Category Archives: Kwethluk

Nature

They are Back

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The ravens waited for Aki. Two of the large black birds strutted down the Fish Creek Bridge as if fat-rich bodies of dead dog salmon weren’t stretched out for them on a gravel bar beneath the bridge. They were sated and bored and looking to do some mischief. My little dog was a handy patsy. When they didn’t make way for us on the bridge, Aki growled and dashed forward. The ravens flited a little further down the bridge and waited for her to catch up. Just before she did, the ravens lifted themselves onto the bridge rails.

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Game ended, the little poodle-mix trotted off the bridge and headed toward Fish Creek Pond. Two bald eagles eyed our approach. Incoming pink salmon splashed on the pond’s surface. One let itself be caught by a grade schooler on the opposite shore of the pond.

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We’d see at least a half-a-dozen eagles on our walk to the creek’s mouth. All have been drawn here by the pink and chum salmon now filing up the creek. All around Juneau, chum salmon are spawning in their home streams. Each stream draws of collection of bald eagles, ravens, crows, and gulls waiting for the dying to begin.

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Grumps

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Three young women walked towards us off the Basin Road trestle bridge, not together but spread out like they are trying not to draw artillery fire. Aki trots toward them, tail wagging, eyes intent. The first woman stares at me and I laugh and hope that she doesn’t notice.

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I laughed, not because of her designer “cat eyes” glasses or bronze colored body suit. I laugh because she is the first person we have met that hasn’t responded to Aki’s goofy charm.  We had just walked a loop up and down Perseverance Trail, passing many locals and cruise ship tourists. Every one, even the gruff guys and smart phone-toting teenagers at least smiled when we passed them.

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Maybe the three young women had just fought and needed time to cool down. Perhaps they had been forced by family to take an Alaska cruise when they would rather have spent the summer at the beach. What ever brought on their grumpy mood is sure to prevent them from noticing local beauties, like the lilac covered daisies lining the old mining road trail.

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Why Not Stop Once in Awhile?

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The rain stopped early this morning and the wind has shaken the beach grass dry.  As I slow walk down the Outer Point Beach, watching two eagles do an aerial dance with steps known only to them, I realize that I have never just sat and watched the sea from here. Without giving Aki warning, I plop down on a beach log.

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A strong breeze tears through the canopy of the forest that borders the beach. But the trees prevent it from reaching the little dog or me. The wind rips leaves from the beach-side alders, carries them over our heads, then releases them to float down onto the water.  Microbursts of wind slam into the surface of the bay driving tiny by intense waves out in concentric circles. Out in a Lynn Canal a boat idles, waiting for a whale to surface.

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The rain starts up, falling in thick drops that form grey circles on the beach pebbles when they hit home. I am still inclined to doddle but Aki is not. She stands thirty meters away where the trail through the woods begins, showing me her “are you crazy” look. Perhaps I am, little dog, to let you bully me away from all this turbulent beauty.

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Fish and Friend Ballet

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Aki didn’t come with on this fishing trip. It’s for the best. She’d been bored after she investigated the boat for crumbs. The boat’s rhythmic pounding as it rounded Shelter Island would have sent her searching the cutty cabin for a place to hide. She wouldn’t have been calmed until the banging stopped, even after I assured her that the waves would drop at the changing of the tide.  Now I wonder if I shouldn’t have stayed home with the little dog.

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I was thrilled and frightened by a humpback whale that surfaced less than fifty meters in front of us as the boat headed for the fishing grounds. The captain and I both felt relief after he made a course correction letting the whale slide by twenty meters to port. Now I am a little bored and feeling put upon by the rough motion of the boat beating into sharp-edged swells. The captain and I sank our herring-baited hooks an hour ago.  At the edge of our vision, a pod of humpbacks bubble feed. But to move nearer to them would take us away from the fish we seek.

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Right now the Juneau Costco store is opening its doors. If home and not being hammered by waves on Lynn Canal, I could buy two immaculate red salmon fillets nestling under plastic wrap in a foam tray. The tray would cost less than the gas used to reach the fishing grounds. But if I substituted that salmon for the one I hope to catch this morning I could not have watched the peaks of the Chilkat Range climb out of low lying clouds. There’d be no more whale encounters if I only fished at Costco, no more chances to see a bear work the tidelands for found food.

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The tip of my trolling pole dips down and then pops us as a fish pulls my line from the downrigger clip. I grab the pole and reel in slack until I can feel hooked salmon struggling to escape. When it breaks the water and I know it is a silver.  My fishing partner reels in his line and cranks up the downrigger cables so they can’t interfere with the boating of the fish. With the net, he moves in front of me as I gently reel in my line. Three times the silver will undo my efforts when it swims away after being brought close to the boat. It will be too tired to resist the net the fourth time. Then I will remember that it is this ballet of salmon and friend that I would miss most of all if I only fished at stores.

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Salmon for Dinner

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The Gastineau Channel eagles and seals are assembled for a banquet. Thirty seals lounge on a disappearing sand bar. An even greater number of eagles huddle together on a barge tied up near the salmon hatchery. Their dish for supper—homeward bound chum salmon—wait in line to climb the hatchery fish ladder. Soon the seals will be herding salmon into a tight group that will make harvesting easier.  But I can’t figure how the eagles will cash in on the chum bonanza.  Except for those fish killed by seals or fisherman and not eaten, the salmon will all end up in the hatchery pens. There they will be electrocuted and their eggs or milt will be removed. The milt will fertilize eggs to create the next generation of salmon.

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Simple Things

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Simple things—a cooling breeze, sunlight on flowers, interesting shapes of everyday objects—can lift a person’s mood. Aki keeps it simple in her life. She examines every faint smell. The little dog follows the straightforward social rules of her kind, showing submission at the first meeting with a larger dog and then joy when submission is not required. Often my tendency toward complexity leads me to ignore the plain things.

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This morning I am standing at a trail junction waiting for Aki to catch up. Mosquitoes are storming around. I want to move before the one buzzing my right ear sinks its drill-bit like proboscis into the tender flesh at my temple. When the little dog breaks into a run in my direction I make my escape. We continue on to Gastineau Meadows in a cloud of bugs. A ten-knot breeze reaches the meadow the same time as us, carrying away the mosquitoes. In the unexpected quiet that follows, I slowly focus on how the wind ripples through the meadow grass. I notice, too, the early morning sunlight elevating the beauty of simple objects like dead trees limbs and live pinecones.

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Tiny but Fierce

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Aki showed indifference while I pulled on my bike gear and left the house this morning. I didn’t hear her howl when I rode out of the yard and down the steep hill into downtown Juneau. She seemed calm when I took a post-ride shower. But her patience and understanding ran out when I filled a mug with coffee.  Okay little dog, we’re going.

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I crack open a window to distract Aki and drive over to muskeg meadow. It should be empty of people. No one I know would spend a sunny afternoon hunting and pecking on the muskeg for ripe cloudberries. Only expats from tundra towns or Scandinavia seek them out.

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At first Aki refuses to follow me off the gravel trail.  She has learned to avoid the normally wet muskeg. But thanks to our recent drought the meadow is dry. She can spring over it in search of interesting smells. After plopping a cloudberry into the container, I look up and spot my little poodle-mix legs up on the muskeg.  With the look on her face of an aficionado with a mouthful of perfect ice cream, she rubs her back on something that must smell like doggy heaven.

This is why I choose to ride my bike to Sheep Creek this morning rather than take you there in the car.

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That morning, I had heard the scream of gulls before reaching the creek. They fought for position on gravel bars and places in the stream full of holding salmon. A dozen bald eagles held a meeting on the Gastineau Channel beach. Already dead salmon—the kind that dogs love to squirm in—were pilling up on the beach.

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In mid-stream, a lone Bonaparte gull landed on a partially submerged rock. While she screeched from her rock, a dog salmon slapped her pulpit with its tail.  The little gull flew off and dive-bombed an eagle as it ripped flesh off a dead salmon. Tiny but fierce bird.  Kind of like Aki.

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Beaver Country

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We are deep in beaver country, walking on a strip of high ground between two ponds.  Cottonwood trees felled by the energetic rodents crisscross the ground. Paths beaten smooth by beaver feet drop off the trail to the ponds. Aki follows me down a path that leads to their den. Made of sticks stripped of bark, the beaver house looks like a Inuit igloo—a rough dome with a round-topped tunnel that allows underwater access to the den. I’m surprised to find an above water entrance.  More surprising, Aki doesn’t drop into it to visit the beavers.

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Near the beaver house, a lichen colony grows on the tip of a rotting spruce branch. The top branches of the little lichen trees have formed a tangled canopy around their dead host. Next January, while the beavers sleep away the long, cold days, snow might collect in the lichen canopy, turning the lichen forest into a snow-glove sized metaphor for winter.  But by spring, the rotting base of the forest will give way and the tangle of lichen will fall to the mossy forest floor.

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Auk Lake

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When she was a puppy, Aki would carry a book around in her mouth. I’d find her tooth marks on volumes left by the bed. She gave up books when she figured out she couldn’t eat words. But she still likes to visit our local college.

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I also like to walk across the tiny campus with its Tlingit totem poles and sheet metal raven sculpture. The campus abuts against Auk Lake, which we circumnavigated after our college visit. It’s a trail better suited for someone hearing impaired who wouldn’t have to listen to the constant noise from nearby Glacier Highway.

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After I tune out the road roar, I notice a face formed by the reflection of sedge by small wind-driven swells. It looks grumpy, even menacing in a James Thurber sort of way. Nearby a small floatplane appears to be sinking in shoreline vegetation.   But I know it is tied safely to a hidden dock, ready to fly its owner over the glacier and onto a quiet mountain lake.

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She Can Never Know Solitude

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Since this is the first overcast morning we have had in a week, I shouldn’t be surprised by the lack of hikers on Perseverance Trail.  But it seems weird to have the trail to ourselves.  Thanks to her powerful nose, Aki can never experience true solitude. Her world is always full of scent messages. She can never know and would probably hate the sense of being alone in the rain forest.

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Today’s flat light robs much of the beauty from the mountains but there is plenty of interest at my feet: heart-shaped cotton woods leaves stressed into displays of fall colors, canary yellow monkey flowers (aka touch-me-nots) framed by their own green leaves, and a judgmental little poodle-mix urging me to get a move on.

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