Category Archives: Uncategorized

Speed of the Stream

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meadowWe leave Chicken Ridge early hoping to get in a hike before the arrival of forecasted 60 miles an hour winds and rain. A thick cloud layer blocks the morning sun like a leaden cover. When we start up the road to OUR mountain meadow trail, a cosmic hand lifts the cover and let the sun shines on the car and the freshly white mountain peaks to the north. Not trusting the strength of that hand, I fret that the sunlight will vanish before we reach the meadow trail.

darkThe yellow light still shines on the meadow when Aki leaps out of the car but fades to gray before I’ve taken more than a few photographs. Sunlight will blink through for a few second at a time during our hike but only it will confuse my digital camera. Without its rich distraction I can appreciate reflections of the bordering mountain ridges in the meadow small ponds, even those broken by fading lily pads.

board walk refAki finds little to distract her on this walk. No dogs come charging up the trail; no squirrels declare the forest a no trespass zone. She still dashes about, tail wagging, nose to the ground as we climb to higher ground. She shows surprising patience when I stop on a flat section of trail and start Tai Chi warm-up exercises. It’s the prefect place for it—the edge of a pocket muskeg meadow separated from a mountain wall by Fish Creek. I face the mountains at commencement, offering an invisible globe to the avalanche chutes. Am I performing a pagan liturgical dance? Aki stands by as I single whip, wave hands, brush knee, parry, punch, block, and finally, push the mountain. I offer another invisible globe to the mountain and pet Aki. For the first time since entering the meadow, I feel in sync with the place, as if my life energy flows at the speed of the stream.

Nature’s Shiny Things

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grapesIf Aki is a typical dog, they have no interest in a raindrop’s sparkle or light shinning yellow through a translucent devil’s club leaf. She reacts to sudden movement, like a squirrel’s scamper or dark shapes that could be bears. Why am I drawn to nature’s bling? If I look at clumps of Oregon grapes, my eye is drawn to the light collected in the remnants of the last rain shower that cling to single grapes. What evolutionary purpose is served by making me a sucker for sucker for nature’s shiny things? shower that clings to a single grape. What evolutionary purpose is served by making me a sucker for nature’s shiny things?aki

Tree Fire

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Tree FireWith white mist floating between trees on the hillside forest, it was natural for me to assume that the smoke from a tree fire was harmless fog. It didn’t even cause an eagle to abandon its roost in a nearby spruce tree. That’s why Aki and I walked past it on our walk around the Mendenhall Peninsula.

SealJust before we turned the corner a curious seal swam up the river toward us. He appeared to look at something over my shoulder so I turned back to see a tan plume of smoke mix with the white. It didn’t take long to find the source. At the base of a tall, straight spruce, where its roots wrapped around a great granite block, a crackling fire burned. While its flames chewed away at the tree’s trunk., the fire sent streams of white smoke through the small animal tunnels that honeycombed the moss covered forest floor.I hurried the dog back to the trailhead and called 911 on a borrowed cell phone. When I left, the authorities were working out what agency was responsible for the fire while it charred the 200-year-old tree unchecked.smoke

Last Trip to the Pass

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Herbert Glacier

The captain and I couldn’t squander yesterday’s September sunshine so we made one last trip of the season to the North Pass for silver salmon. Since Aki would soon become bored on the captain’s old Sea Dory, I left the little dog home on Chicken Ridge.

Harasssed Sea Lion

We motored into a light north wind that barely rippled the open reaches of Favorite Channel. A Stellar sea lion battled a cloud of gulls for scrapes from a silver salmon he had just snatched from the cold current. When he barked at the birds, they dived for the salmon bits that flew from his mouth. Near the north end of Shelter Island a small pod of humpback whales worried a school of herring into a convenient ball of feed.

Shelter Island Whales

Sea lions and whales fished the pass. We tried to keep our distance from them, but a pair of sea lions swam around and under the boat. Twice our rod tips bent toward the water and then snapped back after a sea lion had snatched away our bait herring. Twice a hooked silver salmon jerked a rod tip up and down and then vanished along with the hooks and line that secured them to rod. Since we used strong test leaders, we blamed the sea lions for these losses.

Our luck improved after we passed through the sea lions’ territory and into Hand Troller’s Cove. In a few hours of trolling twirling herring around the cove we had six fish of size in the ice chest—enough for over 40 pounds of fresh or smoked salmon dinners. Like the seal lions, whales, and bears hunting on the spawning streams, the captain and I have come to rely on fish to help us through the winter.

Whales II

 

The Dog Salmon Party is Over

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P1020180Yesterday I fished for salmon but caught only frustration trolling across the grain of the waves in North Pass. Rain, wind, cold featured prominently, as did a pair of feeding humpback whales. The experience helped me understand the songs sung today by clouds of eagles and gulls, ravens and crows in this riverside forest. They fight over putrefying scraps of dog salmon dropped on the trail by picky bears. I, like the birds and bears, wait for the next pulse of silver salmon, still ocean bright, to turn toward their home streams.

P1020169 The place smells like death. That’s too broad to communicate the complexities of scent on offer. Deep in the forest quiet, decay flavors air spiced by ripe high bush cranberries. The riverbank smells like week-old road kill. Spots where Aki hangs behind me displease like an untended pit toilet, an odor that could mask skunk spray. Here waits a bear. Carrion eaters, bears are what they eat, smell like condensed decay..P1020195I see bear sign everywhere—berry speckled poop, rough trails through the trail side brush, the odd head severed by sharp jaws from a dog salmon body.  Time to leave,

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After the Shock

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P1010520Why, I ask the little dog, did someone whack down the plants bordering this mountain meadow path? It must have been dramatic when the gas powered cutting machine severed flowers, grass, berry bushes, and finger sized alders. I search the resulting debris for survivors and find almost ripe blue berries, still green blades of grass and fading flowers.

P1010510A few feet away from the havoc the weight of a flower, a white hedgehog shaped thing, bends over the thin grass blade that nurtures it. A white orchid still flowers next to the living grass. Joy after sorrow?

P1010496After the shock, I tell myself that it’s a small, necessary thing. Without the destruction, nature would close over the path and block our only way onto the meadow. I wouldn’t be able to watch the sun favor a Mt. Robert’s avalanche chute with a thin shaft of light or hear a falcon’s cry over the racket of ever present blue jays. But, that’s the way with man in nature. Nature always pays the price of our enjoyment.

A Weekend for Remembering

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Boats on the water in Southeast Alaska can bring joy and frustration, sometimes on the same day. With unlimited sun and warm temperatures, we have joy today but Aki expresses frustration at the time it is taking us to get to the picnic spot. She whines quietly and paces back and forth across the three foot width of the canoe as her paddlers fight a stiff headwind blowing off the Mendenhall Glacier. We land safely on an exfoliated granite point which reminds us of Sweden.

On this Memorial Day weekend we remember the beauty of Swedish archipelagos and our friends there. I remember family and friends who have passed, some in service to their country but most after just living good, useful lives. My now dead father would have love this place like he would have loved Aki and his never-met granddaughter. He would have laughed at me and and my fishing buddy when yesterday we yelled at a seal lion after it snatched away a 20 pound king salmon that my friend had hooked fairly.

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We should remember our war dead this weekend but save time and energy for the deceased, like my father, who taught us to love.

After the Storm (Portland Japanese Garden, Rain)

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P1060751Having missed the big petal storm

I settle for the pale glow of those cherry blossoms

still clinging to the their tree in the face of a steady rain

for the lovely fallen

glittering and wet.

forming new flowers on the tree’s understudies

and a carpet that I crush

on the way to the pond

where the wind has

scattered cherry blossoms

over waiting koi.

After Party at Sheep Creek

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L1220440The St. Patrick’s Day partying ended when the front street bars closed at 2 p.m. Another party should be going this morning here on the Sheep Creek Delta. In Southeast Alaska, when the tide is out, the table is set. At first we only see two crows near the creek, loitering about like the trouble makers they are. In a few minutes we find the party. Two eagles, crows and gulls all feed on something tasty near the Gasteneau Channel beach. Just off shore, a tight raft of Barrow’s Golden Eye ducks feed in shallow water. Further out, a seal waits for them to move onto his hunting grounds. L1220469