Category Archives: Juneau

Remembering the Little Avalanche

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Today is one for chores and therefore compromises. We manage to squeeze in a quick circuit around the nordic ski track through the Mendenhall Lake Campground. I find it a soulless place and today a little frustrating due to ski conditions. If not for the output of this one in a series of last snow storms of winter we wouldn’t be able to gain a purchase with skis on the icy base.

P1120743Aki dashes back and forth between the faster skier and I, making me wonder whether poodles were once used for herding. She is never happier when all her people are within easy reach. The frankly monotonous scenery at the campground—a young spruce forest that only once offers a snow softened view of the glacier—-sets my mind wandering from present to the recent past. We are in the family Subaru dropping out of a blizzard threatening to close the Canadian side of the Klondike highway.

Easing into Alaska, knowing the ferry terminal at Skagway is less than 15 miles away, I start to relax until a small wall of white snow begins to cross the road in front of us. It’s a beautiful thing, this undulating mass that will win the race we are suddenly in; we would win by passing before it blocks our way, maybe sweeps our little green car into that steep ravine to our right.  We don’t win but tie as the car ploughs into the avalanche. I feel the car hit the wall and slow, go blind as snow blankets the windows, remember to steer straight, forget to pray. In seconds we are through then negotiating the switch backing road as it drops to sea level.

P1120722Cruising the campground these two weeks and some change later I can now ask whether our interaction with the avalanche was a matter of good or bad luck, how many small things coalesced to bring that wall of snow and our car together at that moment of time, that we survived.

Swans, Geese, and Skis

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L1200274The frenzied cries of Canada Geese call us away from our cross country skis and over to the river where great rafts of waterfowl float toward us on a strong incoming tide.  Geese for sure and many ducks ride the tide, all forming a guard for the  swans, most with pure white feathers, two still grey— all graceful as the Queen on her balcony.  The swans dwarf the Canada Geese, our hometown giants. They are the travelers, rebuilding strength lost on the long flight to this riverine meadow; storing energy for the final leg to the Alaska tundra.

L1200253An almost magical convergence, we have sun and high water and swans as well the snow buried Chilkat mountains just across Lynn Canal.  There is also the trails and a little gray dog that longs to sprint along as we ski. I hear goose complaints deep in the woods long after we turned our backs on our guests.

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Last Gifts of Winter

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Judging by their absence from the moraine most residents of our town don’t appreciate this snow storm or its five inch white blanket now beautifying the Troll Woods—a departing gift from cantankerous winter.  Aki, who likes fresh snow best of all, is ecstatic. Me, I’m haunted by the memory of a storm covering subarctic tundra in April.

P1100572It happened when we lived in Bethel on the Kuskokwim River in Western Alaska. An April snow storm reopened the snowmachine trail to Akiakchak right after my just widowed father arrived for a visit.  He had arrived on the evening jet from Anchorage, watching the details of the flat Kuskokwim delta soften beneath the descending plane, the sky fade from deep blue to black.

That night it snowed down quarter sized flakes that quickly covered the wet tundra with ten inches of white. Knowing it wouldn’t last ‘till noon, I roused Dad for an early breakfast and, hoping my neighbors would forgive the noise, began the chore of harnessing our team of dogs to the sled. They began to howl the minute I left the house carrying an armful of harnesses. They howled louder when I secured the sled quick release cable to the deadman anchor and laid out the gangline; reached a level of near hysteria while I harnessed Bilbo and clipped him into his lead dog position.

I didn’t hear dad leave the house, didn’t notice him in the dog yard until he shouted an offer of help. “Stand by Bilbo,” I suggested even though the old lead dog needed no help to keep the lines stretched tight. The three of us had been through much. It was time for Bilbo and dad to know each other.

The noisy energy of the dogs, each acting like a spoiled child in fear of being left behind, distracted me from the purpose of the trip— to share something that I love with one who had lost the main source of his.

P1100597Dad took his place in the sled basket when all eight dogs were clipped to the gangline.  I stood behind on the sled runners and pulled the quick release. We never talked about what came next—the sudden silence as the dogs surged forward—my fear of not being able to control the accelerating team or make the tricky turn where the trail dropped off the tundra onto Brown Slough—his blind faith in my ability to bring him home safely.

The dogs pulled us up the trail as the snow melted away under a spring sun.  Only the ribbon of the snow machine compressed snow of the trail remained when we turned back to town.  We were on the crest of the riverside bluffs where Dad would pick blue berries that summer. As the dogs rested we watched the broad Kuskokwim River, still covered with softening ice, take a lazy course through dead brown tundra broken by islands of cottonwood, willows, and stunted black spruce.  You see no mountains or even hills from the place— just a great flatness relieved by occasional undulations and the practical buildings of Bethel.

On the return trip I worried whether the slough ice would hold long enough for our return crossing and whether there would be enough snow for passage over the less used side trail that leads to our dog yard.  I should have spent the time telling him much it meant for me to share this with him—all of it.  I’d like to think the sorrowful man could appreciate the wild beauty of the day and accept this last gift of winter

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Spring Icons

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We’ve been sent to this rainforest trail on a mission: sever and bring home three blue berry branches—-each the red color of spring, each supporting swelling flower buds. I carry a mercifully sharp knife to do the deed. Aki, a fan of the ripe blueberry refuses to help. She knows, as I do, that while the plants wounded by my hand will survive their severed limbs will never bear fruit. They pay the price for our indulgence; our need to watch their tiny blossoms, each a miniature Japanese lantern open during Easter dinner. P1100537

 

The rain returned last night to wash away much of winter’s snow from the trails. Little bags of rains hang from the blue berry brush, each a misshapen globe of light. With rain hammering my parka hood I can barely hear an eagle complain in the trail side spruce or the percussive rhythms of a woodpecker’s drilling for food. Still, the deluge has freed the trail boards of ice and infused them with a lovely if weak glimmer. There’s beauty here—-shinning trails and bags of rain, melting ice still encasing thin roots of an tumbled tree, this motif delivered by the tide—curves of a partially burned root providing counterpoint for the angular interplay of glowing gray cliff rocks.

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Myths of Spring

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The calendar claims that Spring waits outside our door but snow still covers the moraine and ice the beaver ponds.  Wrapping Aki in her red fleece coat I grab the skis and head to the glacier. We find a good surface for traveling but no dogs for Aki to greet. She hides her disappointment in a search for clues left by recent visitors and, when we reach their village, the beavers.

P1100479Someone has dismantled their large dam, replacing their miniature hockey rink with a sad scene—-mud, fractured pond ice,fallen cottonwoods. We can’t find beaver tracks in the softening snow. Aki heads deeper into their village until I call her back. No sense adding to their stress.

Returning to the main trail we find tracks resembling those left by very large bare human feet but with deformed big toes.  These are deep, crisp impressions in the snow with icy sides and bottoms as if made in the heat of the day by something of great bulk. We find them where the trail bisects a grove of trees killed years ago by beaver formed floods.  I look around for someone to confirm our find but Mt. McGinnis, with sun in his eyes is the only other presence.

Do I credit it a hoax or confirmation of Big Foot? Wanting a return to firmer ground I lead Aki further into the moraine and then to Mendenhall Lake and a view of it’s glacier dropping out of the clouds. A shaft of light fights its way through the cloud cover to hit a portion of the ice fall, now a translucent light blue under the sudden illumination. This is something man can not duplicate or distort to legend—at least not yet.

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Troll Throne

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St. Patrick’s Day means nothing to Aki. She is only interested in the animal moving with stealth through the woods lining this beach. We are far from the bars where most Americans like to celebrate the saint’s holiday, drinking green colored Budweisers and singing songs not heard in Ireland since it was a British colony. You might find someone there with a Bodhran but no one with a copy of Patrick’s breastplate.  Americans have always howled at the moon this time of year—the Irishman’s saint’s day is just an excuse.

My eyes settle on a wooded hill forming a bell curve across Stephen’s Passage. It’s shape might have reminded the Irish crew on Vancouver’s Discovery of Croagh Patrick. A homesick man looks for the familiar in the foreign; perhaps they imagined climbing this mountain without shoes.

P1100435We have had our pilgrimage this morning—me in boots not bare feet like Aki—the little zealot. Together we wandered half lost through a thick forest drained by an awakening creek. Snow still frosted trees, bush, and ground. Without a mountain summit to draw us on we chose the easiest paths until reaching a throne-shaped tree stump illuminated by a tiny shaft of sunlight shining through the overcast. Giving this troll’s royal chair a slight nod, I lead Aki out of the woods and onto this beach to take up station on a rock just washed clean of snow by the tide. Now we wait for sun to warm out faces or a whale to breach in Stephen’s Passage, or a line of Trolls to begin the climb up Croagh Patrick.

 
 
 
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First Light on Fresh Snow

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After allowing us a generous taste of Spring, Winter returned last week on the north wind, driving down temperatures, silencing smaller water courses with ice, covering all in snow. Now he gives us a sunny two hour window to walk through the resulting beauty.

It’s sunrise near the confluence of the Herbert and Eagle Rivers. Aki flies down the trail, bounding over deeper drifts with front and back legs acting as one. This is her favorite snow—fine enough to offer soft landings and disinclined to form snow balls in her fine poodle hair. She leaves me standing, a little in awe of what comes from new morning light striking newly laid snow.

L1200068The temperature climbs above freezing as we walk between old growth spruce and hemlock trees that carry heavy burdens of sparkling white. These, they will soon lose in the heat of the day. We find few animal tracks in the forest but many dot the muskeg meadow we must cross to get the river—small stuff mainly: mice,squirrel, hare. A larger animal left a no nonsense trail on the stream forming the meadow’s boundary. There is also the path made by tiny mice feet that ends in a one inch wide hole in the snow. Other than the flight a sparrow, made memorable by streaming sunlight, these tracks are the only found evidence of wild life this side of the river.

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Dark clouds blanket out the sun as we finish the walk, lowering the volume of beauty; bringing a surprising sense of relief—maybe just calm.  I am thankful that Aki and I aren’t jaded by nature’s generosity, which we abuse with familiarity.

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Morning Breaking

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Sunlight floods over Mt. McGinnis but leaves the rest of our view in the dim glow of early morning. Aki and I traverse up a granite cliff shaved flat by the retreating glacier. She moves freely over the ice and packed snow trail with me following cautiously behind. Already one of my ice grippers is broken.

Even without their leaves the trail side brush screen out most of the view, here of frozen lake and the flat moraine that boarders it, now just being touched by early morning light. I spot a mountain goat on the high ground above Nugget Falls, maybe a mile away and look forward to a chance to view him a close.

L1190971With their white fleece, curved back horns and prominent brow, our Mountain Goats look like descendants of the pagan god Pan. I can almost hear his pipe music play over the awakening moraine below, looking new and fresh in first light under this crisp blue sky.  Recognizing the danger in such a flight of fancy, Aki snaps me out of it with a full speed charge down trail.

Despite her efforts I still feel like the first man to transit this trail to Nugget Falls—the air too clean, colors too rich, light too pure, snow too deep and shapely, the silence too profound for me to accept her well meaning lesson.

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Alders

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Another gray day on the moraine but one spiced up with two inches of pure white snow. A good day to reflect on the humble Sitka Alder and the drab willow. They were the first plants of size to gain a foothold on the moraine, tough witnesses to the the glacier’s retreat. Normally something to cut out of a photograph, with today’s topcoats of fresh snow providing counterpoint to dark bark they make excellent frames for greater beauty.

These pioneers laid the groundwork for Aki’s Troll Woods—building soil for the poplars and spruce even though the big trees would eventually rob them of light and nutrients; force them to carry out a holding action on soggy lake edges and bogs; make them dependent on the bowels of birds to carry their seeds to newly disturbed ground.

P1100408On the edge of beaver flooded land we find an alder displaying signs of spring, summer and fall under a coating of winter snow. On one supple twig cling a well formed leaf from last fall, spent cones, and spring bright pollen pods. Almost hidden by snow are this year’s tightly wrapped leaf buds.

Red Alder, the largest of the clan, provides excellent material for carving. I learned to work with it from master carvers at the Totem Heritage Center in Ketchikan. They helped me make the tools—alder handled adzes with blades fashioned from re-tempered car springs, crooked and not-so-crooked knives ground from cross cut saw blades. They taught me to work with wood from a tree freshly fallen and how the adze could be used to quickly transform a piece of firewood into an abstract figure. They encouraged me to cradle the new form in my lap while using crooked knives to mimic my model.

With the help of another master carver, an Italian American from New York City, I used adze, crooked knives, and not-so-crooked knives to carve a mask of my recently deceased father. The intimacy of the experience helped me grieve. Here is the result.

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Geese Chasing Away Solitude

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We hoped to purchase some solitude and views of Canada Geese by taking this ice covered trail during a rain storm. As expected rain water covers the ice in a glistening clear blanket that would have made the trail unusable but for the  winter’s worth of dropped hemlock needles allowing my boots purchase.

L1190843Getting it at a bargain price Aki and I find solitude here broken only by the snuffling of her searching nose, the sound of rain drops hitting my parka hood, mallard chuckles, eagle complaints, and the near hysterical song of geese being driven off shrinking sand bars by a rising tide.

Reaching an open meadow we find a clump of the calming geese feeding alongside the trail ahead. They are all business at first but then one of their unit stops feeding to watch our approach. Aki, no fool she, is not interested in messing with these big wild birds.  Even though we try skirting them at a distance, the geese eventually take flight and move on to the next tidal meadow. Now we hear geese warning calls coming from across the river, giving advanced warning of the approach of several formations of Canada Geese that fly overhead to join their just departed buddies 300 meters away on the other meadow.

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Moving across the meadow we reach a gently sloping beach of sand bordering the perfectly still waters of Lynn Canal now reflecting a murder of crows flying toward the river.  A smaller gang of the black birds have assumed station at the top of a beach side spruce to wait for the abundance of low tide.

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