Category Archives: Juneau

Evolutionary Limb

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clouds

As she always does, Aki squeals and fidgets in the car as we approach the glacier trailhead. She flies out of the car when I open the door even though no dogs are near to welcome her. She must always expect wonders at the start of every hike.

We drove through rain, snow, sun and more rain during the 12-mile drive from Chicken Ridge so I birdonly expect confusion from the weather. I hope for a chance to watch mountain goats forage on the rock face above Nugget Falls. I didn’t expect to spot a female white-wing crossbill on some glacier-scrubbed rocks near the trail. The little yellow/gray bird’s bill strands it way out on an evolutionary limb. Overlapping like a broken pair of scissors, the bird’s bill is dynamite for prying seeds from spruce cones, which is why it thrives in the rainforest. The Audubon folks write that the white-winged crossbill can feed on pine seeds and even fruit in a pinch but it’s slim beak evolved to hammer spruce. “Chow down, little bird,” I tell it, “and pray that the spruce forest doesn’t shrink like our glacier.”

goat

Soaked

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eagle

I brought Aki to Treadwell for a sheltered walk among the old gold town ruins. The steady storm has already overwhelmed the bare-boned cottonwood canopy so we walk on mud, instead of the expected gravel trail. I look through thick walls of rain for a metaphor or simile that might be expanded into a poem. But none of the cast iron relics, made by true craftsmen over 100 years ago, stir my imagination. A boiler held together with thick bolts has no connection with my computerize life. An ore car rail emerging from the flesh of a spruce tree doesn’t drag me down a rabbit hole to find a mirror image in my life.

We leave the woods for the beach near the deep little bay formed when mine tunnels that ran under the channel collapsed. You would think that the worn pilings that once sported a shipping dock would make a good metaphor. I try some out out: rotten teeth, Hayden’s Wall, ghost army, the gates of Hell. All bad.

Then, while leaning against a worm-eaten piling, I spot an immature bald eagle that has secreted itself on the top of a piling 20 feet away. If it already had the white head and tail of adulthood, the bird would stand out like an ice cream cone. But today, soaked like the piling, by rain, it blends into the wood. The rain has darkened his brown feathers and turned his few white patches gray. The effect of rain on the eagle inspires me to give up my search for metaphor and try for a list of rain’s powers:

Rain blends eagle into wood

washes free iron relics

or buries them in mud

feeds the forest moss

floods its streams

softens my poodle’s curls

and makes them smell like spring.

When packed in a storm

rain ensures solitude

unwanted by my extravert dog

Aki

Aki, Bilbo, and the Queen Bumblebee

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Aki

Bilbo is the first good thing that has come our way on this adventure. Before the big Chesapeake Bay retriever joined forces with Aki, it was all rain and emptiness along Eagle Beach. That’s a bit of an exaggeration. There were the crows, a small murder (manslaughter?) that croaked at us from safe perches along a narrow trail. We heard the nervous Canada geese that still fly almost of eyeshot along the river surface. I wonder if Bilbo makes them tense but the geese don’t react when he lumbers toward then and into the river, as if he needs to cool off on this 40-degree day, as if there is not enough rain to keep his skin pliable.

When they first met, the Chessie wiggled and galumphed around Aki. After he settled down they formed a dog gang—Aki the brains and Bilbo the muscle.

geeseEvery few minutes Bilbo wets himself in the river. Aki stays in the meadow always on alert for smells and animal movement to investigate. When they reunite, Aki appears to organize them into a recon patrol.

Just before we reach the woods, I hear a faint, “Bilbo.” Way down meadow a mom and her two kids call for their dog. Bilbo ignores the summons like he ignores the queen bumblebee that circles his thick skulled head. I pick up Aki to break the spell. Without the little poodle mix to distract him Bilbo hears his mistress and lumbers back to her. I drop Aki to the ground; half expecting her to follow her new homeboy, but never gives him another look.

A minute later we stumble on a local naturalist sitting in front of a blue berry bush covered in blossoms. Even though we interrupted his attempt to film a feeding bubble bee, he is gracious and tells me that only queen bumblebees survive the winter. All her royal subjects perish in the cold. These insects cannot be capable of emotion. No one with feeling could ever survive such generation genocide.

Beauty and Pain

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mountain

On a day with rain low and snow high we drive to connected mountain meadows where winter is enjoying one last rager before springs takes over. Falling snow adds to a skiable cover on the muskeg. When snow stops and the sun breaks loose of cloud cover it animates the tundra like meadows. Aki and I have to squint our eyes against the glare. Snow blindness conditions. I’m reminded of the day trips to the mountains behind Los Angeles “for the snow” I took when a child. There was beauty and pain then too, both provided by winter. The beauty most North Americans know: sun enriching white ground and the evergreens poking into a crayon blue sky. The pain was as simple: cold felt by bare hands or ones covered in cotton gloves. After an adulthood living in Alaska, I accept pain as a price for beauty. But it always surprised me when I was a California boy.

reflection

Disparity of Sight

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Mt. Juneau

Aki and I are on the Gastineau Meadows, back together after my weeklong trip to Minneapolis for writing stuff. During my absence, the little dog stayed with friends who care for her, but a week apart has made both of us a little more excited about this walk than usual.

reflection

It’s early so rich Arles-like light floods the meadow like it does in the first hours of a sunny day. Aki sips dew from new grass then walks around with a severed stalk dangling like a cigarette from her mouth. Her prop flies away when she barks at something that just dashed to cover in a scattering of bull pines. I look in the direction she indicates with her muzzle but only see twisted pines and passive muskeg. More of the same. Last winter, I followed tracks of deer, lynx and even an insomniac bear across this meadow. But only Aki saw the animals that laid them in the snow.

ravev

Our disparity of sight reminded me of the AWP conference I just attended in the Twin Cities. At many of the panel discussions, I could follow the presenter’s presentation and even recognized the essay or poem used for reference. But during lectures on how to solve one of my many writing problems, I saw nothing but new tracks in the snow.

fog

Preserving the Mystery

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path

We head out North Douglas Highway to a path taken often to the sea. As I always do on this walk, I stop where a beaver pond pushes against a row of old growth spruce and look at the feeder stream curving out of sight. What lies around that corner? I plan on bringing the canoe here so I can answer that question. I think, once again, that I should have explored the creek during last winter’s cold spell when strong ice covered it. But this summer, there will be no canoe expedition into the darkest recesses of the muskeg it drains. I’ll move past it on my way to the more dramatic beach even during next winter’s cold winter. Does something in me want to preserve the mystery? If Aki is stuck in similar mental loops, she is too busy to say. She has squirrels to chase and pee messages to leave dog friends.

herons

Do Angels Fly Like Herons?

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herons

It is Heron Day on the Sheep Creek delta. True, there is one bald eagle perched on the number 2 navigation marker and the usual scattering of mallards, scoters, and gulls on the beach. But I am drawn to three great blue herons.

Eagle

Aki finds a lumbering golden retriever to circle as I snap pictures of the herons. Two are as rigid as tide markers. A third, perhaps made uncomfortable by the playing dogs, trots into the wind with wings extended and lets itself be lifted by the breeze off the beach. Once airborne, the big bird turns sharply and glides to a stop 30 feet down the beach.

After the flying heron resettles itself, I notice that rather than extend its long neck for optimal viewing of the small fish it usually hunts, one of the other herons hunkers down. He looks like the skulking villain in a melodrama. I figure out why when I enlarge a fuzzy photo I took of him and see a pan sized fish dangling from its beak. His catch must be too large for the little snap head back and swallow technique I’ve seen herons use to eat prey.

Heron and Ducks

Looking at Douglas Mountain range reflected in the channel on this rare blue sky day, I wonder if angels take flight like herons. Do they unfurl wings as wide as they are tall, curl them into a aerodynamic foil, and float off the earth?

Reflection

What are We Doing Here?

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Aki

What are we doing here Aki?

A stiff wind startles the little dog when she hops out of the car. The wind carries a mix of snow and rain that makes Aki blink. She turns, anyway, into the wind and follows me up the mountain meadow trail. I snap a few pictures of the meadow-side mountains, just white from the morning’s snow. But I switch to more intimate subjects on the ground to avoid having to wipe rain off the camera lens filter.

mountain

With little more than fundamental knowledge of composition, I rely on emotion to frame a shot. Today, I’m warmed by the thin sheet of new snow bending over waves of tough yellow grass. My eyes can see the energy of movement pushing against the snow like the emerging limb of an abandoned Michelangelo sculpture. The camera can ‘t capture it.

snow

I carry home the limb of a blueberry bush. It’s leaf buds swell even though it has been severed from the bush. In our kitchen we will watch the leaves fill and, if lucky, enjoy creamy blossoms, each a tiny Japanese lantern swing from the maroon twigs of the branch.

Rodent Envy

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ice

I suppose it is silly to be jealous of a beaver. But I feel a little green each time Aki rolls on a beaver trail. It’s the ecstasy that shows on her face—eyes squeezed shut with pleasure, lips curling up in a contented smile. She is ecstatic today with beaver sign spread everywhere we walk on the glacial moraine. Since our last visit the beavers have been reduced to logging alder trees along Crystal Lake. They have dropped and stripped the bark off of most of the lakeside cottonwoods. Only ones with trunks protected by wire fences stand. My resentment changes to concern when I think of the hard times ahead for the big-toothed rodents.

Aki

Have You Ever Seen a Whale?

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channel ducks

On wet winter days

when only pastel craftsmen homes

remind us of spring and

drenched ravens harmonize

with a barking dog

an imaginative man

finds the will

to pull on rain gear

push outdoors

ignore drizzle

soaking his sensible

if ridiculous hat.

He skips down crooked steps

like one who

might see whales in the channel

spot eagles near the moored black cod boats

just make out spring-white goats on Mt. Juneau.

He wonders on the way

what imaginatives do

in southern cities

where robins always sing

to a cloudless sky

crime and traffic

provide the drama

and no one has even seen a whale.