Thank You Frost

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I didn’t expect much to come of this cross country ski trip. The temperature had dropped to below freezing yesterday to end the thaw and solidified the mushy snow. My skis shouldn’t be able to gain a purchase on the resulting concrete. But I hadn’t figured on the frost that built during the calm, cold night. It changed the ice-slick snow to ski-friendly stuff.

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Aki, her other human and I are traveling along the shore of Mendenhall Lake on frost covered snow. It provides perfect skiing. The skis of those who tried the same thing before yesterday’s freeze sank deep into soft, wet muck. So did the paws of a wild animal that left a compact line of parallel tracks from the woods, through overflow, and onto the lake. I am still trying to identify the critter that made them.

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The glacier and surrounding mountains rise above the refreezing surface of the lake. Low angle sun throws deep shadows on fractured sections of ice. But clouds obscure most of Mt. McGinnis and Thunder Mountain. In a short time we reach the still-ice-free Mendenhall River and ski along its shore. Thin fog vapors rise from the water to be turned almost painfully white by backlighting sun. The mist separates long enough to reveal a lone merganser paddling across the river.

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I stop often to photograph the shiny beauty. A gap opens up between Aki’s other human and myself. The little dog dashes back and forth between us, taking advantage of the hard trail. She is still running when we reach the car and find two ravens policing the parking lot for dropped snacks. Aki is displeased.

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More Like Early Spring

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No No No No November, tomorrow brings December. The calendar claims that we are sliding into winter—that it is only three weeks away. But as rain continues to melt November snow, it feels more like early spring. Aki and I walk through the Treadwell mining ruins. The lovely snow is almost all slush on the trail. The little dog works to avoid stepping into the little swimming pools of melt water that fill each boot print on the trail. But neither the rain nor the slush discourages her. When I feel the cold water soak my socks I check to see if the poodle-mix wants to make it a short day. She is already down the trail, smelling more signs left by her dog buddies.

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To avoid the slushy trail, I lead Aki out onto the beach of crushed gold ore that fronts the ruins. Here the trail is drier but we’ve lost the protection from the wind driven rain that the ruin’s trees provided. I’d like to stay and enjoy the harsh beauty of storm clouds above the channel but retreat back into the trees before my hands are too cold to operate the camera.

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Later, from a protected spot at the edge of the woods, I will watch two bald eagles circle above the channel as if it were summer. Nearer, a brace of loons will dive on baitfish that have collected in the collapsed glory hole. Aki will play tag with a wet wheaten terrier. But when we reach the trailhead, she will be the first to the car, waiting with impatience, for me to open the door.

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Home and Wet

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Our plane arrived to late last night to allow us to bring Aki home from the neighbor who cared for her during our trip to Washington D.C. When her other human and I enter their house this morning, the little dog yipped with excited and ran back and forth between her temporary caregivers and us. Outside a light rain melted through the snow like it was sugar. Because of the thaw, most of the trails are covered in slush. So I let Aki lead me up Basin Road and onto the Perseverance Trail.

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When we left to fly south, the roofs on the Craftsman homes that snake along Basin Road had heavy snow loads. This morning they are wet with rain.

A human friend joins the little dog and I on the hike. When he bends down to secure an ice cleats to his boot, a dog treat drops out of his pocket. Aki stares at it but doesn’t gobble it down. Even after he said she could have it, Aki wouldn’t eat it. But after that, she kept close to my friend. Sometimes she would leap up until she was waist high on him in case he was holding the treat in his hand. But he never was. She never tasted the snack.

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Mt. Vernon

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Preservation is an odd thing. Using the latest technology, the US government is attempting to preserve in time the home of its first president: George Washington. Here are sheep, grazing like they did when George lived here. Here is the table he dined at, the bed he died in. Here are reproductions of the quarters he fashioned for his slaves. Here is a multi-media display to help modern visitors taste the life of a slave during the country’s infancy.

Still, I can only guess at the brutality it took to maintain this plantation during Washington’s time.

It will be good to return home tomorrow to Alaska and Aki. But, I will miss the sun and moderate temperatures.

Little Lending Libraries

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I’m in the American Portrait Museum, face to face with a bust of William Seward: the man who engineered the US purchase of Alaska from the Czar. We celebrate his birthday in Alaska by giving everyone the day off. Here, close to where he was almost assassinated, his image hides in a corner.

Earlier, I walked over the Eastern Market, stopping at each of the tiny “take one, leave one” libraries. Even though the birdhouse-like structures only hold a couple dozen books, their contents allow a good read of the neighborhood’s character. The first one I checked on Capitol Hill contained a recent paperback novel by Isabelle Allende and a slim volume of essays by Montaigne. Another one had a hardback tome on Joan Moro. A few blocks away, we could only find crime novels and kid books.

I never found a book on William Seward or even one on US history in any of the tiny library boxes I looked into today. But they did offer an impressive number of fine reads.

It’s Like A Museum

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It is still snowing in Juneau. Aki’s humans are still in Washington D.C. I am stumbling onto slices of beauty in our capital. They are easier to find during the last hours of daylight, a time of shadow and brightness.

My trip to Giant Foods yesterday afternoon for an early edition of the Sunday paper was a little like dropping by the National Gallery to visit the Goyas. At one point I almost photographed a gutted building being remodeled, sucked in by the subtle contrast between the red and blue insulation sheets. Instead I took one of the D.C. Street Car clanking past a funeral home.

Later I read the newspaper while waiting on the roof of an apartment building for the sun to set.

A Little Bit of Home

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Here in the U.S. capitol, four thousand miles from Aki’s house, we discover reminders of Alaska in the Native American museum. I found little to remind me of home on the way to the museum. We walked down broad, straight streets lined with hardwood trees in fall color. Cars and buses tried to filled the air with smog but were defeated by a cleansing wind. Only the light, as clarifying as yesterday’s shared something in common with Alaska.

Back home, in Juneau, Aki might be walking by the state museum if someone has shoveled away the foot of snow that has fallen since we left. If allowed inside, she might pass in front of the Tlingit longhouse or the collection of Yupik masks collected near our old home in Bethel.

Brothers of those masks wait behind glass inside the Capitol’s Native American museum. The masks are locked rigidly in place. They will never dance again. But they do watch, over and over again, video loops of Yupik dancers remembering with their bodies, the old songs.

Clarity of Light

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Even though we are in a metropolitan center, a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol, the air is crisp and clean. No apparent pollution softens the intensity of the afternoon’s light. We’ve just left the American Museum of Natural History after enjoying an exhibit of wildlife photography. Each photograph captured in fine detail, a moment in the life of the depicted animal. In one, a cougar, head dropped in the way they do when approaching in caution, appears to be within striking distance. Even the grains of fur on the predator’s back can be discerned.

I wondered at this artificial clarity and why it thrills us humans? Not having the skill or high-end camera required to capture such detail at a distance, I just try to post pictures that share what I saw when I took them. Are my photos more honest, or just mundane?

Back outside the museum, I realize that the clarifying light is giving me an opportunity to take very crisp pictures with my cell phone camera. The reality, for once, is as crisp as a museum-quality print.

Fall colors on Capital Hill

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I walking without Aki to get coffee down a back street. It is near 60 degrees and the light cloud layer that dampened the sunrise has burned off. Limbs off hardwoods form tunnel over the sidewalk. I imagine for a minute living in one of the brick row houses, looking out from a bay window at the turning leaves. It wouldn’t be a bad life.