Avian Rodeo

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Trying to focus a camera is probably the worse thing to do when a dozen bald eagles are flying over your head. Bur here I am, pointing it skyward. There are ravens too, more athletic than the eagles, more aggressive. Holding Aki’s leash and a full poop bag in one hand, I move the camera in the general direction of the birds and click like mad. If I drop the camera now, I could watch their dives and in the case of the ravens, barrel rolls. I might figure out why they spend so much energy during this time of near-famine. Could it be sport—an avian rodeo?

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The little dog and I push on into the wind and climb from seawater to Chicken Ridge. A block from home we stumble on a small flock of European Starlings harvesting in our neighbor’s yard. Sunlight angling up Main Street enriches their chestnut feathers and brightens the males’ reds and violets. Here, the camera proves a better tool for accessing beauty and personality.

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Wetlands Ice

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lemon-creek

The guns are gone now that hunting is over on the wetlands. Except for area far above the high tide line, there is no snow, just ice, bent grass, and frozen mud. A raft of very relaxed ducks floats just down channel form the little dog and I. How many quiet days does it take for them to drop their guard?

wetlands-ice

Wishing that I had brought my ice grippers, I spend most of my time with eyes down, careful to step on patches of grass sticking out the ice. I am surprised by the view of Lemon Glacier when I do look up. Its terminus hangs above the Lemon Creek Valley with its collection of box stores and the state prison. Long banners of blown snow trail off the surrounding peaks.

 

Beaver Scent

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The little dog and I walk between two channels of the Mendenhall River on a trail only passable after stretches of cold, snowy weather. If she wasn’t such a brat about it, we could follow it all the way to the lake and loop back on a trail rich in dog signs. But Aki disappears across the river and into the woods whenever she sniffs a trail to her preferred route. She doesn’t care about solitude or silence or the reflected views we have of the glacier and Mt. McGinnis. She wants some same-species interaction.

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I crunch ahead, breaking through the thin crust covering the snow pack except where the wind had stripped the trail down to bare ice. We find what looks like a miniature bobsled course that runs from the river’s edge to a thick forest of alders. My suspicion that it is a beaver’s logging ice road is confirmed when the little dog rolls on a portion of the run with a goofy smile on her face. She does love beaver scent.

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High Wind Warning

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I’m standing on a downtown dock that is covered in ice. The ice has enough grit mixed in it to provide boot purchase on a normal day but 80-miles-an-hour wind gusts are sweeping down the channel. A gust snaps forward my knees and lifts my torso forward and up, like I am no longer anchored by gravity. Instinctively, I lean back into the wind to avoid being pushed off the dock and into the turbulent channel.

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I am glad that Aki is still in the car. It’s been awhile since I felt such a jolt of fear. We drive out to a North Douglas Island trail where the forest should provide some protection from the wind.

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Last night’s storm has stripped the forest trees of frost but the beach is still white with snow and ice. Waves born in Lynn Canal curl onto the beach and die. Their crashing noise mixes with that of the wind whipping over the treetops to make the little dog nervous. Protected from the wind by the beachside forest, we watch a small raft of mallards fly low along the surf, close to the beach where the wind gusts can’t interfere with their flight. The wind doesn’t inhibit crows, ravens, eagles or gulls, which wing through the gusts with an overstated nonchalance.

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Low Tide at Fish Creek

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We have one more day of gray before the sun returns. According to the weatherman, it will bring glacier-borne winds to chill Chicken Ridge and the rest of Downtown Juneau. The promised wind will make short work of the frost feathers now decorating town. Thier angular crystals cling to almost every surface from car roof to spruce tips. They brighten the bare-branched alders that line Fish Creek. Aki and I visit there to enjoy the show.

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Aki finds a brace of miniature collie dogs to chase near the Fish Creek Pond but otherwise we have the place to ourselves. Leaving the pond, we walk down an icy trail that splits a frosty forest of beach roses and cow parsnip stalks to a spot offering an unobstructed view of Fritz Cove and the Chilkat Mountains beyond.

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All the bird action is near the tide line where mallards grumble, a heron wades, and a bald eagle rests on a rock. The sky hints at the change of weather. Rather than forming a locked pearl and gray ceiling above the mountains, the clouds scatter and pastel pinks and purples paint their bottoms.

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On our return to the car I hear what sounds like a murder of happy crows. When we get closer I can tell that it is a chorus made by children playing a pickup game of hockey on a small pond. Even if they look up from their ice, they wouldn’t be able to see the pastel clouds, the heron or the eagle. They wouldn’t even see the mountains. But their apparent joy exceeds mine.

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.

3The flat light emphasizes the blue in the glacier ice and turns ice encasing the waterfall a gentle turquoise shade. Water still forces it way through the ice it created to push beneath the lake surface. Even diminished by its turquoise sarcophagus, the falling water intimidates me with its powerful song. Mesmerized, I almost miss a brief reveal of glacier and mountains provided by the sun.

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Fog

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Aki dashes around Sandy Beach, one of our most popular dog walk. She ignores the old mine air shaft, a tall, rectangular battlement with a pitched roof now appearing and disappearing in the fog. As I try to focus my camera, the fog appears to grow thousands of feet in height until it obscures all but the top of Mount Juneau. It deflates as quickly, as if it is being eaten like cotton candy by the sun. In a minute it is barely taller than the airshaft.

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All the miners who were served by the airshaft managed to escape before water from Gastineau Channel flooded the tunnels of the Mexican Mine. Before that day, even the sharp-eared Aki would not be able to hear my summons over the sound of ore crushers that ran 24 hours a day except for Christmas and the Fourth of July.

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I imagine the miners moiling in lantern-lit depths while fog shrank and expanded over the channel on sunny January days. They would never know the bright beauty that Aki and I share unless they took their lunch above ground. They entered their tunnels in the dark of morning and left long after the sun disappeared behind the Douglas Island ridge. Maybe, during their dinner after a day like this, their children told them about the fog and how an eagle emerged from it with talons lowered to snatch food from the channel waters.

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First Light

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The sun rising over Gastineau Channel this morning makes Juneau look like a tropical paradise by flooding the tidal flow with orange light. Aki and I know the truth. Its early January in Alaska and the temperature is yet to rise above 12 degrees F. We head north out the road to visit a large meadow where wolves hunt, beavers sleep through the day, and otters play.

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My skis barely crack the crusty snow that covers the meadow. Aki just trots on top of it. The snow won’t be a challenge for the little dog. She dashes about, checking the pee mail. I break through a screen of willows to reach the beaver’s home stream and then follow the tracks of a single wolf to their door. Aki sniffs tracks made by the beavers last night and heads further up stream.

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Several nights of clear, calm, and cold weather have allowed frost feathers to build on the meadow’s alders, pines, and spruce trees. The feathers on a nearby stand of trees flash from inanimate gray to flashing prisms when struck for the first time by the early morning sun. I pull off my mittens and make many attempts to capture the richness and sparkle until my hands numb. If I my hands are cold, what about Aki’s unprotected feet. But the little dog seems fine. She doesn’t even lift a paw off the snow while she waits from me to return to the skiing.

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Good Movie

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There is nothing I can do about the clouds over Gastineau Channel, no way I can improve the sunrise. But the little dog and I, wanting to enjoy another day in paradise, head out to False Outer Point. We will have to race the tide around the point and cross by the tiny headlands before the beach floods.

As it has since we woke up this morning, the sun illuminates the mountain peaks but leaves all else dominated by clouds except for the Chilkat Range on the far side of Lynn Canal. They shine from ridge top to seawater.

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A sea lion near the point surfaces for a few quick breaths and then makes a shallow dive. He spy hops when Aki barks, then disappears, leaving us alone except for the raft of harlequin ducks just offshore. In minutes they take flight. I spot a kingfisher hunkered down on a large beach rock that leaves when I try to photograph him. Maybe he moved to avoid a bald eagle that flies over our head and the kingfisher’s perch, extends both talons and rocks toward the sea like a parachutist.

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The sun has gained full purchase over the glacier and its surrounding mountains but we remain in shade. This time of year, we can’t expect daylight on the east side of Douglas Island. I enjoy the pull of this bright land that we cannot touch. It’s like watching a movie in the dark.

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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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