Category Archives: Poodle

Waiting Game

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Three miles north of the Douglas Island Bridge a regiment of bald eagles waits. They will wait until the tide crests and then ebbs. Then they will search the exposed flats for salmon alive or dead. From the top of a grass-covered bank I watch the eagles preen, argue, or sleep while Aki wanders around sniffing and leaving scents for other dogs to sniff. She must becoming deaf to eagle screams. 

Later, we will hike down a rain forest trail to the beach, seeing evidence of a dying summer along the way. Fruit will still pull at the branches of berry bushes but many of the surrounding leaves will be fading to fall colors. The leaves of other plants will bare wounds from months of insect attacks.

           We will take a beach trail lined with stalks of dead-brown cow parsnip. I will look, without success, for splashes of color among the beach grass. Gulls will sleep on offshore rocks.  They, like the eagles will be waiting for the big salmon die off. 

Switching Roles

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When she was a puppy, Aki would travel at least twice the distance as I on our daily walks. I would stick to the trail. She would wander back and forth across it, usually at a run. The little dog, now the age of a granddame and I have switched roles. 

          This morning Aki sticks to the trail across this mountain meadow as I wander its margins looking for cloudberries. She doesn’t follow me until the distance between us exceeds her comfort level. Nearing that point, I turn around and see her, four paws planted firmly on the proper trail, giving me a look of incongruity.  She doesn’t flinch even though heavy rain is soaking into her fur. Seconds later she trots up to me just as a gang of six large dogs run head on into a family with their own dog.           

Through the rain I watch the confused, very loud meeting. There is yelling, barking, more yelling, and then apologies. When things calm down, I realize that Aki has kept her eyes on me the whole time. Was she worried that I would join the fray? 

I Should Have Listened to the Dog

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Aki stares at me while I stare at the empty surface of a lake. We are deep in the Troll Woods, a place that the little dog loves to investigate using her nose. She has already catalogued all the smells within her reach. Her patience must be about to run out. But I am not ready to leave until I get a photograph of the dragonflies.

            Two of the big, four-winged insects are flying up and down the lakefront. One hovered right in front of me for a few seconds. It was gone by the time I turned on my camera. I am determined to use my camera to freeze its wings. Aki knows that I am wasting my time. I’ve tried before, without success, to photography a dragonfly in flight. 

            After adjusting the camera so that it will focus on quickly moving objects I turn on the “burst” feature and wait. When I spot the pair approaching, I point the camera at the lake and depress the shutter button and listen to the click-click-click-click of the shutter. 

            At home I will sort through forty or fifty photographs, most will show empty lake water. A few will feature blurry versions of the dragonflies.  Only one will capture with some clarity, one the patrolling pair. I will be relieved that I spent a few minutes in the woods photographing high bush cranberries dripping rain. 

Rare Summer Crossing

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“Life is not all beer and skittles, little dog.” My words fail to convince Aki to follow me onto the meadow. I should not be surprised. This most stubborn dog has never tasted beer or played skittles. I backtrack and carry her thirty or forty meters away from the graveled path. She looks perturbed as I set her down. When her legs don’t sink into the muskeg she relaxes and begins to follow her nose. 

            Mountains surround us, now summer green. Usually by now the summer rain has turned the meadow into a wet sponge. So, we don’t step onto it until winter has frozen it and whitened the mountains. But little rain has fallen since last winter’s snow melted. 

Normally the mountains draw all my attention when we cross this meadow. This morning my eyes are draw to the little plants and berries that glisten with dew.  It is going to be a good year for bog cranberries, which won’t ripen for another month. Now they are pale and hard spheres lying on wine-colored moss. Insect eating sundews grow between the cranberries, their mouths open to capture flying bugs. The sundews have taken over the meadow like an occupying army. I wonder if this is their long established territory or a recent invasion. 

Two snowshoe hares will cross our path. Each will freeze at the edge of the trail long enough for me to appreciate their chestnut coats. Distracted by pee mail, Aki will see neither. When we will near the place where one crossed the trail, I will have to wait for the little poodle-mix to study the scent left by the hare’s feet.   

In the Wet

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Usually, when Aki and I take this trail into the Treadwell Woods a gaggle of domestic geese give an alarm. This morning they are quiet. A pathetic looking eagle might be the cause for their silence. It sulks in a spruce tree above the geese yard. I wonder if it has designs on a plump gander. It’s tough to raise poultry in this town unless you protect your birds with an electrified enclosure. Last week our neighborhood bear chomped down on a free-range chicken. 

            Low clouds hide most of the Gastineau Channel and the mountains that line it when we drop onto the beach. The rainstorm that soaked the woods last night continues to drop much needed rain. My pants and Aki’s fur were soaked when we passed through a grassy verge to reach Sandy Beach.             

A waterlogged eagle grooms itself while perched on top of the old ventilation tower. With its fierce gaze and feathers all ahoo, it looks like an awakening dragon. But a puff of down sticking to its beak shatters its tough guy image. 

It’s low tide. Down the beach three ravens search the recently exposed sand for snacks. One flies to the top of an gnarled wharf piling and pretends to dig a feast out of the top of it. Then it balances on one leg and kicks the other one up like a can can dancer. 

Hjorton Picking

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Aki looks frustrated. She sees no point in lingering on this remote mountain meadow, which is well off the beaten dog walker track. Why leave that rich environment to fill a recycled yogurt container with yellow berries? 

            I’d have much luck explaining my actions to the darning needle dragonfly that just landed on a weathered trail board as to the little dog. She has never bounced across a tundra meadow in Western Alaska during cloudberry picking time. She’s never climbed to a Swedish meadow in search of hjorton, the name the Swedes have given the cloudberry.

            I stop to plop one of the segmented berries into my mouth and remember watching families on a tundra plain near Bethel gathering in gallons of cloudberries, which they call “salmonberries,” so they could enjoy wild fruit during the coming winter. The kids giggled, the parents smiled and let all their worries disappear as they harvested summer. 

Grit

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Aki and I are walking through one of the grittier sections of Downtown Juneau. Most visitors wouldn’t be impressed with its grit. But it is a place of parking lots, gas stations, and resident hotels. Aki isn’t happy walking through this landscape. But we’ve just dropped off the car for servicing and need to pass through here to reach home.

            I manage to convince the little dog to accompany me to the waterfront where we find a young woman sleeping rough. Her possessions form a fabric wall around her. She may have fallen into a financial hole, but still appreciates natural beauty. A handful of fireweed blooms, carefully arranged in an empty beer bottle, brightens the scene. 

            An adult bald eagle perches on top of a driftwood snag a few hundred meters away. The snag was planted by the city next to a new boardwalk. Rain has soak the eagle’s feathers, which makes it look hung over or like a homeless person in need of a cup of coffee. The eagle ignores Aki and I as we walk under its perch, like it can’t be bothered with the diminutive poodle-mix. 

Aki Drags Her Feet

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Aki knows that something is not right. She left the house in a car with two of her humans. Before starting this walk to salt water we had dropped off one of her people so she could pick berries. Aki wants to go back for her—-to return her lost human to the family herd. 

              I coax her down the trail, keeping her on a lead in case she decides to take matters into her own paws. Each time I stop to snatch up a ripe cloudberry, the poodle-mix tries to pull me back toward the car. We cross a meadow of tall grass, some knocked down by a sleeping bear last night. Now Aki has something else to worry about. 

            The trail to the beach takes us under an eagle’s nest. An adult eagle guarded the nest the last time we passed by. This time it looks to be empty except for bird sounds that could be made by juvenile eagles calling out for food. 

            Aki tolerates my decision to sit for a bit on the beach. From there we watch two unsuccessful attempts by eagles to pluck fish from Stephen’s Passage. Then a Dahl porpoise makes a rapid transit past us. None of this takes the little dog’s mind off of her other human. The sudden appearance of a deer focuses her attention until it runs into the woods. A frustrated little poodle and I drive back to the berry patch where Aki squeals in delight when her missing human approaches carrying a half-gallon of blueberries. 

The Calming Place

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What a difference a few days can make. It was hot during our last visit to this rain forest. Forest fire smoke had turned the sky gray. The sky is grey today but colored so by clouds, not smoke. It is cool enough to need a sweatshirt to keep warm. Last week the trail was jammed with kids and their parents—all heading toward the tidal flats or Shaman Island. This morning the trailhead lot was empty until I parked there. 

            Without crowds, heat, or sun, the rain forest is a calming place. The quiet helps too. Only birdsong breaks the silence. It’s a once again a place to heal. 

            The little dog and I fall into our familiar patterns. She sniffs and I click my camera or look at reflections in the beaver pond. She sniffs and I pop a few sweet blueberries into my mouth.

A flurry of bird action takes us both surprised when we reach the edge of a little muskeg meadow. Chestnut-backed chickadees land on branches just above our heads. Thrush and their cousins the robin trot across the boggy meadow ground. Just ahead a red breasted sapsucker prospects the trunk of a slow growing pine tree for sap. After eyeballing us briefly it returns to his work. 

Even Bears Like to Have Fun

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Aki and I are walking along the edge of the Troll Woods. Mosquitoes buzz around us but can’t land if we keep moving. I pay for each photograph with a bug bite. Aki doesn’t seem to be bothered by the mossies. 

            When the little dog stops to sniff some pee mail I spot a line of tracks recently made in a muddy ditch. Stopping long enough to learn that a bear left them, I let a mosquito nip the back of my right thumb. It is a small price for priming my imagination with the image of a two hundred pound black bear waddling along in the mud. It could easily have chosen the firmer trail that the little dog and I are using to get back to the car. 

            Did the bear, which never has to worry about tracking mud onto a recently cleaned kitchen floor, chose to walk in the ditch just so it could feel mud oozing up between its paw pads?  Given their size and power, it is hard to think of bears as more than scary eating machines. The one that just left here with muddy paws is also a bit of a hedonist. 

Bears share other things in common with humans like the ability to have fun. Several springs ago, Aki and I watched a sow and her two cubs slide down a snow covered mountain meadow, climb back up and slide down again. The mom eventually stretched out on a rock in the sun while her kids continued to play in the snow.