Sun after the Storm

Leave a reply

Yesterday’s storm left Mendenhall Lake covered with a half-a-meter of snow. Aki can’t handle such deep stuff without some help. She gets it from her other human and I. We ski ahead, packing down a trail for the little poodle. 

            We started the ski in the woods on a trail that winds though a stunted spruce forest. Only light filtered by the snow-covered forest canopy reached the ground. I felt like one of Plato’s cave dwellers when we emerged from the forest and dropped onto the sun-splashed lake. The snowy woods offered a restrained beauty, but it was only a pale imitation of lakeside trees, weighed down with new show, crisp in full sun. 

            The lake ski trail normally offers great views of the glacier. Today, we can barely see it through a veil of thin clouds. I stop pointing the camera at the ice river and turn it on the normally mundane: a flat covered glacial erratic rock, that island of dwarf trees and the shadows that they throw. 

            Aki keeps up as her humans ski near the top end of the lake. Small snow balls bounce on her legs as she trots after us. But her tail never drops. She does fall back on our return journey to the trail head. I wonder, as I wait for her, whether to pull off some of her snow balls.  She must have stopped to chew them off herself. The little dog trots by me and sprints to catch up to her other human. 

Clumps

2 Replies

Last night’s snow stopped a few hours ago. Down channel, the sun climbs the shoulder of Mt. Roberts, painting a scattered of snow clouds with yellows. Aki has to squint when the car turns us briefly into the sun. We are heading out to the glacier trail system. I picked that for a destination because it has one of the few trailhead parking lots already cleared of snow. It is also one of Aki’s favorite places to explore. Hopefully memories of our morning adventure will help her get through this afternoon’s visit to her dog doctor. She is due for her rabies shot. 

            The normally crowded parking lot is half-empty when we arrive. Deep snow covers everything, even the path to the trash bin. I post hole over several meters of it to deposit Aki’s poop bag.  Last night’s snow has turned the stairs down to the lake into a ramp. I could see Mt. McGinnis and the glacier while I parked the car. But a rising snow storm soon hides it from view. We pass two ravens having a companionable chat in a cottonwood tree. They are the only wild things we see on the walk.

            Snow collects in Aki’s red sweater and clumps onto the fur covering her legs, This does not lessen her excitement. The little dog has always loved new snow. The storm thickens as we approach Nugget Falls. We can hear but not see it. A man passes us on cross country skis and disappears into the white. 

I might be scared of getting lost in the storm if the people who walked the trail before us hadn’t pounded out a trench-like path into the snow. It is easy going the little dog and I as long as we stay in the trench. This doesn’t stop her from porpoising through the deep stuff to read her pee mail.  

Confused Skies

2 Replies

Snow shoveling delayed our morning walk. Two hours after picking up the shovel, Aki and I could head out to North Douglas for a walk on the False Outer Point Trail. That didn’t, couldn’t, happen. Just before we reached the trailhead, the blade of a snow plough raised a half-meter high snow berm between the highway and the parking lot. 

            With no safe place to park, I turned around and headed toward the Nine Mile Creek Wetlands Trail. Aki, who had squirmed with excitement while we approached, did not like this change of plans. 

Deep snow covered the Nine Mile trailhead parking area. But it was safe to park on the low traffic road that provides access to it. Aki had to porpoise through the parking lot snow to join me at the trailhead. Only a thin layer of white covered the trail. The snow that would have made travel a slog had pushed down the trailside alders into low tunnel. Tiny Aki dashed down the trail while I, sometimes bent almost double, stumbled after her. 

            The little dog froze when we reached the open wetlands. She stared as I post-holed out to Gastineau Channel. The sky over the wetlands was confused. The south view was socked in by snow clouds. Sunshine flooded the northern view. But the sunny area shrank as I watched, consumed by another advancing storm.   

Little Rewards

Leave a reply

Aki, who had been squealing like child Christmas morning when I parked the car, hesitates when I open the door. She can hear the rain slamming the car windshield and feel wind rocking the car. She stares at the icy ground coated with a thin slick of rainwater. Then she leaps out of the car, waddles without conviction to a patch of snow, and pees.

            Water the color of tea streams over the ice still covering Fish Creek. Ice covers the trail too, making it a tricky passage for poodle and her human. Aki gives me her, “Are you sure you want to do this?” look. We are banking Karma, pooch. The big K will owe us if we slip and slide, head into rain and wind, around the pond and down to the creek mouth. What will the pay off be? The orca wolf pack rounding False Outer Point? We are more likely to see a deer sheltering in the old growth.

            Aki gets her reward before we reach the pond. A fat golden retriever galumphs up, tries to stop on the slick ice, and goes into a 180 slide. My guy backtracks to facilitate the doggie meet and greet. Perked up, Aki trots around the pond then stalls when wind forces her head down. I lead on, sure that anyone willing to lean into cold and wet wind on such a flat light day is entitled to a special treat. But no killer whales slice through the waters of Fritz Cove, no deer huddles just off the trail. Something spooks a gathering of gulls when we reach the creek mouth. They form a sparce, white cloud in front of the barely discernable glacier. That will have to do little dog.

No So Wild

Leave a reply

I heard their snuffling behind me before I saw them. Two golden retrievers, each wearing a cowboy-style bandana instead of a collar, surprise Aki while she is sniffing some pee mail. It makes me wonder about my little dog’s hearing. I could hear the retrievers even over the sound of my skis. 

            The campground trail, where Aki and I are traveling, is covered with firm snow. After she plays with the two goldens, the poodle-mix tears ahead. She manages to run in one of the set ski tracks. She disappears around the corner, leaving me to wonder how she manages not to trip up in the narrow track.

            This is not one of my favorite places to visit. With its groomed trails that wind through a thick spruce forest, it feels more like an athletic field than a wild place. I can glimpse the river when the trees thin out. Each time I do I want to step out of my skis and walk down the river bank where a brace of mergansers or a nervous deer might be seen. But the glide and slide rhythm of skiing is addictive. And Aki is always just ahead, drawn down the trail by lingering smells.

Ice and Eagles

Leave a reply

Aki stands on the other side of a thick strip of slick ice. She crossed it with only a minor slip, thanks to the handy nails on her claws. I was trying to figure out the best way to cross the barrier when she moved to the other side with a poodle’s nonchalance. I could call her back but I’d like to join her on the False Outer Point beach trail. All that stands between me and it is the two-meter thick ice stream.

            Hunching over like one of my Neanderthal ancestors, I crab across the ice, reaching the relative safety of the snowy trail in time to bag a pile of poop just deposited by the little dog. Fortunately, I only have to leap across an icy section of trail to reach the trash can.

            The usual raft of Barrow golden eye ducks float just off the beach. But the usual rope of severed seaweed is absent. Recent storm tides must have carried it away. In exchange, the tide dropped a driftwood log—the corpse of a hemlock that had been twisted by years exposed to the wind. One of the knotholes mimics the eye of a judgmental whale. No human abstractionist could capture the life story of the tree that is there in the tree’s grain for any passerby to see.

            I stumble on a barnacled-covered rock while rounding the point. The sound of it startles an eagle to flight. As snow pellets start to fall, the eagle catches an updraft and is soon high over Fritz Cove.  As Aki waits patiently by my side, the eagle circle over the water. In seconds its mate joins it. A minute later there are four eagles circling above the cover, then six. Together they climb until lost to use in the snow clouds.

Tough Little Ferns

Leave a reply

Just where Basin Road curves onto the old trestle bridge that provides access to Perseverance Trail, a colony of ferns grows. Still green in spite of the recent stretch of cold weather, when the temperature dropped to near zero F., they seem unaffected by today’s heavy snow. Aki is no mood to appreciate the ferns’ adaptability. She drags me onto the bridge, drawn no doubt by smells in danger of being obscured by new snow. 

             Large snowflakes flutter onto the snow-covered trail. The clouds that dropped them obscure the slopes of Mt. Juneau. The hemmed in mountain valley feels cozy rather than claustrophobic. Aki, anxious to find and mark ever piece of pee mail, can’t appreciate the peace of this place. 

            We linger longer than usual in the valley and take a roundabout trail back home. The trail is untracked except by two deer that used the trail during the night. Aki lets me break trail for her in the six-inch-deep snow. 

            On the approach to the trestle bridge we discover another colony of green ferns. A thick icicle is forming around one of the ferns, doing it no apparent damage. 

What a Piece of Work

Leave a reply

The snow, which kept other dog walkers from Sandy Beach, is having no apparent affect on the mallards. They chuckle and float just offshore. The quarter (or Euro) sized snowflakes confuse my camera but not my eye. Seeing the ducks clearly, I say, “What a piece of work is man, little dog.”  Aki doesn’t hear me. She is down the beach, peeing on a clump of grass. 

            What a piece of work is this day, I mutter to myself. The still flooding tide pushes high up the snow-covered beach. It stripped away snow from the old wharf pilings, leaving a coating of white on the piling parts it can’t reach. Pancakes of snow bump into the shore and each other as tiny swells roll into the beach. 

            We round a point and spot more ducks swimming under alder branches that are bent over with snow. The little dog and I will have to shimmy our way under, over, and around a tangle of alders to reach the trail into Treadwell Woods. The ducks pay us little attention even though we come within a few meters of them during our passage. We are close enough to a drake to see a teardrop of water slip from its beak and plop into the water. 

Snow Walker

Leave a reply

Aki has a perfectly fine sand for walking but she insists on using the snow-covered portion of the Auk Bay Beach. I’m cruising on the bit washed clean by the last flood tide. The Auk people once launched their ocean-going canoes from this crescent-shaped beach. 

            No rain falls on the little dog or I. That may change soon. Translucent storm clouds hang low over nearby Douglas and Admiralty Islands like a curse. If the temperature doesn’t drop back to winter-normal, we will lose our snow. Maybe that is why the poodle-mix prefers to make her tracks in the remaining white stuff.

            Off Point Louisa, something, maybe an eagle, stirs a raft of Barrow goldeneye ducks to flight. They land near the outlet of a small stream and begin splashing about in the surf line. The tiny waves seem made for surfing ducks. They rise and fall with each set as stern-looking gulls watch from the beach.    

Reunion Walk

Leave a reply

It took me a few minutes to find Aki so I could invite her on a walk. It was hard. She had hunkered herself far under a bed. The snow stopped an hour ago as did the wind. It was a degree above freezing. I wanted to tell the little dog that she’d enjoy the planned visit to Outer Point Trail.

            It was to be our first walk since my return from the north. It blew 90 knots the last time we walked together. Aki must have expected more of the same today. She shivered while we drove out to trailhead even as hot air from the car heater blew on her. Her mood changed when I parked. She squeaked and leaped onto the snow-covered ground. High winds and cold forgotten, she trotted ahead of me down the trail, tail a metronome. 

As we moved through the old growth I thought of the almost judgmental light of North Alaska that I had to squint into two days ago. It brought out beauty and clarity but little comfort. Today’s gray’s light is as comforting as a hug.

            As a light snow began to fall, we reached the beach. Rafts of ducks, harlequins and golden eyes, dived on feed. Ten meters away from the ducks, a seal surfaced and gave me the saddest stare—as sad as a boy last picked to play ball, a girl betrayed by her best friend.