Category Archives: Nature

Waiting for the Winds

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We woke this morning to a promise of cold and wind. The moon confirmed the forecast by hanging bright over Douglas Island during my 8 AM commute.  Later at work, the sun muscled its way through morning clouds to turn golden Gasteneau Channel. We braced for it to release the Taku Winds by warming Mt. Juneau’s summit so the winds may can rush to town in rude gusts.  Instead of sun, a blanketing snow storm moved up channel to paint mountain and town in white. It still falls but tomorrow they promise the sun.

Trapped in a Peaceful Place

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Pushed up against mountains and an ice field, Juneau enjoys significant micro climates. Downtown gets the wind and 100 inches of rain each year. Douglas receives more of both. Most storms pass over the small area running from North Douglas Island to Smuggler’s Cove, which only receives 60 inches of precipitation.  With a strong rain soaked wind hammering the house on Chicken Ridge Aki and I hope to find a sheltered walk in this dessert on North Douglas Island.

Apparently a strong believer in meteorology, Aki is unperturbed by wind that rocks our car on the Douglas Island Bridge and whips up white caps on the usually sedate Gasteneau Channel. She stares down the road with anticipation but does not smirk when the rain and wind drop as we reach False Outer Point.

We have the forest to ourselves but find the beach crowded with water fowl. A small raft of ducks who were tight against the shore when we arrived move slowly into deeper water. A pair of loons feed in the open space between us and Shaman Island.  We all enjoy the flat calm sea only occasionally dimpled by rain. An incoming tide shrinks the beach and threatens to force us into the woods. Wanting to walk a while on ice free ground we quicken the pace to round the next point before the tide makes that impossible.  We make it just as the tidal door closes, leaving us alone with the birds.

Two eagles in trees just behind us exchange angry words and more of their kind tussle for roosting space on the Outer Point side of this now flooded bay. Some chase each other over the water, talons extended out as if they were about to snatch a herring from the water. Seems too early for their mating dance —-the one where they lock talons and then spin in circles as gravity pulls them to ground. I saw that hookup once but the tangled eagles dropped out of sight behind the tree line before I could see if they broke off before hitting the ground.

We find the fresh carcass of a loon washed into the rocks. Just off shore another one floats aimlessly by. The eagles go quiet and nothing breaks silence except the flutter of gull wings.

The sight of death saddens me as does the loon appearing to morn but the silence is a perfect gift and I remember Slavic (Russian Christmas), which was celebrated yesterday in the Kuskokwim River villages of Western Alaska where we use to live.

Beauty Revealed by Rain

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Rain is winning the precipitation war today,  All winter it battles with snow for control of our lives and forest. The snow creates and the rain reduces until we are left with ice free lakes and muddy trails. Then, with the help of the freezing air, snow reclaims its kingdom. It could happen this afternoon or tomorrow or next week. Until then Aki and I must find enjoyment on forest trails like this one circling Auk Lake.

Aki can handle the icy path but I couldn’t safely get out of the car without pulling ice grippers over my boot soles. Ice made slick by rain offers no purchase for bare lug soles.  I bring a camera but have little hope of capturing beauty with it. Days like this turn it into a story telling device. There are hints of stories here like tiny deer tracks recently cut into rain softened ice and those of a dog who foolishly tested the weak lake ice.  Along the lake edge branches of half submerged spruce, now freed of snow by the rain, could be vertebrae of dragons soon to be freed from an icy prison.

Snow brings peace to the forest as it softens familiar shapes and brings colder temperatures to silence moving water courses. When snow rules we go deep in the woods, where the wind can’t reach, and enjoy a whitened church. Rain brings movement and energy and, I have to admit, excitement to our rain forests. Today the trail crosses a series of dark rivulets cutting a noisy path through the snow covered ground. Water droplets collect on every tree branch overhanging the lake then weaken the ice when they drop.

Approaching a larger stream crossing I notice that the trail crew used curving spruce trunks for the bridge. The young spruce once grew along the lake where they reached out over the water before turning up to the sun.  The trail designer must have harvested them after seeing in their arching bodies the reverse line of the trail where it crossed his creek. Last week’s snow hid the bridge. Today the trees’ gentle beauty and the designer’s genius have been revealed by the rain.

Better in Black and White

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The wind blowing off the glacier has a familiar bite, as familiar as the feel of these boots moving through soft wet snow, as comfortable as this trail bisecting a young willow thicket. I could be in Bethel on the trail to Steamboat Slough. It would have to be Spring there because of the warm temperature and I would be pumping along behind a small team of sled dogs, not following a poodle mix in a red coat. Somehow the memories power through all the differences between then and now and I ignore the negative of this place, pushing aside the beep beep beep of machines clearing the runway and the dominating noise of the Coast Guard rescue helicopter landing in a snow storm.

If I could I would dial back my color receptors until all becomes gray, black and white and fall into the richness of a black and white movie made just before Technicolor.  This stormy day is  about values, not colors, and the push and pull of snow pasted on dark tree bark by a persistent wind.

Aki, for whom everything is black and white, cringes when the wind lifts her ears so I take a shortcut back to the car and drive over to the old Thlinght village site. There we walk in the lee of old growth spruce and listen to waves on the beach. Once I follow Aki through the trees, and across a foot thick blanket of snow to the beach. Here again is a time to dial back the color and concentrate of the stark lines between sea, gravel beach and snow that converge together in my mind where the point pushes out to sea.

After the Storm

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We return to the woods along Eagle River with skis rather than snowshoes. Yesterday’s heavy snow fall followed by equally heavy rain transformed the trail. A weak crust covers 2 feet of heavy wet snow. Aki tries her luck on the crust but it is too weak to support even her diminutive frame. Soon she takes up station behind my skis as I slog along.

Sections of the trail are craters as if shelled by tiny mortars and I wonder if the beavers are escalating their battle with the U.S. Forest Service.  I dismiss the silly notice but can’t ignore the carters, some 10 inches deep and 2 feet across. Looking up I find the answer in the now bare spruce branches above the trail.  The weekend storm loaded down the branches with snow which was released in great masses by the heavy rain. It must have been frightening for any wandering these woods during that wet storm—snow release, violent upward snap of the newly freed tree branches, explosion of snow on snow.

This morning as nature regroups from the storm, the gray marine layer fragments into irregular shaped clouds willing to show us a little sun and blue sky. Still, at 11 AM the colors of sunrise are all we see until reaching the tidal meadow.  There the full rich tones of our winter sun make us squint but we can’t resist keeping our faces turned toward the source of irritation.

Tired of breaking trail I lead Aki onto the beach to where tide has washed away the snow.  As I empty my boot of snow an eagle cries out and five Canada Geese fly over our heads. Aki (proud dog owner speaking) doesn’t bark or break down the beach as they fly over.

Two puzzling terraces of snow border the frozen beach. I reject the first explanation that comes to mind—that the last high tide overrode snow forming the lower terrance but left a three inch blanket of it intact. Then I remembered the intensity of yesterday’s storm that covered footprints leading to our house in minutes. Rain must have given way to snow in the early morning as the tide receded, leaving behind this fine white blanket glistening in the sun.

Since the tide was out I had hoped to walk around the meadow on the bare river bank but it was too steep so we return to the meadow where I break new trail for Aki until we find one set by other skiers.  For the first time since May I enjoy the kick, glide, kick of classic skiing.

Wisdom Comes on the New Year

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I am excited this morning to use the cross country skis. The trail should be perfect. Yesterday someone with impeccable style skied a perfect parallel trail through the moraine woods. Now it is just discernible under three inches of newly fallen snow.  I move onto the trail, Aki close behind but after a few glides my skis slow and then stop, glued to the trail by sticky snow.

This happens in Southeast Alaska where snow can turn to rain on a slight shift in the wind. They call it “icing.”  In an hour or maybe minutes a temperature change will erase the problem but that won’t help me now. Aki has her own icing problems as snow balls form in seconds on her fine hair.

Last year I would have pushed on, forcing my skis down the trail, pouring all energy into movement until sweat mixes with new fallen snow on my bare head. But wisdom arrived in the first hours of this new year so I remove the skis then realize we are on a snow covered beaver house. Falling snow fills the sky from here to the Ice Fields several miles away. It transforms in silence,

I walk back stopping to see the things missed while skiing— thin alders arching over the trail by snow and a shapely bolder that has caught moisture on its concave top since dropped here by the retreating glacier.  Aki, perhaps no longer worried by the sliding skis, dashes through the woods along the trail.

Do I Look Fat?

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The younger spruce lining this trail look hammered by new snow that fell in fat moist flakes to quickly reclaimed the forest for winter. The snowshoes sink 6 inches with every step on a trail that was bare last weekend. Everything bends under white weight except the old growth stuff — spruce and hemlock trees that send straight shafts to the canopy. Some second growth trees appear to embrace the storm.  Their vestige branches curve upward just feet above our heads to cradle newly fallen snow.

Aki has three more adults to manage today. She runs among us all while wearing a new snow suit that covers her legs in the faint hope of eliminating her snow ball problem. This kind of snow clumps quickly on her fine poodle hair; forming white billiard balls on the inside of her legs that force her into a bow legged gait. Running up to me as we approach a meadow she tilts her head in query as if she wants reassurance that the new snow outfit doesn’t make her look fat.

 

Oshogatsu

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January 1 was a day for visiting when we lived in Bethel. While people in Anchorage and the Lower 48 were hunkered down around the TV watching football and nursing hangovers those of us without excess money or cable TV would cycle through the houses of friends. On the pretext of wishing them Happy New Year we would appear uninvited. if not unexpected or unwelcome, at the inside door of their arctic entry way. Once inside there would be tea or coffee drunk and stories told of the last year while we waited for someone else to appear. When it was polite to do so we would move on to another house or return home to wait for folks to visit us there.

Now, in Juneau, I’m saved from an American New Year’s Day by the Japanese American Community with an invitation to their Oshogatsu. There we will find a potluck of Japanese food eaten with tea and conversation. There the whole village will gather, some who I only see on this first day of the year. Later Aki and I will explore some trail, me more able to appreciate the wild silence for having been filled at Oshogatsu,

Winter Sun Diary

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9:00 AM: Sun tries to break through storm clouds over Marmion Island but only manages to color them a remarkable golden yellow. We return to work when it fades to gray.

12:35  PM Sun manages a partial appearance low over Mt. Jumbo while wearing a wreath of blue and white.

12:59 PM Sun disappears leaving a patina of grey and yellow on the channel and the returning storm clouds.

1:30 PM Snow

2:30: Darkness

Land of Contrasts

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Aki and I find the moraine a land of contrasts today. I feel it more than she because her light body travels equally well over transitional snow and ice. I struggle to keep on the thin strip of ice running the length of the trail for new snow makes it slick. Only a contraption of small chains held in place with rubber makes passage possible. I feel the contrast of hard and soft each time my boot slips off into the still weak snow bordering the ice path.

The temperature dropped during the night as snow replaced rain over Juneau. The rotten layer of ice covering this lake strengthens by the minute but watercourses draining the lake still run clear and dark.  Over all the storm deposits pure white snow flakes. They make their best show on top the charred limbs of cottonwoods still standing after last summer’s fire.

The contrast of thaw and freeze is strongest where the beavers flooded the trail with their dam. Here a thin dark water channel must be crossed unless we back track to the Troll Wood trail.  The end of a mid-winter thaw offers great opportunities for foolishness that if indulged can lead to danger.  I could carry Aki across the open water but it would means a soaking for my boots. Unless the temperature drops. I could make it back to the car with nothing to regret but wet socks. If it dropped quickly and I become immobilized by  a twisted ankle—. Years ago I would have plunged ahead and into unpleasantness that often ended with my frozen clothes thawing by the fire while I promised myself to stop taking stupid chances with my extremities.

We do back track and enter the Troll Wood where the winter storm has yet to breach it’s defenses. All is green except for a patch here or there were a dusting of snow whitens the yellow-green moss. We’ve taken shelter in a poorly maintain barn. When the trail takes us along the edger of another ice covered lake I look out at the snow and wind with smugness happy to have joined the trolls weathering out the storm. Aki relaxes too, apparently happy to have dry feet and no wind stinging her muzzle.  Neither of us jump when we hear the bang of an avalanche breaking loose on Thunder Mountain. It will never reach this wood.