Little Grumpy

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Aki is in a sulk. Whether tired from yesterday’s forest hike or just disinterested in another walk in the rain, the little dog drags behind as I try to hurry up Basin Road. I want to reach the Perseverance Trail before the mountain goats move too far up the flanks of Mt. Juneau. Each spring morning they work their way up the mountain side so they can be far away by the time most dog walkers start up the trail. We should be early enough to spot them fairly close to the trail. 

            I also hope to see two yearly bear cubs that were playing in an avalanche runout two days ago. Close to fully grown, the cubs spent the afternoon climbing up a snow field and sliding down on their rear ends. Apparently not interested in bears or goats, Aki is content to sniff every inch of the road. After an extensive examination, she throws me one of her significant looks. It could mean that she is tired and bored and I am a fool to be out here in the rain to early in the day for encounters with other dogs. I suspect she is trying to tell me that a bear waddling down the road last night and she has no interest in meeting it today. 

Trail Less Traveled

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Aki is frustrated. She and I have spent the last hour driving from one trailhead parking lot to another, looking for one that is not jammed with cars. She can’t understand why we have to avoid crowded trails. The Fish Creek parking lot has a half-a-dozen cars but it services three trails. We take the one least traveled. That will make all the difference. We will only have to pass three guys, and that at place to will allow us to keep three meters of distance.

            Our chosen trail takes us up the creek, past an amazing number of huge spruce trees. Many might have sucked water from the creek during the English Civil War. Most stood before white people arrived in North America.

   Few fish swim in the creek. It’s too early for adult salmon. Until they arrive, there will be no trout or dolly vardens. By now, most of the salmon smolt have made it to salt water. If we see a flash of silver in the stream, it will be a spawning steelhead trout.

            We can hear bird song when the trail takes us away from the noisy creek. Two male sap suckers pound spruce bark, trying to attract a mate. Nearby, a trio of pine siskens lands on a wind fallen spruce to tear thin strips from the bark for nests.   

Pocket Wilderness

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I expected a grey but dry day when we set out for Gastineau Meadow. Then the sun surprised us. Like most rain forest dwellers, I’ve learned to find beauty in soft, wet days. I even appreciate the power of storms. But that shell cracks when warmed by unexpected sunshine.

            Snow still covers part of the meadow trail. A sharply defined line of it stands in the middle of the trail, like the third rail of the D.C. Metro. The snow forming the line was compressed tight by many winter-boot prints. It will be the last to melt.

            Robins sing and Stellar’s jay scold from the branches of Douglas pines. I wish the jays would let the robins perform. After a winter of silence on the meadow, spring bird sounds are very welcome. 

            I coax Aki off the main trail and follow a deteriorating one onto the meadow.  Without meaning to, we flush a flock of dark eyed junkos off the snow. Some carry bits of dried grass in their beaks. They will fledge two crops of chicks in their meadow nests before the snow returns. 

            Even though Aki and I enjoy the warmth of this spring day, we will miss the snow. When it finally melts away, the still frozen meadow beneath it will thaw, making it a mess for walking. We won’t see the wildflower blossoms turn pink or yellow or watch the fruit of ground hugging berry plants plump and color. Those things will be for the birds, deer, bears, wolves, and coyotes on this pocket wilderness. 

Spring Tension

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Eleven days ago, Aki trotted in my tracks as I skied along this shore of Mendenhall Lake. Today I’m walking. Ice still covers the lake but it will soon rot away. Winter won’t return for at least six months. The robin that just flew off confirms that. 

            As we walk the edge of an ice-free bay that reflects Mt. McGinnis, I’m struck at how move vivid the reflection is than the mountain. No longer burdened with occluding ice, the lake water sharpens the lines of the mountain and even those of the gray clouds that threaten to swallow it. 

            My observations don’t interest the little poodle-mix or the mallard drake preening on an off shore rock. The duck takes no notice of our passage to the Mendenhall River where swallows bob and weave for mosquitos. Four tense merganser ducks watch us from shallow water on the opposite side of the river. Later, as we round a pond, we will see a bufflehead drake try to drive off another while the hens huddle in a nearby patch of open water. Clearly spring, with all the sexual tension it brings, has arrived on the glacial moraine.    

Silence

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Wind-driven rain slammed into the car as we drove out to the northern end of Douglas Island. The rain but not the wind stopped when we arrived at the trailhead. When a few minutes down the trail we flushed a varied thrush from the trail. It landed on a nearby alder branch and gave the little dog and I a hard stare. That’s when I notice the total absence of bird song. On our last visit, varied thrush, like the one looking at us, filled the air with their blurry whistles. Wrens and kinglets added their signature songs. This morning, not one bird, or even a squirrel tried to be heard over the sound of the wind.  I normally savor silence. It’s hard to come by, even in the rain forest. But this absence of bird song is chilling. Trying not to think about Carson’s Silent Spring, I follow Aki down the switchback trail that leads the beach. 

            At forest’s edge, we hear a thrush whistle and then the sweet song of a robin. The resident rafts of golden eye ducks and surf scoters work the offshore waters. Two eagles fly interlocking circles over Shaman Island. A song sparrow searches clumps of greening beach grass for food. Another sparrow sings out from inside an alder thicket. 

            Everything seems normal on the beach until a red breasted sap sucker lands on an exposed alder trunk. With jerky movements it moves up the tree, not stopping to hammer it with its powerful beak. It’s the first time I’ve seen any woodpecker land on an alder, let alone one so exposed. 

Salmon and Birds

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An adult bald eagle circles over the meadow where Aki and I stand. I check to make sure that the little dog is too close to me to be eagle bait and then turn to watch the eagle. Low angle sunshine lights up the eagle’s white head and enriches the chestnut tones of its wing feathers. Taking advantage of its two-meter wingspan, it lets the wind carry it higher over our heads. 

 When the eagle’s mate calls out from a nearby spruce top, it glides toward a nearby one, hovers for a second over its apex, and lands, talons first on a thin branch. The tree top sways with the eagle’s sudden weight, rocking the big bird back and forth until it settles. Once stable, the eagle watches a yellow legs sandpiper quick stepping across the shallows of a small pond.  

Earlier in the walk we watched two guys from the hatchery installing net pens for holding king salmon smolt. While the we watch the eagle watch the sandpiper, we can hear the sound of salmon smolt being pumped from a tanker truck into the pens. After four months in the pens, the smolt will be released. They will make their way down stream to the ocean. 

Adult king salmon, released from the pens over four years ago, will pass the smolt as they swim upstream to the pond. The big salmon, some weighing more than ten kilos, will wander around the pond, trying to find a way to satisfy their instinctual urge to spawn. A few might follow silver salmon upstream to their spawning gravel. Most will be caught by fishermen or bears. 

Dodging Scat

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It’s a day for dogging dog scat. Canine poop and the other detritus of winter are emerging from the melting trail snow. Aki loves this time of year when dog snacks dropped months ago seem to just appear. It’s a time for song birds to hunt and peck on newly snow-free gravel. Aki search for treats gives me plenty of time to watch two dark eyed junkos working the ground.

            Ever since a junko pair nested in our carport, I’ve had a special place in my heart for the little guys. All they needed to bread was a plastic grocery bag full of plastic gutter parts that hung on the carport wall. After the chicks fledged I found a tidy little nest lining a gutter end cap. I had limited of the car port all summer but that seemed a small price to pay. 

            The little dog and I push on to Moose Lake, hoping for another chance to watch the swans. But they have moved north, their place replaced by several pairs of bufflehead ducks. I coaxed Aki to following me onto a still snow-covered trail to the Mendenhall River where newly arrived swallows juked and dived on the year’s first hatch of mosquitos. 

Contrasts

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Aki and I stand several meters off the trail like lepers. I say “hello” to the family as they move up the trail but I feel like calling out “unclean.” We reenact the scene every fifteen minutes. A strong ebb tide has exposed the causeway to Shaman Island, which is too narrow to allow us to safely pass the families streaming over it. Meanwhile, nature goes about its business. Songbirds claim nesting space, skunk cabbage stalks rise up from swampy ground. Hummingbirds hover over opening blueberry blossoms as red squirrels prepare for winter. 

Return to the Troll Woods

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It’s been a long time since Aki and I last walked through the Troll Woods. The trails, pounded out by beaver feet, see few humans. The disintegrating chassis of a VW Beetle is the only sign of our civilization. Proof of beaver presence is everywhere. Every few meters the little dog and I have to step over the trunks of beaver-fallen cottonwood trees stripped each bare of bark.  

            Still standing cottonwoods bear heavy loads of moss that drips rain water onto the mossy forest floor. Colonies of leaf-shaped lichen cling to the sides of spruce trees like swamp orchids. Moss covers every surface not treaded on by beavers, even glacier erratics—those granite boulders scatter over the moraine by the retreating Mendenhall Glacier. 

            The blurry whistles of nest building thrush mix with the sweeter tunes of other song birds as we approach a pocket lake. Ice covers all but a tiny portion of the lake’ surface. A brace of bufflehead ducks float on this lake within a lake. Even though we are on the opposite side of the lake, the male duck seems more interested in us than a discordant squeal coming from deeper into the forest. While I try to guess what kind of bird is making the noise, I hear the tinkle of tiny bells. Someone is making a first crossing of the woods on their mountain bike while a dog wearing bear bells patrols ahead.  

Nothing is Wasted

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Several hundred Canada geese are chowing down along Eagle River. The biggest concentration is on a large tidal meadow. I have to take care not to step on their scat as Aki and I skirt the meadow.  

A smaller group of poke around for food on mud flats now exposed at low tide. Mallards waddle around them until an eagle flies over, flushing the ducks to flight. The geese ignore the eagle as they jab their beaks into the mud. What are they eating, little dog? Aki never heard my question. She’s turned a sand bar into her own race track, running circles around its parameter for the sheer joy of it.

 Near the river mouth, wave erosion has destroyed part of the trail and halved the size of a small copse of spruce trees. Because they root in glacial silt and sand, the spruce trees have smooth, straight roots. Tlingit weavers have come all the way from Ketchikan to harvest the roots, which they use to strengthen strands of their weaving wool. I wonder where they will find replacement roots when erosion finally wipes away this little forest.

After walking on the beach, I lead Aki across a grass-covered dune and stumble upon the esophagus of a Canada goose. The thick-sided, opaque tube is crammed with small, pink-colored shells. Other shells and a crab claw have spilled out of one end of the esophagus. This not the scene of the crime, which would be marked by a scattering of bones and feathers. I suspect that a raven or eagle was attacked by another scavenger bird while carrying the esophagus in its talons. The prize fell onto dune while the birds continued to scrap. They flew away, allowing slugs to finish what remains.