Category Archives: Poodle

Quiet Times

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This is a low-cruise-ship day so Aki and family head out to the glacier. No buses idle in the parking lot when we arrive.  No line snakes out of the bathroom. Without the crowds, the visitors that did make the trip out from town look relaxed and happy. They don’t even seem to mind the rain.

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Aki carries her Frisbee in her mouth. The emergency-services-green disk flops back of forth as she trots along. We try to talk a back path to Nugget Falls but find it flooded.  But that doesn’t matter much today since the crowds are small and happy.

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Two newly calved icebergs have come to rest in the lake. I stop to enjoy them. In a few years the glacier will have retreated away from the lake too far for launching bergs. At this point no amount of wishful thinking or even good environmental practices can stop the retreat.

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Glacial melt and recent rains have swollen Nugget Falls so it is really pounding into the lake. The crashing water forces water spouts and sprites to rise twenty feet into the air, obscuring our view of the glacier. Ignoring the noise and fury, Aki begs her other human to throw the Frisbee. When it is tossed into the direction of falls, she charges after it as if on a sunny beach on a quiet day.

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Breaking The Calm

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It’s peaceful in the rain forest this morning.  No sun threatens the clouds. No wind challenges the calm. It is so different from yesterday’s whale watching tour. Aki would have loved the attention she would have received from the other passengers when they were not photographing orcas. When they were distracted by whales, the little dog would have hunted around lower deck for dropped food. But I think Aki enjoys these mild days with me, alone on a trail, more than a party.

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It takes little to shatter a calm, even one as profound as this one. Like a drop of accumulated rain falling from tree branch onto the beaver pond, a small thing can send out disruptive ripples.

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As we pass the pond on the way to the beach, a tour guide walks up. He speaks in the quiet tone of a person who prefers silence. I am waiting for my crew to arrive. Thinking a crew of soft-spoken people would almost go unnoticed, I wish him well.  The little poodle-mix and I walk on, reaching the beach as the tide starts to cover the Shaman Island causeway. The usual eagle guards the causeway from his usual rock. Two gulls bicker than settle into silence. Even the waves seem careful to hit the beach with a whisper. Then a child cries out like a tattletale gull as the guide leads a group of cruise ship tourists onto the beach.

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Dying Fog

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This morning fog hides the sun and blocks the view sheds of the Fish Creek Delta. Cruise ship fog horns mix with the panic honks of unseen Canada geese. Aki is nervous. The high-pitched screams of eagles hidden in nearby spruce trees put her on guard.

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The sun breaks through the marine layer and starts to deconstruct fog covering Fritz Cove and the surrounding mountains. That touching forested hills seems to tear itself apart on the old growth trees. Ocean fog moves up and down the bay like a hunting animal.

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While focusing my camera on a patch of fog flowing up and over a clutch of spruce, I spot two male deer on the foreground. One stands guard while the other one lies on meadow grass. The trailside grass prevents Aki from seeing the two deer. She will never know they were so close. Both deer are grazing in the meadow when we leave their view shed.

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Alder Dominance

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Alders dominate this morning’s walk across the moraine. They line almost every trail we take. If left alone, the tough shrubs would colonize the trail gravel, leaving us nowhere to walk. Grumpy sounding Stellar’s jays jump around inside the trailside alders as if to get a better view of Aki in case she is about to break some law. I’d like to ignore these forest police but the alders provide little to divert my attention.

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Aki loves these alder lanes because they offer the best chance of dog contacts. But I need a different view shed. Reluctantly, the little dog follows me down a lesser-used trail to the edge of a beaver pond that is rapidly transforming into a grassy wetland. Before the beavers built the pond dam, spruce and cottonwoods thrived in the flooded area. Now their dead-gray trunks rise from beds of reeds transforming into fall colors.

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On the way back to the car, I spot a blueberry growing alone on a bush. That’s right little dog; we have to stop at the store on the way home. Aki’s other human needs domestic blue berries for a low-sugar pie. We pass a great blue heron sulking in the rain. When I stop the car to take a better look, the big bird stretches out its neck and uses its long wings to lift up and away across a field of grass already the color of straw.

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Little Dramas

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Aki and I are the only ones on this normally popular beach. While she wolfs down something dropped yesterday by a child, I wait for the reappearance of a marbled murrelet. The pudgy little bird just plopped below the water. As ripples from the bird’s dive spread, a knot of herring explode onto the surface.  Something has scared the little fish out of the water.  I suspect the murrelet but the herring continue to panic out of the water even after the bird pops up. I look without success, for the wake of an unseen object, the fin of a hunting Dolly Varden.

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The rainfall intensified while I watched the flying fish and Aki ate. It drives us down beach and into the protection of an old growth forest. The time for thimble berries has past but I manage to find a few handfuls of red huckleberries. Aki has to make do with the smells left by passing dogs.

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At the forest edge we can spy on a clutch of gulls grooming themselves on some waterside rocks, Off shore a harbor seal cruises back and forth near the birds. It affects the studied indifference of a hunter and is careful not to make eye contact with its prey. If the birds are aware of the hungry seal, they don’t seem scared.

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Fledged

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Aki and I are on a hunt for an eagle’s nest. Last week a friend reported seeing two eaglets in it. I want to do the same. Aki, whose eyes are starting to cloud with age, is along for the chance to visit with other dogs.  We are on a popular dog-walking trail near the airport.

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The trail could be an icon for the successful human-wild animal interaction.  It wraps around the outside of the airport, offering views of a tarmac runway, floatplane lake, glacier, eagle’s nest, water treatment plant, Mendenhall River, Willie’s boat yard, and many mountains.

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Within a few minutes I spot an eagle in the top of a spruce tree. It looks tired enough to be on break from nest-watching duty. White puffs of eagle down decorate surrounding twigs. I can’t spot a nest. Aki looks bored so we leave the main trail and take one that curves along the river’s edge. A harbor seal, head just out of the water, cruises over to investigate and then slips into the river.

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We pass between drying stalks of cow parsnip and fireweed spears that have gone to seed.  Fireweed down fills the air like light snow will next December. Ahead fourteen Canada geese stand in mid-river on a submerged gravel bar. They make no noise until a flock of two hundred other geese fly across the wetlands to join them. Now the air is full of geese chatter. At first I take the noise to be warnings of danger or assertions of territorial rights. But as it goes on and the geese swim over to the original fourteen birds, their cackles sound more like party noise.

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The solitary eagle is still in its treetop eerie when we return to the main trail. In minutes we find a cottonwood with a “This is an eagle’s nest tree, don’t mess with it” sign. I look up and see the nest but no eaglets. Fledged but not forgotten by the tired eagle in the nearby tree.

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Enriched by Light

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Sunshine enriches this visit to an old growth forest. It backlights the translucent flesh of plant leaves and throws strong shadows off hunting dragonflies.

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But I wonder if Aki cares. Sunlight reflecting off the beaver pond forces her to squint and, I think, sometimes to sneeze. As long as her little nose works, she doesn’t care if the sun shines.

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The little dog and I walk along through the forest to a small bay. Soon the bay will fill up with waterfowl making their annual trip south. They will be joined by harlequin docks fat with baitfish from the stormy outer coast. Local mallards will share the bay with them and a few resident eagles. Today a few crows croak from a rocky island in the bay. Gulls, full from feeding during the ebb tide, putter around the same island or rest on the Shaman Island spit. I hear but do not see an eagle. Its high-pitched scream sounds like a piglet’s squeal.

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Kayaking to The Glacier

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I wasn’t sure about this trip. Aki’s other human and I are to paddle a kayak for over an hour to cross Mendenhall Lake and onto the toe of the glacier. Then we will climb a short trail and onto the glacier itself. Aki, can’t ride in a car for more than ten minutes without whining. How is the little dog going to handle a long ride in a confining cockpit? The answer is, “surprising well.”

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A ten-knot head wind slows our crossing of the main body of the lake. Aki sits in the forward cockpit, watching gulls hover over the kayak. She whimpers when we near a rocky point that marks the beginning of the bay that is touched by the glacier’s toe.  Kittiwakes scream at us. We can pick out the young that hatched this year by their darker color.

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We have to share the landing beach with a guide canoe full of customers who had paid for an adventure on the glacier. Aki dashes around them as they pull on climbing harnesses and helmets. They are receiving a safety talk when we walk up the trail. On our way back to the kayak we walk use the glacier to avoid a messy patch of muddy trail, passing the adventurers climbing onto he ice.  I wonder if a ten-pound poodle’s presence on the glacier diminishes their sense of drama.

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It’s Coming

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I don’t realize it is raining until Aki sniffs at something near a small pond. Light drops of precipitation dimple the water, sending water bugs scooting toward the protection of British tobacco plants. It’d be nice to write that I was engrossed in deep thoughts. But the truth is, I had slipped into observation mode, lost to everything except plants exhibiting signs of autumn.

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Just a few leaves on a wild crabapple tree have turned fall-time red. The high bush cranberry brush is still summer green. But the broad and fat skunk cabbage leaves are yellowing. The same is true of the trailside ferns. Gastineau’s once green meadow is now a rolling yellow and orange carpet.

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Above the meadow gray ropes of rain snake down the flanks of Sheep Mountain.  Even when the sun makes a brief appearance, it can only muster a colorless rainbow.

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Fish Creek Eagles

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Last night’s storm broke its back on the spine of Douglas Island and the mainland mountains.  Its heavy rain has swollen Fish Creek and turned the water the color of molasses. Salmon too weak from spawning have already been swept back into Fritz Cove. Those still waiting their turn to bred are hunkered down in eddies or behind drift wood barriers.

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Aki doddles behind until we reach Fish Creek where four eagles and kingfisher watch us approach from spruce tree roosts. One, an immature eagle, has cruciformed its wings so they can dry. The little dog hesitates and then moves close to me. No one dives on her as we round the pond and head out to the creek mouth.

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A big ebb tide has lowered the creek’s level and exposed a wide swath of wetlands. But the dozen or so eagles that we can spot are either feeding along side the stream or watching us from spruce roosts. Aki relaxes on a part of the trail almost enclosed by tall fireweed and wild rose shafts. I stop where that stretch ends and count six eagles watching us from trailside trees. Aki doesn’t follow me out onto the exposed meadow.

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I figure that the eagles must have sated themselves on dead salmon and other goodies exposed by the ebb tide. They won’t be interested in my ten-pound poodle. But Aki doesn’t share my confidence so I have to carry her until we reach a more protected stretch of trail.

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While we circumnavigate a small island covered with tall spruce, I lose count of the number of eagles, mature and immature, that fly over out heads and out over the wetlands.  White puffs of eagle down drift onto the trail in their wake.

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