Category Archives: Southeast Alaska

Blowing Snow, Giggling Kids

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We are back on Mendenhall Lake skiing into a brisk breeze. Blowing snow obscures parts of the mountains above the glacier and has filled in the tracks of those who skied here earlier in the day. Aki tears ahead into the northern, In seconds she catches her other human, Minutes later, we all turn around and finish our ski session on the the nearby campground’s protected track. There we find another storm, this one of preschoolers who giggle and move in our direction. Some try to ski. Most drag their equipment toward the cars that brought them. I lift the little dog off the snow before she can dash around the kids, barking her invitation to play. She treats small people like shy puppies.

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Light and Shadow

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Another day of strong light and wind for the rain forest. Aki and I walk a narrow path pounded out of fresh snow by utility workers and dog walkers. The workers use the path to access a power substation. Dog walkers take it to a rocky beach along Stephens’ Passage. We are here for the clarifying light, I mutter but not loud enough for the little dog to hear. She likes to keep it simple.

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The retreating tide has revealed much of the stony beach. Thanks to the deep shadows produced by the clarifying light, I could count every rock on the shore, every barnacle and the waves that boom while striking barrier boulders and reefs. But that would only produce sums.

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Easily resisting the temptation to count, I lead Aki off the beach and back down the path to where another one breaks off into the woods. No one has used this path since the last snow but it’s easy walking.  I head toward the lazy portion of Peterson Creek. In summer it looks like a New England stream with its deep pools and borders of thick hardwoods. But today little sunlight reaches the stream. What does can’t make the opaque surface ice sparkle. River otters could liven things up. We cross many of their snow slides. Each winds down the bank and onto the creek ice. But the slides aren’t slick from recent use. Even the otters look elsewhere for a little excitement.

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Cowee Meadows

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Finding a place where the wind can’t hit me, I pull off a heavy mitten and use the bared hand to frame a photograph of a beaver house reflected in pond ice. “Click.” I swing the camera toward a ridge of saw-toothed mountains rising above the forest at the north end of Cowee Meadows. “Click.” Hand cold, I return the mitten and search at my feet for Aki but find only snow and glare ice. As she has since lunch when our hiking partner gave her some tasty treats, my little dog is hard on his heals.

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They are fifty meters out on the pond ice. Squinting out the glare, I think I see Aki looking back to make sure I am okay.

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I’d forgive the dog if she asked. She’s earned it. For two hours she bounced in and out of our snowshoe tracks or leaned into a wind that has already scoured trail ice clean of snow. She joined our approach to a beach being hammered by forty-knot winds, winds so cold that I could only stand for minute to appreciate Lion and the other peaks surrounding a riling Berner’s Bay. Then she follows us to this beaver pond, her exposed rear chilled by the wind.

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Reading the Signs

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Aki runs ahead of me with her hind legs splayed out like both are in casts. It’s the only way she can make progress thanks to the collection of snow chunks, some bigger than golf balls, hanging onto the her fur. She has a similar collection on her chest and front legs. I’ve been struggling to make progress thanks to a buildup of snow on my ski bottoms. Were a pair to draw to, little dog, I think when something crashes through thin ice near the edge of Moose Lake.

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At first I think that new snow sloughing off overhead branches made the noise. Then I spot a beaver, fur darkened by water, munching alder branches on another section of lake ice. These guys should be snug in their dens, waiting for ice out, if not night. But here they are exposed, eating as snowflakes melt on their backs. Is this a sign of the apocalypse, bad timing, or a failure to make a fall-time wood pile big enough to keep them in alder and cottonwood until spring?

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Snow and Sand

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We’re visiting the Treadwell ruins, which today, at low tide, offers Aki a chance to run full out on wet sand and porpoise over paths covered with deep snow. After doing her business and checking the pee mail, the little dog links together a series of leaps that propel her far down the trail. When the rubber band connecting us that she imagines stretches to breaking point, Aki returns, otter-like, to my side.

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While we crossed the Douglas Island Bridge to get here, sunlight broke through the storm clouds to illuminate Gastineau Channel with silver light. But all that is gone by the time we reach the first place that offers a beach view. A new storm pulse has backfilled holes in the marine layer and flattened the light. I mourn the lost opportunity, while my little dog motors flat out across a beach made of pounded gold ore. As if commenting on her happiness, irrational in the midst of the storm, two eagles and a raven scream and croak.

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Lights and Darks

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Aki and I are back in the woods where only a dusting of snow covers the trail. It lies, like powdered sugar on the wintering plants. I am struck with the power of white to bring light, clarity, and interest to the rain forest. Is this how, back even before the big Sitka spruce trees we pass first sprouted in the trunk of deadfalls, an innovative artist discovered the illuminating power of white chalk? Did some charcoal portraitist return from a snowy walk inspired to highlight his subject’s eyes with small squares of light?

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More snow has reached the beach, now exposed by the ebb tide. Here the dark tones of rock and stone demark forms of snowy white. An eagle flies over an almost empty bay, talons extended back, perhaps to balance out the weight of a fish that wriggles in its beak. I can’t make out its white head or tail in the gray light.

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Icy Taunts

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It’s almost March. Tomorrow or the next day a Pacific storm will likely hammer Juneau with heavy snow or worse—rain. But this morning, on Mendenhall Lake, it’s almost desert-warm. Someone has set a five-kilometer track on the ice, which we follow toward the glacier. Aki dashes from her other human and I, stopping occasionally to take a cooling snow bath.

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It’s hard to concentrate on anything but sparkling snow, the blue-green glacier ice, and the saw tooth ridge of mountains that rise out of the Juneau ice field. I think about  To Make A Poem by Alberta Turner, a book that urges poets to tap into the subconscious for inspiration. But my subconscious can’t complete with all the natural beauty. Only when I complete the apex of the track loop and turn my back to the glacier, can I yield to the meditative slide and slide rhythm of Nordic skiing. But I sense the glacier leering behind me, ready to strike a stunning pose if I turn around. On a rising north wind, I can almost hear the river of ice taunt, “I’ve calved more metaphors than your sad little subconscious will produce in your lifetime.”

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Not Today

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Taking advantage of the new snow, Aki and I circle the Peterson Creek Salt Chuck (lake). She porpoises in and out of the snow, upright tail beating back and forth like a metronome. I ski behind her, listening to the ice crack under my skis. The center of the lake would provide a smoother path but I don’t feel like getting wet to the waist if I cross a soft section of ice.

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When we near the waterfall that drains the lake Aki bolts toward the woods, barking at something in the trees. I am guessing that she has spotted the river otters that had made the tracks in the snow I now cross. The headland I move towards is one of their handouts. Aki has had a strange relationship with otters. One called her out onto thin ice. Another tempted her to join an otter family in the Mendenhall River. But today, they can’t tempt the little poodle-mix into their woods.

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New Land

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Aki porpoises through the five-inch layer of new snow covering Mendenhall Lake. She doesn’t smile, like some dogs, but her body language—ears flapping, front legs extended—conveys joy. Me too, I think. The lake extends for miles from Skater’s Cabin to the glacier. The handful of skiers already on the ice are lost in dissipating fog. I can almost believe that we are the first to use a new borne land.

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Usually the weather or crowds punish us when we ski on the lake. Cold, often assisted by wind, numbs my hand and face, fogs my glasses. On sunny, windless days, the ski trails can fill up like ride lines at Disneyland. But, when we start today’s ski, it 32 degrees. No wind makes it feel colder or banishes the fog that glistens in morning sun. The temperature climbs as we approach the glacier. The snow starts clumping on my skis. The fog fades.

 

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In an hour, after they have enjoyed a good Saturday sleep in and a fry up breakfast, Juneauites will fill up the parking spaces near the campground and skater’s cabin. There will be squeals and shouts of appreciation. There will be lots of selfies. None of them will capture my little dog flying over five inches of still-crisp snow.

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Silence

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I bring a digital recorder along on this walk to record descriptions of the sounds we hear while rounding the False Outer Point headland. But, the day’s calm, gray skies provide no wind to rattle the spruce boughs or drive surf onto the shore. Early on we pass an eagle but it never belts out its usual high-pitched cry of annoyance. Red Squirrels eat spruce seeds on the headland cliff without chitterling at Aki. Only discarded seed casings spiraling to the beach give evidence of their presence.

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A scattering of scoters floating between us and Shaman Island mutter when we enter their privacy range but stop after they paddle ten meters further into Lynn Canal. The faint crow of a crow floats to us from the island where a raven is imitating a barking dog. Soon both fall into silence.

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I waste the gifted silence by crunching through a midden of empty mussel shells and then a frozen drift of severed rockweed. Most of the steps the little dog and I take dislodge beach rocks or pebbles. They produce a bottom-of-the-well sound when they strike each other. When we stop walking, we can hear a stream flow down the headland bluff and over beach gravel to salt water. In the stream, ice has formed an inverted bass clef at the edge of a tiny waterfall. I’d like to ask the little dog why the sound of sparkling water rushing over gravel calms. Aki drinks the clear water and then calmly looks to me.

In fifteen minutes blasting will start at a nearby barrow site. I have to get Aki to the car before the first explosion. Otherwise the little dog will panic and hide herself in the thick woods on the ridge of False Outer Point. That would be a sad end to this walk of silence.

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