Category Archives: Kwethluk

Nature

Like an Arctic Spring

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According to the calendar, winter started yesterday but it is spring in this beachside forest. It’s not a Wordsworth spring with its daffodil icons or even a Southeast Alaska spring marked by rising crocuses. This feels like a true northern spring when a hard nightly freeze follows each day of thaw. Like it would during an arctic spring, our snow pack has shrunken to an ice-crusted carpet that makes walking treacherous, even for Aki with her sharp nails.

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The little dog and I walk in darkness but sunlight explodes off the mountains. Shaman and the other islands dotting Lynn Canal seem to be sun bathing. But there are few animals to enjoy the view. A cabal of gulls search the tidelands for chow but only four ducks, all local harlequins, fish the bay.

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We are between lows, a time of busted weather that comes after the latest low has exhausted itself against our mountains. Soon, maybe tonight, a new storm will bring us snow and the return of winter.

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Wing Strikes

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Light is precious this close to the winter solstice. Even during last week’s stretch of clear weather, dusk settled over Juneau before 3 P.M. Now the clouds are back as is the rain. Aki and I move with caution down a Treadwell trail covered with sloppy snow and ice. When the marine layer shatters over Gastineau Channel to let in light, I understand why my Celtic ancestors honored the winter sun.

 

1            The forest that hides the old mining ruins still retains snow from the last storm. It brightens the reflection of the twisted alders growing along a shallow pond. One triangle of pond ice juts into the air but the rain is already eroding its sharp corners. Tiny waves, the concentric rings radiating out from each rain strike, crash against the ice—wing strikes on softening marble.

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Pushing The Tide

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When we stop, Aki lifts her front right paw off the snow, drops it down and lifts up her rear left one. She alternates feet like this, doing a slow motion cold weather dance, until I switch off the camera and head down the trail. It’s cold, nine degrees Fahrenheit but there is no wind to riffle the incoming tide. I press as though rising waters ooze our escape path.

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Aki and I slip on the thick layer of salt-water ice that formed over the trail during the last high tide. The tide must have rinsed away any interesting animal smells but the little poodle-mix doesn’t hold back. When the sound of rising water cracking ice encourages our retreat, I take a trail that parallels the channel’s edge. But, Aki doesn’t join me. Instead, she moves quickly onto the alder-lined path that leads to the car. I follow, walking hunched over to pass under a tunnel of alders themselves bent over by loads of frost and snow.

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I don’t have to encourage Aki to hop into the car. But she doesn’t object when I drive to the Fish Creek trailhead and ask he to join me on another walk down to salt water. Here, at least, the tide hasn’t washed away the smells.

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Only My Camera Cares

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It’s cold, cold enough to turn water seeping from mineral rich rocks on False Outer Point into frozen brown streams. Drips from exposed tree roots build up like candle wax on exposed grass blades. But the eagles still work the tidelands for food left behind by the ebbing tide. My old friend, the kingfisher looks for baitfish near the rocky shore. Even the simple sparrow flits among stalks of dried cow parsnip made stiffer by the freezing temperatures.

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Aki, wearing a felted covering, seems oblivious to the cold and wind. Other than taking extra care to avoid any water over ice, she acts like we are out for a summer outing. Am I the only one affected by the storm that has already obscured the mountains and glacier and carries snowflakes in its onshore wind? Technically, the answer to that question is, “no.” My digital camera turns on its self timer as I set up a shot of an eagle so I have to watch it glide with talons extended through my viewfinder while the camera counts to ten.

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Convergence

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This morning sun brightens the new snow covering on Chicken Ridge and the flanks of Mt. Juneau. When such a convergence of white and light comes at the end of a week dominated by grays, I wonder why everyone in the world doesn’t shop for a house in this Alaskan town. Then, when Aki and I start up the Perseverance Trail, the wind will rise. And, before we return home, the sun will make an early afternoon exit.

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Back home, Aki will remember all the dogs she just chased and those who chased her on the snow-slick trail surface. I’ll tell myself that I have the clothes to deal with the wind and faith that the sun will return tomorrow—if not tomorrow, then some time before the Apocalypse. I’ll know that the little dog and I have the patience required to make it to next spring.

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Hungry Raptors

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For the second time a northern harrier flew close over my head after crossing the Eagle River. The first time, when the river was full of spawned out silver salmon, the sleekly built owl flew toward me, allowing plenty of opportunity to watch its approach. Today, I caught it out of the corner of my eye and just managed to take one photograph as it climbed to hunting height. Both times I was amazed at the far-forward position of the bird’s wing.

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Minutes after the harrier drifted behind a big cottonwood tree, a tight formation of Canada geese flew over my little dog and I. In an explosion of noise the geese broke formation. Seconds later a bald eagle climbed back up to its hunting height.

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I’ve seen peregrine falcons knock pigeons out of the sky over Downtown Juneau but never even heard of an eagle hunting like that. In spite of their size, the raptors seem most comfortable using their fierce beak and talons to tear meat from carcasses. They aren’t brave. I once saw a tiny arctic tern chase an eagle away from the tern’s nesting colony by pulling at its tail feathers. But, it is famine time for the big birds, when they have to get creative to eat. As I write this, an eagle flies circles over Chicken Ridge and I wonder if tonight, some neighbor will be missing their cat.

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Even the Devil’s Club Thinks It’s Spring

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A rock fall draws our attention. The little dog sniffs and stares. I follow her gaze and spot two mountain goats just above us on the flank of Mt. Juneau. I’d seen at least six other goats on this hike along Gold Creek. All were too far above us to be more than moving white dots. These two are close enough to watch, to appreciate a little of their personalities. The one following moved slowly, carefully lifting it’s front legs over deadfalls and rocks. It was hard to imagine this goat gracefully transiting a rock face like I’d seen them do often.

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Along the creek, it looks like early summer. Tiny yellow violets are flowering. Elderberry plants, willows, and balsam poplars show fresh green growth. The later smell like the balsam incense for which they are named. Even the conservative devil club plants are leafing out. Yet the goats climb away from all this lush new growth.

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Shaman Island

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Aki and return to the North Douglas trail head and, thankfully, find it empty of cars. Ten minutes into the beachside forest, I realize that my boots are the nosiest things in the woods. No airplane, boat, or car noise reaches us. We can hear a cranky set of Stellar jays and the long trill of a thrush. A goose calls out in panic and flies over our heads. The solitude is not appreciated by my little dog, who loves company of all kinds. She must settle for the smells of scent left by dogs who passed through here yesterday.

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With the uneasiness I always feel when walking over exposed tidelands, I lead Aki onto a flat, sandy plain dotted with shallow tide pools. She hangs back, like she knows in a few hours almost twenty feet of water will cover the ground where we walk. In minutes we are on the now-exposed causeway that offers a dry path to Shaman Island. A large murder of crows stirs on a rocky point at the end of the causeway and breaks into the trees in the interior of the island. Two bald eagles roost in trees on the edge of the island. Another eagle, bound from Admiralty Island, joins them.

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A small raft of harlequin ducks swims away as if to distract us from a small family of their kind that remain huddled against the point. Near the family an orange beaked oystercatcher whistles as if to attract our attention away from its nest. Aki and I wander around the tiny island and start back across the causeway. The crows abandon their island hideout and land in front of us on the trail. When we get within forty feet of them, they burst in the air in a big noisy show and circle back to join the harlequin family and the oystercatcher on the rocky point. A flock of gulls drops in to join them. All will be happy when the tide buries the causeway.

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Muddy Dog of Spring

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As if forced away by music, the clouds always abandon Juneau on the Saturday of folk festival week. This surprised the weatherman, who had predicted a continuation of the wet weather that plagued Southeast Alaska for a week. Aki doesn’t know that a bath awaits her when we return home from this trip to the wetlands. In minutes she manages to coat her fur with estuary mud then prances around like a perfumed starlet. With the tide out, the birds are out feeding on the mudflats. Two eagles do fly over, chasing each other toward the glacier. They disappear, leaving the skies empty except a song sparrow that settles onto a drift wood root wad and sings of spring.

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Alien Fruit

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Thanks to a book I am reading, Eating Stone by Ellen Meloy, I am a little obsessed with our local mountain goats. (Oreamnos americanus). Meloy’s book is about desert bighorn sheep but her descriptions of them in Eating Stone makes me think about the Juneau goats. There should be a clutch of them grazing on the rock slopes near the glacier so Aki and I heading toward Nugget Falls to spy on them. I stop often to photograph the myriad of icebergs that now litter to surface of Mendenhall Lake. You’d expect them to make the best models but I found them outclassed by willow catkins. Even though rain-soaked and already going to seed, they look like complex alien fruit.

3The goats are a no show but on our return to the car we run into a beautiful toddler enjoying her rubber boots, yellow slicker, and red umbrella. She entertains herself with a little umbrella dance until Aki barks. Then she stands at attention next her family’s yellow retriever and laughs at my little poodle-mix.

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