Category Archives: Kwethluk

Nature

Camping Cove

Leave a reply

1

Aki is sharing the trail today with another dog and that dog’s human. The two canines had a scrap or two in car. But, now they cooperate as scouts, exploring the trailside woods and beaches. After two miles of walking we should be at the Camping Cove cabin.

4

It’s a great trail for a cold, sunny morning like this one. Lichen-cover rock slabs and wave-rolled beach grass glisten with frost. Strong sunlight invades the headlands between beaches, silhouetting the alders and spruce trees. Even inside the woods we can hear the boom of waves rolling off of Lynn Canal.

2

We learn from other hikers that a family of river otters is playing near the trail. We won’t see them or the critter that snapped a dry branch near the cabin as we snacked. Hearing the sound, both dogs make a half-hearted survey of the nearby woods but soon return to their humans. It could be a deer, which would look lovely if it wandered into the sunlit patch of grass near the beach. It could also be a bear, looking to snack on our apples. We leave before either shows itself.

3

The Days of The Dead

1 Reply

2

Perhaps because we just celebrated souls and saints—the days of the dead—the snarled pine snag has become a dancing spirit. Looking closer, I realize that it’s a trick of cold—the way that frost settled around the parallel, eye-socket-shaped injuries to a pine burl—that creates the illusion. But the apparition reminds me to honor my dead.

1

Like most Alaskan immigrants, my people are buried in hometown graveyards far away. I can not spend the first days of November tending their graves. But their spirit-like memories are quick to answer when beckoned.

If Aki remembers her dead, she does not say. Impatient with a human who stares too long at a frosted snag, the little dog starts off toward the beach. I follow and find two long rows of the orange and brown sea growth that we call rockweed. During the last storm tide, waves ripped the weed from anchoring stones and rocked it back and forth, like a baker needing dough, until the long, dense lines were formed.

3

I could dig into the rockweed rows and find eagle feathers, beaver-cleaned sticks, and opalescent shells. But a harbor seal just offshore grabs my attention by flipping a just-captured fish into the air and biting it in half. One death to sustain the life of another.

4

Tracks

36 Replies

 

4

Aki and I are back on the glacier moraine where all the leaves have already fallen. I am not surprised. Winter always comes first to the moraine. The glacier, the big river of ice, sees to that. There is still some color to be found. Green and yellow islands of grass stand above new ice on the lakes. A few stubborn leaves hang by a thread from frosty willow branches.

2

I have to coax the little dog off the main dog-walking trail and onto a rougher one that leads to the river. She stands for a minute at the junction, trying to use her mental powers to bend me to her will. When the invisible rubber band that connects us stretches to the breaking point, she gallops to me over crisp cottonwood leaves, producing a sound like that made by horse hooves on firm ground.

1

I am angered by the presence of wide-tire bicycle tracks on the soft trail. Just one pass of a fat bike over it last weekend reduced sections of the trail to a muddy gruel. Some of it sticks to my boots.

3

We find other, more welcome tracks at the river. Yesterday, before it froze, a deer crossed over the sandy beach and swam across the river. Frost has filled in one of the cloven tracks, now preserved in frozen sand until the next thaw.

5

Not Enough Patience

1 Reply

1

Aki and I have just reached a beach on the backside of Douglas Island. Across Stephens Passage, morning sunlight floods the beaches of Admiralty Island. We are still in shadow. A bald eagle flies over us and lands near its mate on a spruce tree. They greet each other in their complaining way. Just offshore a harbor seal works through a line of small surf. It’s round head slips above water once, twice, and then disappears. We won’t see it again.

3

A flew white clouds float above Admiralty but otherwise the sky is clear and blue. I scan the channel in hopes of spotting a whale but none spouts. Without sunlight to warm us, the little dog and I are starting to feel the cold. But, I can’t make myself leave the beach and the comforting sound of small surf hitting the rocks.

4

Frosted brush lines the trail back to the car. Unseen spiders have recently woven basket-shaped webs in the crotches of hemlock or willow twigs. The morning’s rising temperature is melting the frost that had settled on the net webbing during the night, leaving tiny drops of water to cling to the silk.

5

In half-an-hour, the sun will be high enough to reach the spider webs. It will make the little drops of water sparkle until they fall to the ground. But neither Aki nor I have the patience to wait.

2

After the Storm

1 Reply

1

Aki loves the human friend we walk with today. She squeals when I drive up to his house and spends the whole ride to the trailhead on his lap. The little dog walks attentively at his side as we travel the length of the Auk Rec trail.

2

The resident clutch of harlequin ducks are in their winter place just off shore of the mouth of a small streams. Down beach from them a school of gulls sulks at the mouth of another stream. Last week Typhoon Lan rains turned the normally gentle streams into eroding firehoses, cutting deep channels into the beach gravel and exposing roots of tough beach grass. But shafts of silver light pouring from the marine layer seem to bless the storm tired land. Sunlight even manages to illuminate yellow stands of dogwood and Mt. ash trees to remind us of why we love the rain forest.

3

Even with all this beauty, the human conversation turns to the effects of mine tailing stacking on marine life. As we watch harlequins, buffleheads, and golden eye ducks dive on small fish, my friend tells me about the heavy metal concentrations being found in seals. As if on queue, a Steller sea lion surfaces just off Pt. Louisa to disturb the glide of a loon. The descendents of the Tlingit people who once lived above these beaches still harvest seals for meat. Rich in protein and vitamins, they feed it to their children.

4

Digging out a little beauty

Leave a reply

3

In a gray interlude between yesterday’s sunshine and today’s predicted rain, Aki and I sneak in a visit to the Last Chance Basin. The trail we use suffered from the effects of Typhoon Lan. Thick tracks of fresh mud line both sides of the trail. At one point we have to climb up and over a ten-foot high hill of rock and mud washed down the side of Mt. Juneau during the typhoon.

2

As if we are the only folks in Juneau that didn’t get the memo, Aki and are alone on the normally popular trail. Even the animals seemed to have abandoned it. No squirrels chatter at the little dog. No birds flit between the yellowing thimbleberry brush. There are the cloven tracks of a mountain goat that had recently struggled through a muddy stretch. But Aki’s lack of interest confirms my suspicion that the goat is long gone.

1

I work hard to dig out some beauty on this flat-light day. But the fall color is fading and the normally red high bush cranberries are drifting to black husks. A white eruption of plum agaric mushrooms does provide a pleasant surprise deep in a mossy wood.

Thanks for the Color

1 Reply

3

Like most dwellers of lands closer to the poles than the equator, people in Juneau tend to paint their homes in bright colors. Walking past a rose-colored Craftsman house on a stormy day, like this one, can lift your spirits. I’m thankful, this morning, for all those in Juneau who paint their homes or businesses in pastel colors. I am grateful to those who long ago planted the trees of fall color, like maples and birch, that seem to give off  light on this gray day.

2

Aki and I are conducting her standard downtown patrol. As usual, she is all business. It’s been weeks since she has checked the trail of scent left on the streets by other dogs. Other than a trio of house dogs allowed out for a quick pee on their lawn, my poodle-mix will have no opportunity to sniff other dogs on this walk. We will pass a scattering of homeless in donated raingear. One, already smelling of stale smoke, will ask me for light. Others will pass head down as if to avoid getting rain in their eyes.

1

Before the Mirror Shatters

Leave a reply

1

After enjoying our first sunrise for what seems like months, I drive with Aki out to the one place without morning sun: the Mendenhall Glacier. The sun will have to rise above the shoulders of Thunder Mountain before it can warm the trail we walk on or make Nugget Falls sparkle. That won’t be much before eleven, when we will be back on Chicken Ridge.

5

Why then, Aki might ask, are we out here shivering in the twilight? If she did, I’d remind her that she is not shivering and there is light striking the glacier and the Mendenhall Towers that rise above it into blue sky. But we are both too distracted by eagles for conversation.

1

Attracted here by spawning sockeye salmon, five eagles bicker near the waters of Steep Creek. One with better luck or eyes tears away strips of flesh from a dead salmon. Behind the feeding bird, the calm waters of the lake reflect the glacier and Mt. McGinnis.

4

When the sun clears Thunder Mountain to bath everything in strong light, it will also bring a wind to riffle the ice-free portion of the lake, shattering the glacier’s mirror.

2

 

Between Fire and Ice

1 Reply

3

Yesterday, the clouds that pounded the little dog and me with rain decorated this mountain meadow with snow. We are here to enjoy the resulting white blanket. While Aki catches up on weeks worth of pee mail, I watch ghosts of fog climb the whitened mountain ridges. A scattering of tiny ponds reflect the scene, breaking up the mountains’ image with still-green lily pads. There are other signs that winter’s snow caught out the meadow plants.

2

Islands of strong, still green clumps of grass dot the snowy meadow. Many plants, like the sparse-leafed Labrador tea and blue berry bushes are still in fall color. At least they aren’t being crushed by the heavy snow like the low-growing sorrel.

1

A friend recently saw a hummingbird and a warbler, both summer visitors to the rain forest. Are they delaying their southern migration to avoid the current heat wave in California? It is 100 degrees in Los Angeles today and the Santa Anna winds are pushing wild fire through bird habitat. If things don’t change soon the birds will be caught between fire and ice.

4

Pink Pumpkins

Leave a reply

3

When I look up from the field of pink pumpkins, I spot a mountain goat feeding on the Southern slope of Mt. Juneau. Later, at home, I will enlarge the photo I took of the goat and realize that it is starring down at Aki and me. We are doing a circuit through Downtown Juneau. Already I followed the little dog up the gentle Gastineau Avenue grade to where we could look down on the docks, now cruise ship free. Then we dropped to South Franklin Street with its shuttered tee shirt and jewelry shops.

2

A line of gulls lined the superstructure of the cruise ship docks, dozing in the sun. A handful of smokers had spaced themselves along the dock. Some stood alone looking without much interest at the Douglas Mountain Ridge. Two talked, heads almost touching, as steam rose from their take-away coffee cups. One man, dressed in the business casual shirt and slacks of our commercial classes, lit up a long, smooth Cuban cigar. In short, the goat had plenty to look at from its mountain perch. But it broke off feeding to study a little poodle-mix sniff among a field of pink pumpkins. I suppose it makes sense. The man who painted and planted the pumpkins must have hoped to draw attention to his little field.

1