Yesterday’s high winds, some gusting 65 miles an hour, scoured this meadow of the lovely frost I enjoyed during our last visit. The winds also blasted the trail to a porcelain  smoothness. Even Aki slips and slides on the steeper sections. I expected to be pushed quickly off the meadow by more strong winds but they haven’t appeared. Perhaps they wait for the sun to stop hiding behind a cloud bank the color of dirty fleece.

Nothing in the gray invites us to linger on the meadow so I take a faint trail into a sheltered valley. On rock hard snow we drop into onto a gentle plain dotted with old growth mountain hemlock trees, some a foot across at their base. I would have passed through without much thought if this morning I hadn’t read a chapter of  Lynn Schooler’ “Walking Home.” By counting its growth rings of a 12 inch thick mountain hemlock, Mr. Schooler discovered that the tree was 299 years old. Standing before two similar sized mountain hemlocks, I realize that they started their struggle in this weak, poorly drained soil before europeans discovered Alaska, before Russian started decimating its sea otter population, before England’s Capt. Vancouver had his first violent run-in with Tlingit warriors, when the ice of the Mendenhall Glacier touched the salt water of Gasteneau Channel.  One tree still thrives but its neighbor is bare except for a unkept cap of green still pulling energy from the sun. I wonder which I should honor more—-the damaged older soul, or it’s thriving neighbor? I chose the damaged one for its optimistic green bonnet.

Having walked for an hour and a half, I turn to face the sun, convinced that at least a day has passed since we left the car and approached the exit point of the Peterson Creek Salt Chuck. Over the crunch of Aki’s paws breaking through shell ice along the creek I heard waves roaring to their  collapse on the exit point rocks. Water streaming to sea over the rocks refused to freeze but ice and frost coated anything standing above the current. Strong morning light suffused the products of winter so they glowed with a beauty that I could never catch with my old digital camera. I understood that old cliché  about feasting on beauty; never had to touch the energy bar I brought to stem off hunger.

Rested but a little worn by the aural and visual stimulus, I turned my back on the sun and threw a shadow on sparkling snow until reaching the upper end of Amalga Meadow and the old horse tram trail to Eagle River. Part of the way we followed wolf tracks, passing a bloody patch of snow and the ripped up remains of a porcupine.  It took some persuading to get Aki to let the old porky’s bones rest in peace. 

The wolf lead us to a grove of diminutive evergreens, all flocked with frost feathers. Aki, wearing her warmest sweater, posed in front of the trees.  A small mound of frost feathers grew out of the snowy ground. They appeared to be attached to a round creature that had fluffed up his feather cloak for warmth on this cold day. I was tempted to nudge the mound to see what stirred under all that crystalline finery. Instead, I faced the sun and enjoyed the sparkle of backlit frost all the way to the car. 

My watch is dead weight on this walk along Fish Creek.  Like the woods and meadows, I must use other markers of time. Days of deepening cold have thickened pond ice, opening up new avenues across the swampy meadows. Having considered the pond ice unsafe since a mother and child broke through and drowned on a prior February day, I reached out in a panic when Aki wandered onto the ice. After spotting bubbles trapped several inches below her paws, I relaxed and followed her onto the pond,

We regain the trail on the opposite shore. Without hinderance from wind or snow for days, thick layers of hoar frost have coated the thicket of dormant salmon berry brush we pass through to reach the beach. In the few hours since the last high tide, the cold has managed to turn the tidal flood waters into an opaque slurry; decorate the golden beach grass with thousands of frosty Moravian stars.

Leaving the sunny beach, we enter Hemlock woods along the upper creek. The cold has not had the time to silence the stream, only managing to erect icy barriers to slow the water. Low temperatures have driven the forest’s small mammals into dens where they rest in a state of torpor, preserving energy during this winter famine.  Frost from the hibernators’ breath has formed white bands around the dens, each another measurement of time.  

In the shadowy Montana Creek valley, sunlight rarely touches snow or stream.  In the gloom, the creek refuses to quiet down. Other water has the sense to freeze on this cold day.  Creek noise overwhelms the sound of my sliding skis and Aki’s panting. The stream mimics a crowd of inconsiderate theater goers slowly taking their seats.  When a compact shaft of white strikes the center of a spruce that has fallen across the creek, I wait for today’s soloist to walk into the resulting spotlight. She must be waiting patiently for the noisy water, her main audience, to slip into silence. I fear the light crew will leave for home before that happens.