Christmas Day with family on a trail that has become an old friend. It snowed here earlier but we see none on the way to the beach, just the familiar shapes of an old growth forest— confusions of moss, dormant understory plants and an impossible number of spruce rising to the sky. It is all brown and green and asleep.

The sky wakes when we reach the beach an hour before official sunset, offering us a mix of grays and blues and yellows.  The tide and a northern wind have flooded the shore to the forest edge, leaving Aki without a beach to dash down.  She takes it well but does show impatience with my efforts to capture the sin now hitting Shaman Island.

It was a day without drama. Nothing to write or tell about. Just a simple walk with a friend and family on Christmas Day.

Last week’s storm first brought snow and then a cleansing rain that freed the city streets of ice and the forest understory of snow. This trail takes us through a forest on vacation from winter. Sorrel and Dogwoods make the most of it by lifting their still green leaves to the sky. It’s the right place to be on this day before Christmas.

Most of the forest waits for spring, leaves long severed, next spring’s buds wrapped in armor.  They preach patience and reassure Aki and I that the world is already tilting our northern land back toward the sun. The dog woods remind us that summer is worth the wait.

Tomorrow most in America will celebrate the birth of Christ, a star of patience and promise that still leads us out of our individual wastelands. Winter may cover the forest with snow tomorrow while rivers freeze over and the landfill overflows with torn wrapping paper.  Eventually a strengthening sun will alleviate the need for patience. I pray that even then we will not forget the promise of advent.

In a perfect world man would never suffer violence but it would hammer nature. Violence churns it, grinding deterius into consumable parts;  a necessary brutality. Aki and I find a trail of violence from today’s trail head to our turn around spot on the Breadline Beach.

Aki, dashing ahead to investigate finds it first, a shredded deer hide scattered over the forest duff. We find no bones or blood or sinew, only hair and a few strips of fur.  Aki wants to move on but I linger to admire the beauty that this evidence of destruction brings to the forest floor.  A hunter probably discarded the hide nearby. Scavengers of the forest did the rest. The scene reminds me of a shredded rabbit skin I found near my snare line when we lived in the bush. A raven’s wing pattern decorated the nearby snow.

After crossing a hand hewed creek bridge we cross a muddy bottom land then climb to a still frozen muskeg meadow. The oranges and pinks of sunrise show through a wall of old growth spruce lining the opposite side. It’s almost 11 AM and the late sunrise reminders us of the impending solstice.   Nature’s violent winds have been at work here, snapping off limbs and tree tops foolish enough to reach too far for sunlight. The strengthening light turns this meadow of stunted growth into a sculpture garden.

After the meadow we drop into a spruce forest growing at the top of the Breadline Bluffs. Most are young, less than 100 years old, but we find a pocket of mature spruce tucked in a little valley.   There were more of them before rain erosion weakened the hold of their shallow roots and wind and rain undercut the cliff land where they grew. Some dropped to the beach below. The stubborn ones just snapped in half while resisting fierce storm winds. Their jagged stumps still point north in accusation. Those trees still standing near the cliff edge have wrapped their roots around exposed granite,

Moving with caution to the beach we catch a diminutive Dall Porpoise surfing in rollers just before they break. Even though Aki and maintain silence, the porpoise disappears but we still have the sunrise, now filling the ski and sea surface with yellows and blues. A gentle ocean swell, almost timed to my breathing, makes the only sound until a gull fight breaks over a nearby herring ball.  Aki wants to return to the forest. Perhaps she knows of fierce battles for survival fought here by the trees. The next one could be as soon as the next high tide.

 

Aki trots lightly over these slick beach rocks but I must move head down, with caution. I can’t even relax while crossing the flat planes formed by half buried stone. An almost invisible algae coating makes them ice treacherous.

Caution over rocks provides an unexpected benefit today. Moving slowly means moving quietly so I easily hear the growling conversation of a pair of sea lions just off shore. Later I hear a whale exhaling and look up to see five more spouts following the one that got my attention.  At first they appear far off but then one sounds and I see clearly its flukes rise then slide into the calm sea. There are not Killer Whales as I first suspected, who might be hunting sea lions this time of year.

While I watch the whales Aki finds something primeval to roll in and then keeps a distance from me the rest of the walk. Not knowing that she has anointed herself with beach perfume I wonder why she has become standoffish when the whales distract me again. This time one of then breaches— a half hearted sideways launch of his body into the air. Then they disappear.

Moving on, head down I find a great jelly fish spread over grass and gravel on the beach. It mimics the Birth of a Cosmos by Hubbell Telescope. No other creature offers such rich warm colors this deep into winter. It beached itself on the edge of a partially buried field of rolling gray stone with veins of white quartz.  The field rises to a sharp edged hump near the high tide line. Is it the skin of a sleeping dragon partially exposed by the last storm tide? If Aki were a child I might explain how Dragon, tired from a flight across the Pacific stretched out on the beach so the sea could massaged its back with pebbles rolling in the surf. Then Sun broke through Clouds to warm Dragon to a sleep so deep he won’t wake until needed by Man.    

Aki, still keeping her distance, scampers over the dragon’s back. I keep off it, preferring a belt of gravel recently exposed by the ebbing tide. Minutes pass. When I look up Aki stands before  a set of ice falls suspended beneath the exposed roots of some hemlock trees growing at the top edge of the beach cliff.  Aki growls. She does that when unexpected shapes cross her pass. If she were a child I’d tell her that the ice pillars were formed by seeping water freezing to other ice during the subzero weather of November.  If she were a fanciful child I would call them ornaments made for a giant’s Christmas Tree