Category Archives: Poodle

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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Aki on Strike

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Bribery might work but I haven’t brought any dog treats. Aki has planted herself on the access road to the Perseverance Trail, front paws dug in against any effort to move her away from Cedar and her dog owner. They have just taken a spur trail home. Being a herder, she knows it is wrong for us to separate. She likes her people grouped together like sheep in a corral.

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Aki has staked out her moral ground. It’s all black and white. The only gray she will recognize is the color of her fur. My only choice is to pick her up and carry her toward home. In her defense, it is a day where everything is either in light or shadow—black or white. The February sunshine hammers the bare-branched trees and shrubs along the trail to a dessert like clarity. Snow and ice patches are painfully bright. Strong light produces strong shadows. It’s heady stuff for us rain forest dwellers, so comfortable with soft gray light.

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Many Shades of Snow

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Before we leave Chicken Ridge for the Gastineau Meadows trail, I’m forced to destroy art: the bas-relief baroque frost feathers that obscure the rear window of our Subaru. From inside the car Aki watches the blade of our scraper plough through frost as thick as Victorian wallpaper. In seconds it is gone.

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We see so many manifestations of frozen water during our visit to the meadows that I wonder why the English language has so few words to describe it’s many states. There’s the snow that still covers most of the meadow. Corse from repeated freezes and thaws, it can hold even my weight until the day’s sun softens away its crust. Thin sheets of opaque ice cover the ponds with abstract etchings that could have been by Joan Miro. On the main trail, many boots have pounded the snow covering into dense and smooth ice the color of milk. Aki and I avoid sections where a thin sheet of water the color of Irish breakfast tea has seeped over the trail ice.

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Air bubbles are still trapped in meadow ponds where last summer we watched water striders dimple the water. Beneath the ice their progeny wait with the water lilies for spring. Aki and I follow the trail of an adult deer that took advantage of the crusty snow last night. While I stop to photograph Mr. Roberts, the little dog starts racing up and down a solid stretch of snow, ears flapping. Often all four of her feet leave the ground at the same time like she is trying to fly. The little poodle-mix does love snow.

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Surrendering to the Rain

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I used to think that a willingness to lean into the winter wind was the primary requisite for surviving an Alaskan winter. After today, I wonder if you really need is the capacity to surrender.

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Aki and I slip and slide over the paths through the Mendenhall Campground. It’s raining, like it has rained for a couple of days. Before that we had heavy, wet snow. My jacket is already soaked through and water drips off Aki’s fur. We don’t turn back to the car, just take extra care not to slip on the water-skimmed ice. We surrender to the rain.

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This must be what it would be like post apocalypse if you and I were the sole survivors little dog. We are alone, maybe even a little lonely. No one comes out of the bathrooms or carries firewood to their campsite. No children play, no dogs bark, no cars purr as their driver looks for the perfect campsite. With this weather, we have no reason to expect help or even company.

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It’s Back

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Thinking that the recent run of warm weather will continue this morning, I dressed for spring, not winter. Now I wish I’d checked with Shamus, our electronic weather icon, before driving out to Fish Creek. Shamus was probably wearing his heavy coat, muffler, and watch cap. I could use his heavy coat. Aki could probably use her winter wrap but she doesn’t complain. So, I don’t.

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Much has happened on the Fish Creek delta since our last visit. The six-inch-thick pond ice covering shattered and islands of it rode a big tide high up onto the meadow. Already new ice replaces it. There’s new snow two, maybe four inches or so, covering the trail. Aki bounds over it like a deer, ears flopping, eyes looking for a drift deep enough for a face plant. We hear an eagle but see nothing on the land but ermine and dog walker tracks.

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We have sun, at least the islands and mountains on the other side of Fritz Cove and the channel have it. They stand whiten by new, sunlit snow. But the little dog and I walk in a dusk that will last until night. Hundreds of ducks, mallards mostly, and scoters work the stream mouth. The scoters flew off minutes ago but the ducks stay as if they know it is too cold for the dog or I to swim into their territory.

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Jumpy Birds

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The flooding tide just displaced this murder of crows from an offshore bar. They regrouped on a lumpish rock thirty feet from where Aki and I emerge from the woods. My dog ignores the crows, as she tends to do with corvids except for our neighborhood ravens, which act like her teasing cousins. One by one the crows launch into the air. A small one keeps a look out while the rest line up like jets waiting to take off at the Seattle airport. I wonder if this organized nonchalance is designed to hide fear.

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The ducks and scoters are definitely jumpy. There were two rafts of mallards when we arrived but one group panicked into a short flight to join up with the other. Now they hang close to shore while one of their number cackles in way that would suggest insanity in a human. The party colored harlequin ducks are quick to dive until driven to flight by the appearance of a bald eagle overhead. This sets some mergansers off and into the air.

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The eagle pulls back its talons and skulks back to its spruce roost. I want to hang around and watch micro bursts of wind push small waves through the ducks’ formations but Aki whines. She has a point. It’s blowing hard, a wind that propels raindrops like missiles. I followed her into the woods where the storm hums through the canopy and we have to climb over a hemlock tree downed by the last windstorm.

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Free Range Dog

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I was disappointed to find so many cars in the trailhead parking lot. But most of their occupants had already formed an ant-like line on the lake ice pointed toward the glacier’s ice cave. Aki and I keep to the eastern lake shore and wander toward Nugget Falls. Fog and low clouds form a grey and white ceiling above the lake, revealing only the lower half of Mendenhall Glacier.

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Aki usually keeps pretty close to me but today she ranges like a cattle drive scout, returning for a checkup and then dashing in another direction. No dogs or people draw her away. I blame interesting smells, entertain the possibility of ghosts. One time I spot her far out on the lake where she has acres of ice to herself.

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Last Crisp Day of 2016

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Nature’s timing is off this weekend. Rather than prolong the wet, gray storm that washed though the rain forest for much of the last week, the sun returned on this last morning of 2016. At 8:30 it started a low arc over the Douglas Island ridge and plunged behind the mountains about 2 P.M. Even through a playwright would have scheduled sun’s reappearance tomorrow, when the New Year begins, I’d rather end the year with a day of crisp light rather than one dominated by flat gray. It reminds me that 2016 had sparkle as well as darkness.

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Before the sun can disappear, the little dog and I climb to Gastineau Meadows where we look from shadow at the bright-white flanks of Sheep Mountain and Mt. Juneau. The meadow crossing gives Aki a chance to demonstrate her ability to scoot across the top of the snow pack even though as one of my legs plunges through the crust every four or five steps. Early this morning several deer and many snowshoe hares had crisscrossed the meadow, leaving tracks on last night’s snow. The deer had the roughest passage but even their slender legs didn’t pierce as deep as my size 10.5 boots.

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Aki Does Love Snow

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Wind blown snow, like that swirling around Chicken Ridge today, narrows your world. It limits us to views of the neighborhood, denies any chance to see Gastineau Channel or Mt. Juneau. I worry that it will discourage Aki from venturing much beyond her yard. But the little dog leans into the wind, walking quicker than usual to reach Basin Road where craftsmen houses provide us a windbreak. Even though it means facing into the wind again, she pulls me across the old trestle bridge that leads to the Perseverance Trail. When I let her off lead, she charges ahead then looks back to make sure I am still following my poodle-mix lead dog.

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We pass the old wooden chute that releases overflow from the flume carrying water to a small hydro plant behind the Salvation Army store downtown, head up a trail covered in drifted snow. Aki pushes on, porpoising in and out of the six-in-deep stuff. Soon she is plunging her muzzle in soft drifts and twisting her head when she comes up to cast off the flakes that stick to her gray fur. Most hangs on to give her a white mask.

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Somebody’s Birthday

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Today is Aki’s tenth birthday. We celebrate on the glacial moraine. A favorite trail is almost empty even though it’s sunny and frost feathers cover every stone, fallen leaf, and blade of grass.

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Wafer-thin ice covers Mendenhall Lake except where Steep Creek flows into it. At least four late-run sockeye salmon recently entered the stream. Three have taken up station on one end of the first beaver pond. A fourth is dead at the feet a bald eagle that is busy ripping off strips of salmon flesh with its orange beak. In seconds three other eagles land. The first bird chases off one but the other hangs about. Two magpies flutter around the feast but have to settle for scraps that have landed a safe distance from the eagles. Soon raven will push away the magpies and reach a détente with the bigger birds.

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Aki, she ignores the bickering birds but not the scent of something she catches after we have moved away from the lake. At first oblivious, I trod on until I sense her absence. Turning, I see her standing stiff, noise wrinkling in caution. A line of what looks like wolf tracks lead from her to me. I back track and take an alternative way to the car with my little protector.

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