Carrying Wind

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Are crows the masters of wind and memory? While eagles roost in wind shadows and gulls hunker in the protection of tall grass, crows play in the gusts above the Fish Creek wetlands. Aki shelters beneath dancing fireweed stalks. I watch the crows surrender to updrafts and then furl their wings into dives that end just above the spruce tips of a small wooded peninsula.

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Two female deer ease out of the woods and mince down to a beach covered with severed rockweed. Wind that carries fireweed down over my shoulder to them makes our presence known. But rather than breaking back into the woods, they slowly move along the beach until they are past.

 

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After the deer have passed, Aki and I round the wooded peninsula. The little dog lets me lead on the tall trail grass first so I can knock all last night’s rain off the bending leaves and create a newly dried path for her passage. On the peninsula tip we surprise an immature bald eagle perched on a beach. Even the wind gusting around the point can’t hide out approach. With a surprising lack of grace, the eagle ends its short flight with a plunge into the creek. After flapping around like a drunk just fallen into a swimming pool, the eagle breaststrokes over to the little island it was shooting for when it hit the water. Was the eagle victimized by a sudden burst of wind?

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Aki and I must lean into the wind on the way back to the car, wind that plays with the wheat-yellow grass and reddening fireweed stalks and lifts crows. It carries the voices of the king salmon snaggers on Fish Creek Pond, fireweed down, and memories. The down always reminds me of my child on an Alaskan beach to August, skipping rocks as fireweed down flies:

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From eagle feathers and fish bones

memories float up off this beach

like fireweed down in August.

 

Eagle flies from a spruce bough

circles then drops to the sea.

She submerges talons that pull

a herring dinner skyward.

 

My toddler daughter watches

as others clap amazement.

 

I want to dive into the memory

surface just after the capture

ask if my baby feels pity

or admiration, my child

of forest and beach

who falls asleep to the music

of wind and tides.

 

Promises

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Aki ignores the kingfisher that seems to me to be hunkering down on a small glacier erratic. It’s a fool’s errand to attribute emotions to a bird but expressive kingfishers invite the attention. This one on its small bolder might have been stunned into stillness from a just injected meal. It could be waiting, with patience, for its feathers to dry from a recent downpour that soaked the forest and created rivulets that eroded parts of the forest trail we took to reach this beach. It might just be sulking as another kingfisher, on his one own glacial erratic a hundred meters down the beach, savors a recently caught herring.

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When a shaft of sunlight illuminates white gulls that wander a patch of orange-brown rockweed just delivered by last night’s storm surge, I think of the rainbow. It formed over Admiralty Island during the downpour we drove through to reach the trailhead. Aki, didn’t God seal his promise to Noah of no more catastrophic floods with a rainbow.

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I can accept the promise of no more civilization ending floods but know rainbows never promise the end of rain. Even as we leave the beach from the old growth, drops dimple the water around a curious seal.

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Where beavers recently flooded part of the forest, I see another possible portent: three woodpeckers hammering the same section of an old spruce tree. Two are sapsuckers. The other hunts insects. Why do they crowd together in a rain forest full of targets? The dog has no answers and the birds—they never talk to me.

Storm Beach

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Even when living in California I preferred a winter beach to one crowded in summer. An empty beach is the best place to calm jangled nerves or indulge a funk. Even one in a mellow mood can appreciate the offered solitude. So, on this gray Sunday morning with rain in the forecast, I head out with Aki to a crescent of gravel near the old Auk Village site.

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We drop down steep stairs to a trail that winds through a forest of alders and old growth spruce trees. I can see, through gaps in the trees, that the beach is empty but keep to the forest trail. The large spruce offer the kind of comfort that can only be provided by living things that have withstood storms for over two hundred years.

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The beach is still empty when we leave the woods. We have it to ourselves for ten minutes. Then, a family of toddlers and water dogs crash out of the trees barking and giggling and sending a roosting eagle to flight. Another eagle screams when the startled one tries to land in its tree. Soon both are in the air, struggling to master strong gusts of a storm front. We will all be wet soon, the birds, dogs, and toddlers.

Wet Whines

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It’s raining. I’m pick blueberries. Aki whines and shivers. She waits for me to launch her Frisbee over the muskeg. But, I am in a harvest mood on this mountain meadow. Already the blue berry plant leaves yellow and redden toward their fall color. Some of the berries are over ripe and drop at the slightest touch. We need another gallon to get through the winter. But Aki whines so I toss the Frisbee and return to work. If the little dog were home and dry my mind would drift into areas where creative ideas are harvestable. But she is here, wet and pathetic. Tossing her Frisbee is the only creative thing I can to do.

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What do the seals make of Aki?

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The mouth of the Mendenhall River narrows and widens with the tide. Today, the tide ebbs, shrinking the river’s width and opening a trail around the tip of Mendenhall Peninsula. Unseen to the little dog and I, chum salmon are finning their way up the river to their spawning grounds in Montana Creek. We smell the rotting corpses of the early arriving salmon that floated down river after a violent spell of mating.

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The dead chums keep the interest of a half-a-dozen eagles roosting above us in spruce trees. After hearing the first one scream, Aki takes up a defensive position near my heels. But, the birds are not interested in ten pounds of poodle. They wait for the tide to serve up the dead.

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I am not so sure about the harbor seals. Two of them float in the current just off shore. I assume that they are there for the salmon but appear to look longingly at Aki in her yellow fleece coat. Maybe they are just curious as to what creature walks on four legs but wears clothes. As long as we keep moving down the trail, the seals swim towards us. When I stop for more than the time it takes to focus the camera, they slip under the water.

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Twichy Birds

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It’s early morning on the Treadwell ruins. Aki and I head over to the Glory Hole to check out the kingfishers. The forecasted heavy rain has yet to appear but clouds hang low over the channel. Eagles and gulls mew from the beach but we can’t see anything through the thick hardwood forest that has taken over the ruins.

Red “Xs” mark a dozen of the alder and cottonwoods that grow close to the old power plant building. While Aki sniffs for sign, I read a sign affixed to the largest of the marked trees. It lets the reader know that all the marked trees will soon be cut down to protect the ruin. “How odd,” I think that the city officials feel the need to notify people of the logging project. How strange, that they want to cut down the things that make this peaceful place even during a storm.

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On the beach, I spot one of the kingfishers apparently asleep on a jagged-topped piling. The flooding tide has created a moot of channel water around him. The bird lets me reach the edge of its moat before flying off. I take as many pictures of it as I can before it flies off. A minute later the bird settles in another piling several hundred meters off away. I feel a little guilty for disturbing its sleep.

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Down the beach, on top of the old mine’s ventilation shaft, a bald eagle squats. A surrounding murder of crows imprisons the eagle. Something startles the crows into the air after another eagle takes a roost on a nearby snag.

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A Little Early

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We arrive at the false outer point trail before the mist burns off and the tourist guide buses. It’s not too early for the Stellar jay who squats near the trail, ready to curse our passing. Aki feints a charge at the bird and it flies up to low branch. Both probably consider theirs a job done well.

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I lead Aki out of the woods and onto a rough beach trail, surprised at the how much algae now grows on the rocks. The green stuff seems to be creeping north as our climate warms. It makes the rocks too slick for walking so I have to find a work-around in the rockweed. A bald eagle that had been waiting on the beach for the tide to ebb flies off and lands on a stranded glacier erratic a hundred yards away. Its flight temporarily sends a gang of gulls airborne but they are on the beach seconds after the eagle lands. The big bird might make the gulls nervous, but not enough to abandon a chance to chow down on the critters soon to be exposed by the retreating tide.

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Cheated

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I feel cheated out of three weeks of summer. Just barely one week into August and already the devil’s club leaves yellow and chlorophyll drains out of skunk cabbage. We don’t even have sun to enrich the autumn colors. A soft, steady rain drenches Aki and I as we climb up the Dan Moller Trail. The rain does not distract the dog from the abundant number of pee-mail messages left on the trailside brush. It’s a different story when we reach the first open meadow and cross it on a deteriorating wood plank trail. Here she shakes off what rain she can and stares at the fool who actually wants to continue up the trail. I know how this story will end but want to prolong the meadow visit long enough to sample the low bush blueberries. They too confirm the departure of summer. While some bushes wear fall colors most are still green. Even so, most have already dropped their berries. The few blues I harvest are bitter.

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The Stink Eye

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I am here under duress. Even though she already had her walk this morning, Aki gave me an extended stink eye until I slipped her leash into my pocket and grabbed a camera.

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Minutes into this walk on the Outer Point Trail, a group of tourists eye me with caution, like country folk might look at men in gang colors after stumbling into an intercity neighborhood. Aki, an animated stuff animal, can’t have scared the tourists. Maybe I should have shaved this morning.

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It’s quiet in the forest after we pass the timid tourists so we can hear the hammer-like pounding of a woodpecker. Later we will be scolded by a Stellar jay and a red squirrel will swear at my little dog while I look over a scattering of its spruce seeds on the trail. We will hear more woodpeckers and stop to watch a red-breasted sapsucker and later a three-toed woodpecker. I will wonder if their presence in such high numbers is the result of the mild winter we had last year, which allowed tree pests to survive in high numbers.

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The Harvest

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The eyes go first, and then the belly contents. If bears had harvested these chum salmon, the brains and stomach would have been torn away. But unlike bears, gulls peck rather than bite their carrion.

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Last night’s retreating high tide scattered dead chum salmon all across the Sheep Creek delta. Their eye sockets all empty. Most have beak-sized holes through which a gull has extracted their stomach contents.

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Now the gulls, hundreds, if not thousands of them, wade in the shallows. They scream in each others’ faces and wait for the dying to continue. One immature bald eagle flies off as soon as I turn my camera on him. I understand his nervousness. I can also hear the screams and see the fishes’ hollow eye sockets.

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