Category Archives: Poodle

All About the Light

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Like a logger descending a spar tree the temperature has been slowing moving downward since early morning. If Aki and I had taken this walk last evening, the little dog would have splashed through the trailside puddles. We could have driven to the trailhead without concern about black ice on the road. This morning, I could feel the car float over newly formed ice. 

            The trail mud is firming up but it is still wet enough to cause Aki to detour around it. We are heading toward the Fish Creel delta just after the crest of a 17-foot high tide. When we left the car, water still blocked part of the trail. But it will have exposed a narrow path by the time we reach the tip of the small island that marks the mouth of Fish Creek. 

            We will see eagles and a handful of ducks. But the sunlit mountains will grab my attention. At one o’clock in the afternoon, they will be made impossibly white by end-of-day sunlight. Their silhouettes will cut a rugged line in the azure sky. Calm water at their base will double the scene.

   All this sun washed beauty will quickly give way to dusk but not before the mountains and encroaching clouds reflect the pink colors of sunset. 

Capacities

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Scattered snowflakes are falling on this mountain meadow. An hour ago the sun shone here.  The deer that left tracks on the trail might have stood in the sun. Did he stretch his neck in happiness the sun warmed his hide?Aki, who has known only snow on this walk, ignores the question. 

            I’m pretty sure that the little dog feels a range of emotions. She can bark in anger or melt into my arms with a look of bliss on her face.  What emotions drive the wild deer? They can panic. A doe protects her fawn like her human counterpart would. Love motivates the human mom. Is the doe only driven by instinct? 

            Humans can feel joy, like I did last night while watching a surprising sunset. I suspect that domestic animals might feel joy. What else could explain the display Aki puts on when her humans from vacation? But I wonder if wild animals like the deer and bear experience joy. 

Snowballs

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I don’t enjoy this either, little dog. I’m holding Aki over the bathroom sink trying to move one of her front legs into the faucet stream. It, like her other three legs, is covered with snowballs. Better this, than having me pull them off.This reminder does nothing to reduce her resistance. 

            Aki picked up her snowballs running on new snow that covered the Perseverance Trail. She could have avoided them by staying on the packed portion of the trail. But, as she would say if she could, what would be the fun in that? While she gamboled and nosed into the snow, I took stock of the day. Mist ghosts climbed up the side of Mt. Juneau.  New snow lay crowed onto the tops of cottonwood limbs and the rocks lining Gold Creek.  Looking down the valley we could see dark, anvil-shaped clouds, about to deliver our next dump of snow. 

            Still standing over the bathroom sink, I manage to remove all Aki’s snowballs and dry her off. Her paws are moving before I can manage to drop her onto the floor. We meet at the back door, where she is waits for her post-walk treat.  

Merry Christmas Little Dog

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December 25th is one of the days on which I wish Aki could speak. What does the little dog make of Christmas, with its gifts and extra visitors? Does she hate holiday music? She shows her appreciation during Christmas dinner for scraps of meat secreted to her under the table. But does she wish everyone would leave the house as soon as the turkey or lamb is put away?

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If she could understand, I’d tell her that humans need something to celebrate during this, the darkest time of the year. People living closer to the equator may not get this. But since last summer we northerners have had to wait longer and longer for the daily sunrise. Those of us wintering in Juneau suffer even greater reductions in daylight because of the Douglas Mountain Ridge. Five days ago on the solstice, the earth began slowly rotating its north pole to the south.  Merry Christmas little poodle, spring is just three or four months away.

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First Ski of the Year

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This chance to ski is an unexpected holiday gift. Everywhere but along Montana Creek is bare of snow. Thanks to Montana Creek’s microclimate, it received snow while the rest of town saw only rain. But the recent string of warm days and freezing nights have iced over sections of the trail and exposed rocks. This might be the only chance for the little dog and I to get in a ski until we receive a new blanketing of snow.

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Aki and I sneak by the gun range, thankful that no one is blasting away. The sound of a shotgun or rifle can send the poodle-mix into a panic. We won’t hear gunshots until two kilometers up the creek. Mostly we listen to the sound of skis shushing on the trail and water pouring over creek boulders and windfalls that have fallen into the stream. At first Aki dashes ahead as we climb up the creek valley. When she tires, the little dog trots just ahead of me on the set classic ski tracks.

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Singing the Blues

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It’s below freezing. A light wind makes it feel colder. But for the first time in a week, the sun shines down unimpeded on the rain forest. While watching golden eye ducks splash after fish in Gastineau Channel I hear a strange cry. It is faint and very close. It is not a mimicking or sarcastic sound so I rule out ravens. It is far from a mallard’s maniacal cackle, the gull’s tattletale scream, or the eagle’s scolding screech.

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I wonder, for a moment, whether a nearby great blue heron is singing the plaintiff song.  Then I remember that herons squawk like barnyard chickens.

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Looking down, I discover the source of the noise at my feet. Aki, squinting under the unfamiliar sun, is singing to herself.

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It’s a blues song. The little dog dislikes walking along Gastineau Channel. I think she only agrees to join me out on the exposed gravel because she knows that we will soon be walking along the edge of a grass-covered dune where many people walk their dogs.

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Not Aki’s Favorite Kind of Snow

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With snow falling down in coin-sized flakes, Aki and I head out to False Outer Point. We started the drive on gray, glistening pavement but by the time we reach the trailhead, several inches of snow cover the road. The little dog bursts out of the car and into the white.

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Aki loves snow, loves the way her paws dig in to the stuff when she runs, loves to run the side of her muzzle down a stretch of it. But the snow produced by this morning’s shower offers none of those doggie enjoyments. When she runs down the beach, her paws reach sand and gravel. The new covering the beach is too shallow to muzzle rubbing. But she doesn’t throw in the brakes or try to coax me back to the car. She just ignores the way the flakes into her curls and trots along by my side.

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For me, the snow is perfect—not too deep for walking but thick enough to enhance the angles and curves of the rocks that jut out into Lynn Canal.

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Winter Garden

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The outdoor thermometer on Chicken Ridge promised a mild day for this time of year. If not for a brief snow shower that fell while I gathered things for today’s walk, winter would have seemed a long way off. Aki and I headed out to the wetlands to cruise for ducks or eagles. We only saw ravens.

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The temperature during the walk never dropped below freezing but the wind chill made Aki shiver and me wish I had brought a heavier coat. At the beginning of the walk, we watched an airborne raven try to drive its brother off a scrap of food.  After that it was all windblown grass and muddy trails. Well, that is not entirely true.

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On the side of a large driftwood log, I found a little moss and lichen garden. Red lichen flowered among moss with leaves like tiny blades of grass. I would have never found this magic garden if not for the wind, which forced Aki and I behind the big log to warm up.

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There is Always an Eagle

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There is almost always an eagle in that cottonwood this time of year. Aki takes notice of my mumbling. The big birds always make her nervous. The eagle, marked with the white head and tail of an adult, watches us out of the corner of its eye. She is even wetter than my little dog.

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From its cottonwood perch, the eagle can see the toe of Mendenhall Glacier poking out from a fog that hides the rest of the river of ice.  Ghosts of mist float over Nugget Falls and the spruce covered hills that encroach on the east side of Mendenhall Lake. The resulting beauty helps me ignore the plink and plunk of raindrops hitting the hood of my rain parka.

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The eagle can’t pull on a gore-tex coat when the weather worsens.  It must endure and hope to scavenge some food to fuel its inter furnace. Is it dreaming of summer when salmon swim past its cottonwood tree on their way to spawn then become eagle and bear food? Or just does it just curse the rain and pray for a chance to dry out in the sun.

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Reading Tracks

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At beginning of this walk to Gastineau Meadows, a raven supervised me as I captured Aki’s scat in a plastic bag. From its post in a nearby spruce tree, it squawked with apparent disapproval when I dropped the bag on the ground and continued up the trail. I don’t think it trusted me to pick up the bag on the return trip to the car. It is one of those “at least it is not raining” days. The sunrise provided a little drama at daybreak but now gray skies seem to suck the color out of the rain forest.

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A crust of snow covers the frozen meadow. It doesn’t deter the little poodle-mix from following me off the gravel trail and onto the muskeg.  Someone with a fat tire bike has crushed his way across the south section of meadow. Worried that the thin snow covering is not enough to protect the fragile muskeg, I mutter curses to heap on the bike rider if he appears. But he is gone. After leaving the portion of the meadow marked by his tracks, we won’t see any other human tracks.

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We follow the tiny tracks of a first-year fawn, hoping to find those left by its mother. But the little deer appears to have walked alone. Later we find the tracks of an adult deer moving in the direct we need to take to reach the trail to the car. A few yards later we see the tracks of a stalking wolf. I wonder if a single wolf could run down a deer impeded only by a thin crust of snow over frozen ground. Aki and I will find no sign of a kill.

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The raven will still be in its post when I bend to pick up the poop bag that I had dropped at the beginning of this walk. It flies off only after I carry the smelling bag a few feet down the trail.