn Canal. Now swirling snow clouds cut the mountains off from view. 

Year End Rainbow

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Like so many recent walks, yesterday’s started in the rain. Aki and I squished down a now-snow-free trail along the Mendenhall River. The river ran green in the gray light. Water collected in Aki’s gray curls. Thick river mist obscured views of the surrounding mountains. The weather seemed emblematic of the overcast year that would end at midnight. 

            The river mist was glowing by the time we reached the bend of the river which offers a view of the glacier on a clear day. Thunder Mountain started to shrug off the surrounding cloud cover. 

            Quietly, a rainbow formed. It was so faint that at first I blamed my wishful imagination. The Bible tells us that God formed a rainbow over Noah’s ark to seal his promise to never again flood out life on earth. The way the world’s peoples treated each other in 2019, I was looking for a sign that God wouldn’t renege on his promise.  

            As if to put me at ease, the rainbow solidified. One leg plunged into the river and the other touching the glacier. After we moved onto the glacial moraine, it was all blue skies and white peaks. Mts. McGinnis and Stroller White stood tall above the reforming river mist. 

            Things returned to normal after the clouds recaptured the sun. Before returning to the car, we stopped at a Moose Lake beach to watch the bright-white tip of Mt. McGinnis disappear into the gloam.

Happy New Year to the readers of “Walking with Aki.” May next year bring happiness.

Sucker Hole

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The clouds cracked open this morning as Aki and l loaded I into the car. They let in enough sunshine to reflect off of Gastineau Channel. The sun lit up the blue patch of exposed skiy and painted the bordering clouds with sunset colors. 

            The blue hole slowly closed as we drove to the Gastineau Meadows trailhead. When we arrived, Mts. Juneau, Roberts and Sheep still glowed white across the channel. Now they have returned to rain forest gray. 

            We climb an icy trail through a bull pine forest to the meadow, just in time to witness the clouds close over the hole. In Southeast Alaska we call these patches of blue in the marine layer, “sucker holes.” More than one pilot lost above the cloud layer had flown through one of these holes in hope that he will be able to find his way home beneath the gray. For more than one, this has been misplaced hope. Aki seems unaffected as the hole closes, dimming the day. But it ends any hope I had for a sunny, winter day. 

Teenagers

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Aki and I are following Fish Creek to its mouth. The trail takes us along the spine of a spit. Two eagles watch us pass from roosts on the other side of the creek. A strong flood tide is quickly expanding the creek, covering the dead-grass meadow bordering it. 

            While Aki investigates the base of a cow parsnip stalk, I look seaward, hoping to see the Chilkat Mountains on the west side of Lynn Canal. I can make out Admiralty Island but clouds hide the Chilkats. In the foreground something that looks like a half-submerged drift log is moving around Fritz Cove at an impossible speed.  With the help of my telephoto lens, I figure out that my log is actually a gang of adolescent Stellar sea lions.  

            What I took to be a blackened root is actually the fin of a reclining sea lion. His buddies swim around and under him, sometimes jamming their heads together only to explode away. Another eagle watches the sea lions with what could be a judgmental expression on its face. 

Just Hanging Out

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Yesterday’s storm forced the snow to retreat a thousand feet up the Douglas Ridge.  It did the same to the snow covering the flanks of the mountains surrounding Mendenhall Glacier. It also opened up bare patches on the Mendenhall Lake’s beaches. Aki and skirt the bare bits, using the remaining snow and ice as bridges over the silty beach. 

            The lake’s surface is still covered with ice. We find open water where the lake waters flow into Mendenhall River. It is hard for ice to form over Water quickening into current. Here, as other has been the case all through the walk, Aki keeps close. On previous walks along this beach, the little dog has wandered into the woods, trusting me to keep safe. 

            I want to tell her to relax. I won’t swim in the open water or slip on a patch of ice. Do I seem more vulnerable to her this morning?  Does she smell a wolf hanging out in the woods? Maybe she just wants some quiet time with aa friend before the next storm hits.  

The Second Growth

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The wind shook our little car on the way to this morning’ trailhead. With the help of the windshield wipers I could make out the road through sheets of rain. Aki still whined with excitement a few blocks before we reached the entrance to the Marriot Trail. Two ravens were waiting for us. They flew ahead and landed on a spruce tree and watched. The ravens followed as we walked along a creek and then out onto a very wet meadow. No longer inhibited by the forest trees, the wind blasted the little dog and I. We pushed on. The ravens did not. 

            The trail led us into a forest still recovering from being clearcut. Like all second growtht forests, it is dark even on a sunny day. Thanks to the dense canopy formed by densely packed spruce and hemlock trees, not enough light can reach the forest floor to support life. We drop into a creek drainage which was never logged. Some of the thick spruce have been growing here for three hundred years. 

            The second growth forest continues on the other side of the street. Thin trees, twenty feet long and stripped of bark lay scattered on the ground. Most still have a root ball. Micro-bursts of wind must have uprooted them years ago, and tossed them about like an angry giant. Here and there new trees have taken root in an old growth stump. If left alone, nature wastes nothing.