Category Archives: Kwethluk

Nature

Porpoising

1 Reply

3

Aki needs some beach time so we head to the old Auk Village site. It is still snowing when we arrive. We are at the tail end of the storm that left a foot of white stuff on the old growth forest floor. The little dog and I move down a well-packed trail as wet snow and melt water drip from the trailside spruce. We are soaked by the time we drop down onto the snow-free beach.

1

As Aki chases after her Frisbee, I scan the crescent-shaped bay for life. In addition to the usual confab of gulls, harlequin ducks, and crows, I spot a small pod of Dahl porpoise hunting just offshore. They, well porpoise: briefly break the bay’s surface then dip back beneath the water. It happens fast, too fast to see anything but backs and dorsal fins. Unlike their larger cousins, the whales, the porpoise don’t form a noticeable plume when they exhale. But their rolling through water shinning silver with storm light still gives me a thrill.

2

High Centered

1 Reply

3

Aki is stuck, high-centered a foot of new snow. Big, “Charlie Brown Christmas Special” flakes deepen the snow cover. Nearby, gulls and scoters bob in the three-foot swells about to slam onto a snow covered beach. The little dog gives me a patience look. She could be barking complaints about my trail selection. She could be whining. Instead she waits for the expected rescue.

1

I want to explain that I took special care to stomp down the trail. But her face tells me not to bother. She understands. I lift up the little dog and carry her up the trail and over a five-foot deep berm thrown up by a truck when it plowed out the trailhead parking lot. When released, she rolls her face in the snow and starts to chew off the snowballs now clinging to her legs. I want to tell her that thanks to this winter storm, she’d struggle on any trail we used today. A ten-year victim of our fickle weather, Aki doesn’t need such reassurance.

2

RIP

Leave a reply

2

To get to this pocket grove of old growth spruce, Aki and I had to cross recovering ground. More than 200 years ago, it began rebounding after being crushed by the Lemon Glacier. The Lemon retreated into hanging glacier status but since then someone clearcut most of the old growth that grew in its newly freed earth. Alders and berry brush choked the slashed land until new hemlock and spruce trees managed to rise above the tangled mess and form a second growth forest. The canopy of these thickly packed trees now blocks the light needed for understory plants.

1

Perhaps because they rooted in a hard-to-reach stream valley, the collection of spruce that now surround my little dog and I have stood since America purchased this land from Russia. In a tiny glade formed by the big trees, a bald eagle died and its body was devoured by forest recyclers. Aki tentatively sniffs the corpse—-now just bones and feathers, talons and beak, then backs away. The bird lays on its back with wings splayed out, head upside down. I hope it chose this peaceful place to die after a long life.

3

Frustration

Leave a reply

1

Aki and I are frustrated. The little dog sulks in her house, still wearing the red sweater that celebrates International Woman’s Day. Lack of activity is not the problem. The frustration rose after a good walk around Auk Lake, which included a stretch on the snow-covered lake, itself. Aki played with a friendly, if rambunctious sled dog. I talked with two British photographers who had just finished filming a red squirrel. I could hardly hear them over the noise of cars driving fifty miles an hour a few feet away. The Brits were satisfied, even thrilled at their encounter with the red squirrel. This made me question whether I’ve been jaded by the rain forest’s beauty. The visitors could have been filming a fishing eagle or otter. They could have found red squirrel subjects deep in a quiet, coastal forest.

3

After the hike I tried to help my hiking partner’s configure his computer to satisfy a new Internet provider. For four hours Aki watched me being placed on hold and shifted from one person to another. Each person needed a magic word to solve the problem. I was fresh out of magic. All the fruit of the morning walk seemed lost, gone up in the smoke of my frustration. My failure to help connect a friend to the World Wide Web cut me off, for an afternoon, from my calm connection.

2

Cowee Meadows

Leave a reply

4

Finding a place where the wind can’t hit me, I pull off a heavy mitten and use the bared hand to frame a photograph of a beaver house reflected in pond ice. “Click.” I swing the camera toward a ridge of saw-toothed mountains rising above the forest at the north end of Cowee Meadows. “Click.” Hand cold, I return the mitten and search at my feet for Aki but find only snow and glare ice. As she has since lunch when our hiking partner gave her some tasty treats, my little dog is hard on his heals.

2

They are fifty meters out on the pond ice. Squinting out the glare, I think I see Aki looking back to make sure I am okay.

3

I’d forgive the dog if she asked. She’s earned it. For two hours she bounced in and out of our snowshoe tracks or leaned into a wind that has already scoured trail ice clean of snow. She joined our approach to a beach being hammered by forty-knot winds, winds so cold that I could only stand for minute to appreciate Lion and the other peaks surrounding a riling Berner’s Bay. Then she follows us to this beaver pond, her exposed rear chilled by the wind.

1

Lights and Darks

2 Replies

2

Aki and I are back in the woods where only a dusting of snow covers the trail. It lies, like powdered sugar on the wintering plants. I am struck with the power of white to bring light, clarity, and interest to the rain forest. Is this how, back even before the big Sitka spruce trees we pass first sprouted in the trunk of deadfalls, an innovative artist discovered the illuminating power of white chalk? Did some charcoal portraitist return from a snowy walk inspired to highlight his subject’s eyes with small squares of light?

3

More snow has reached the beach, now exposed by the ebb tide. Here the dark tones of rock and stone demark forms of snowy white. An eagle flies over an almost empty bay, talons extended back, perhaps to balance out the weight of a fish that wriggles in its beak. I can’t make out its white head or tail in the gray light.

1

Icy Taunts

3 Replies

2

It’s almost March. Tomorrow or the next day a Pacific storm will likely hammer Juneau with heavy snow or worse—rain. But this morning, on Mendenhall Lake, it’s almost desert-warm. Someone has set a five-kilometer track on the ice, which we follow toward the glacier. Aki dashes from her other human and I, stopping occasionally to take a cooling snow bath.

1

It’s hard to concentrate on anything but sparkling snow, the blue-green glacier ice, and the saw tooth ridge of mountains that rise out of the Juneau ice field. I think about  To Make A Poem by Alberta Turner, a book that urges poets to tap into the subconscious for inspiration. But my subconscious can’t complete with all the natural beauty. Only when I complete the apex of the track loop and turn my back to the glacier, can I yield to the meditative slide and slide rhythm of Nordic skiing. But I sense the glacier leering behind me, ready to strike a stunning pose if I turn around. On a rising north wind, I can almost hear the river of ice taunt, “I’ve calved more metaphors than your sad little subconscious will produce in your lifetime.”

3

Not Today

1 Reply

3

Taking advantage of the new snow, Aki and I circle the Peterson Creek Salt Chuck (lake). She porpoises in and out of the snow, upright tail beating back and forth like a metronome. I ski behind her, listening to the ice crack under my skis. The center of the lake would provide a smoother path but I don’t feel like getting wet to the waist if I cross a soft section of ice.

1

When we near the waterfall that drains the lake Aki bolts toward the woods, barking at something in the trees. I am guessing that she has spotted the river otters that had made the tracks in the snow I now cross. The headland I move towards is one of their handouts. Aki has had a strange relationship with otters. One called her out onto thin ice. Another tempted her to join an otter family in the Mendenhall River. But today, they can’t tempt the little poodle-mix into their woods.

2

New Land

7 Replies

2

Aki porpoises through the five-inch layer of new snow covering Mendenhall Lake. She doesn’t smile, like some dogs, but her body language—ears flapping, front legs extended—conveys joy. Me too, I think. The lake extends for miles from Skater’s Cabin to the glacier. The handful of skiers already on the ice are lost in dissipating fog. I can almost believe that we are the first to use a new borne land.

3

Usually the weather or crowds punish us when we ski on the lake. Cold, often assisted by wind, numbs my hand and face, fogs my glasses. On sunny, windless days, the ski trails can fill up like ride lines at Disneyland. But, when we start today’s ski, it 32 degrees. No wind makes it feel colder or banishes the fog that glistens in morning sun. The temperature climbs as we approach the glacier. The snow starts clumping on my skis. The fog fades.

 

1

In an hour, after they have enjoyed a good Saturday sleep in and a fry up breakfast, Juneauites will fill up the parking spaces near the campground and skater’s cabin. There will be squeals and shouts of appreciation. There will be lots of selfies. None of them will capture my little dog flying over five inches of still-crisp snow.

1

Place of Pride

1 Reply

1

All the birds we see during this walk on the wetlands are jumpy except this eagle. I hear, rather than see a gathering of Canada geese after something flushed them into the air. Every golden eye or mallard duck flies across the Mendenhall River when I point the camera in its direction. But the eagle remains roosted on the top of a driftwood stump, even when a brace of bird dogs runs toward it. Even after the Alaska Airlines flight from Seattle slices across the face of the glacier behind it.

2

Earlier I lead Aki away from the dog walker trail toward a little-visited slough. Snow from last night’s storm covered the ground. Bent over strands of beach glass formed golden swells on the sea of while. Behind us, the glacier towered above the Pepsi bottling plants. It back-dropped the body shops, boat yards, and the other blue color businesses along Industrial Boulevard. Only in Alaska would a welder’s shop have such a place of pride.

4