Category Archives: Ravens

Time to Look for Wild Clues

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Once a week, when Aki and I walk a route through downtown Juneau, the little dog transforms into a policewoman patrolling her beat. This morning, as sunlight brightens the clouds over Douglas Island, she insists on a full investigation of a patch of pavement on Chicken Ridge. It could be urine spread by a favorite dog friend, or scent left by the bear that raided a neighbor’s garbage. It might even be the aroma of popcorn crumbs scattered by one of the neighborhood’s raven or the faint musk of a passing deer. Is this town, the state’s capital, uniquely blessed to have so many wild animals within its urban core? Or do the little dog and I just have more time than other city dwellers to notice?

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The Black and the White of It

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Ravens and gulls are the black and white of it this morning. Aki ignores both. She doesn’t notice how the birds feed on spent dog salmon carcasses or wait for the ebbing tide to reveal more. She has no time for sights or sounds this morning but uses all her energy to study pockets of smells that dot the trail. Each one seems just out of her reach when I stop to photograph a bird. She manages to jerk forward just as I hit the shutter button on my old camera. This frustrates both of us but produces one little blessing in the form of a raven’s portrait captured in flight.

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In Spite of the Rain

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On this walk through the Treadwell ruins it will rain hard but there will be no wind. We will pass many dogs and their humans. Aki will play with the dogs and ignore their humans, including the woman who will shout, “Keep that dog away from me,” even though Aki will already be twenty feet down the trail. A raven will waddle between the stubs of wharf pilings and stop only long enough to give us the stink-eye. Three kingfishers will chase each other across the surface of the glory hole and one will land in a nearby branch for the sole purpose of scolding my innocent dog. An eagle will sink its talons into the top of a ruined wharf piling and screech defiance at a pair of other eagles who will show the good sense to perch under the shelter offered by beach-side spruce trees. It will be a good walk in spite of the rain.

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Sacrilege

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Near the downtown Juneau bus terminal, Aki ignores the guy standing next to a spray-painted sign that asks, “Why Me?” I can’t. In his hand, he holds a beautiful, if old, carving adze. It’s one of the curved-bladed ones, handy for scooping out the back of a mask but hard to sharpen. Performing a sacrilege, he uses the adze to dig a trench in the soil of a planter box. Above the sound of passing tourist buses, we hear a song of condemnation hurled in the man’s direction by a nearby raven. I’d join in if I knew the words.

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Out of the Wild

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Last week, while Aki chased her Frisbee over Juneau trails, I explored lands drained by the Innoko River area in Western Alaska. Some of the area I passed through has been designated wilderness. But we saw as many or even more animals in the non-wilderness areas. The flying predators we spotted—eagles, peregrine falcons, owls (great grey and great horned), and even a raven—seemed more interested in keeping near their food source than fleeing us. On each beach we sampled we added our boot tracks to those of geese, wolves, moose, beaver, porcupine, and grizzly bears. Twice we watched moose swim the width of the Innoko River.

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Today, now back with Aki in Juneau, I spent part of this Fourth of July picking blue berries near the Mendenhall River. While we walked on trails beaten through the patch by black bears, none appeared. Even one did appear it would not make the moraine a wild place, not when rubber rafts full of cruise ship customers constantly float past the berry patch.

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People of the Salmon

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I could be in downtown, watching members of the three Tribal nations of Southeast Alaska—Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian—sing, dance, and drum down Egan to Centennial Hall. But Aki and I are walking a trail through the gravelly ground left behind by a retreating glacier. The parade is the first major event of Celebration 2016 I’ve missed since Wednesday evening’s opening parade.

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We can’t hear dance drums echoing off the moraine’s pocket lakes and heavy cloud cover has grounded the tourist helicopters so there’s silence for reflection. I doubt that Aki reflects on anything more complex than animal scents and the pile of beaver scat that she rolls in while I enjoy the reverse image of tree-covered mountain flanks half-hidden by cloud.

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Raven’s song bounces through my brain—the one performed as an encore last night by the Git-Hoan dancers. The name means, “People of the Salmon” in Tsimshian. It’s an inclusive term because of the importance of salmon to everyone in the Alaskan rainforest, especially the Native residents. Earlier in the perform Git-Hoan released three man-ravens into the crowd, dancers with large wooden raven mask with articulated jaws. Knowing the ways of the wickedly smart birds, the people of the salmon saw the dancers transform into ravens.

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There are no ravens on the moraine today. Only sparrows and one, apparently grumpy robin appear. In a month or two, silver salmon will move through the waters we now walk along. Eagles and ravens will perch above the trail, waiting for their opportunity to feed. The Native people now in Juneau attending Celebration will be on their own salmon streams. Here, trout and char will stalk the spawning beds. The cruise ship tourists will be home in their suburbs. In the early mornings of spawning days, black bears will slap the silvers out of the water. Aki and I will be home on Chicken Ridge, eating fresh salmon,

Raven Cabal

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I sense tension in the raven community. Aki picks up on it. On Gastineau Avenue, they burst from beneath a salmon berry patch when we approach. One appears to act as a lookout from a perch that provides an unobstructed view of the MV Zaandam’s bow ropes. Ripe salmon berries, some red, others a milky orange distract me away from the ravens. But, like the ravens’ moods, they are sour.

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The little dog and I descend the Ewing Way steps to Lower Franklin Street and then walk past Tracy’s Crab Shack to the cruise ship dock. The disembodied voice of the Zaandam’s cruise ship director lets his passengers know that it is now safe to disembark. Early risers waddle down the Zaandam’s gangplank, pose for a picture with a crewman dressed as an eagle, and move into a swarm of land-tour hawkers. Aki powers past the false eagle and toward a gang of ravens shredding the ropes that secure the Zaandam to the dock. One, apparently the local lookout, watches us pass. Aki doesn’t even bark.

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Respectful Silence

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Like ravens, gulls, and eagles, you can hear middle school boys in the woods long before you see them. A coven of them spreads out from a fire ring. All but the one sitting by a weak fire are soon out bouncing around the old growth, shouting at each other as the last of the crows and gulls abandon the nearby beach. The boys in the woods all wear bright colored rain gear and, to be honest, smiles.

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Aki and I came early to this forest for a quiet, if wet walk through forest and bird song to the beach. I also hoped to bird watch. On our last visit I spotted a small raft of northern shoveler ducks swimming past a stalking heron and godwit. When we break out of the woods today a formation of goldeneye ducks flies away in a panic, leaving the near in waters empty.

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I think of the Tlingit elder that once taught me how to make an octopus bag. She also taught my five-year-old daughter the raven and canoe dances. She told the young dancers to keep a respectful silence on our beaches and in our woods. “Don’t even skip rocks,” she said. Even that shows disrespect to wild things.

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Cautious Little Dog

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Aki may be a deep file—one deep enough to remember the eagles that usually roost in the spruce trees along the lower end of the Mendenhall River. Rather than dash around the expanse of sand that I cross, she trots over the rough gravel near the tree line. When I stop to examine something, she appears briefly at my feet, then returns to the safer path along the trees.

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There are eagles but they are heard, but not seen. A scattering of gulls are spread out like shy bathers on a summer beach. They tolerate the little dog and I, as well as a single raven that follows us down the river to its mouth at Fritz Cove.

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Opinionated Ravens

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Aki and I join a line of dogs and owners on the trail from Downtown Juneau to the old Perseverance mining district. At the upper end of craftsmen homes on Basin Road, we passed under a light standard occupied by two ravens. The poodle-mix and I must walk in rain but the ravens could fly in less than a minute to the snow line. Instead they hang out on their light standard, commenting in raven speak on we earthbound travelers. The sleek, black birds turn their back when I stop to listen and croak out something that sounds like, “the nerve of that guy and his little overdressed dog.”

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