Monthly Archives: January 2024

The New Chapter

Between Ocean and Snow

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The rising sun turns the hillsides purple. My kayak cuts through the water, leaving an ever-expanding “V” in its wake. Even with a down jacket, I can feel the bite of morning cold. The low tide leaves an exposed strip of rocks and kelp, frozen and crunchy, patiently awaiting the sun and thaw.

For 72 hours the Icy Strait Corridor has endured an unrelenting snowfall. Winds buffeted the trees and left huge drifts piled along the beach meadows. I shoveled five times trying to keep up with the snow’s metronome consistency.

Boats in Juneau’s harbor sank, the land frozen in winter’s fist. Trees bend double beneath the load. Cracks echo through the forest as these proud sentinels break under the weight.

At last, we have a respite, a window of calm before the outflow returns with gusts of 40 knots.

I have waited for this day. Snug and warm next to the woodstove I would peer through the windows at the blizzard and wonder how any animal could survive such conditions. This is my chance to find out.

The benefits of old-growth forests could fill volumes of text. The contrast between the muskegs and woods is shocking. Four feet of snow fill the open areas of the island with perhaps half that amount beneath the trees. It is these big trees, their massive boughs enveloping the land in a protective embrace that give the deer a chance. These causeways give them routes to the beaches, where they can slog through the drifts and find relief below the tide line. The table is set. Rockweed and bull kelp torn from their holdfasts wash ashore and provide some of the only accessible forage when snow of this magnitude hits.

I paddle south along the island’s southern peninsula, scanning the beaches. The first one yields a doe and fawn that scatter into the woods as I glide past. Eight more deer congregate along a 300-yard stretch while a small cove no more than 50 yards wide holds another six.

I bring the binoculars to my eyes and watch, the boat bobbing in the gentle swell. The rut is over, and the bucks have dropped their antlers. It will be something of an easter egg hunt in the coming months to find them hidden in the moss.

These deer are in my parking spot. I’d planned on landing here and climbing to the other side of the island to inspect the long stretch of east-facing beaches bathed in morning light. I hover offshore and watch them through the binoculars. Five adults and a yearling. They look in good shape, still fat and healthy.

Deer are ruminants, meaning they chew their food multiple times and have specific bacteria in their gut to maximize their caloric intake. But every food type has its own bacteria, and there’s a delay as these new bacteria colonize the stomach. Switching overnight from a diet of forest groceries to kelp can have dire consequences. A deer can eat kelp all day, but until the bacteria catch up, they may as well be eating dirt.

The six are foraging voraciously along the shoreline. How long had they waited for this opportunity? It’s easy to imagine them hiding beneath large hemlocks, watching the never-ending snow pile among them with stomachs growling and fat metabolizing. Landing will scatter them back into those snow-laden woods and I can’t bring myself to do it.

I paddle onto the next little cove.

This one too is spoken for. Three more deer graze among the rockweed. They’re so engrossed in their work they don’t notice me for several minutes. A large rock cuts this cove in two, and when they move to the far side, I ease my kayak into the beach, step out, and drag it to the snowline. I peek over the rock and see three sets of ears tuned to my frequency. Upwind of them they maintain a curious demeanor. A shift in the wind will send them scurrying, perhaps getting a whiff of the venison meatballs I’d eaten the night before.

I step towards the woods, sink through the snow’s crust, and posthole to my hip. It’s a quarter mile to the other side and it takes fifteen minutes of panting, gasping, and trudging to reach it. Sweat drips down my face and my lungs burn. How do these deer do it? By the time I reach the edge of the woods, I’m exhausted. It takes several minutes before I feel ready to climb down the cliff face to the rocks below. I remind myself to look for snowshoes when I get home.

My clumsy ascent sounds like a gong on the beach below. I watch two more deer scatter through gaps in the trees.

Whitecaps adorn Icy Strait, and Lemesurier Island looms in the distance, its forest frosty and frozen. I glass the beach ahead and see a lone deer near a washed-up hemlock deadhead.

Surprising. I figured there’d be more. I hug the waterline as I pass the hemlock, the deer watching suspiciously. On the other side of the log, another deer materializes, I stop, look up the beach, and they seem to apparate. One, two, three, four… eight. Eight more clumped in two groups of four.

I never think of deer as social animals, but they are. They may not have reliable herds, but there’s no doubt they enjoy each other’s company. Clicks and loose friendships form, safety in numbers, community. It resonates. Reminds me how alone I am.

There’s a difference between alone and lonely. I have enjoyed my solitude, the quiet, and the reflection. But there is no denying that I still reflexively reach for my phone when I remember an old inside joke, hear a new song from one of our bands, or find an Instagram reel she needs to see. Old habits, they die hard.  

The beach bends, and I creep among the boulders, peaking over the top of the last one. The 30th deer of the day has her head buried in the snow, rising every minute to slurp down another slippery string of kelp. I advance when her head’s down and freeze when it rises until I’m 50 feet away.

I settle on a boulder, open my backpack, and invite myself to lunch. As I munch trail mix and guzzle water a fawn stumbles out of the woods and joins its mother among the kelp. The scene brings an emotional response I wasn’t ready for. The pair moves to a young hemlock, and they strip the needles the way a bear forages for berries.

Icy Strait sparkles. The snow-covered mountains and hills pop. Eagles soar on the thermals. You can hear the land exhaling after the deluge of the previous days. There’s a tug at my heart, a desire to share this moment with someone. Some of House Stark’s words hover in my head.

“When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives.”

The tide is rising, and the sun setting. I leave the little family to their work, padding back down the beach past watchful eyes and into the woods. Through the trees, I see a glimmer of red. No matter how far up the beach I bring my kayak, I never stop worrying until I see it right where I left it.

The trio of deer have disappeared, leaving the beach unoccupied. I launch and enjoy the sun on my face as it begins its downward trajectory over the Pacific. I feel full and content as I paddle for home, again overwhelmed by the incredible beauty of this place. The southern end of the Fairweather Range peaks above the islands to the north, with 14,000-foot peaks, and an icefield you can hide Rhode Island in.

I stop in front of the next cove and smile. The deer are still here. No longer foraging they lay among the sunbaked rocks. I can feel their contentment, their relief. The new bacteria in their stomachs beginning to work, metabolizing the kelp and hemlocks and blueberry twigs. Feeling warmth for the first time in days. A chance to breathe, to rest and recuperate.

I knew today was coming, had the 16th circled on my calendar even as the snow continued to pile up. The deer have no such luxury. What concept of time do they have? How long had the last three days felt for them? For those little fawns experiencing the first truly hard moment of their life? But now, the sun was out. More storms are coming, another foot of snow is expected in a few days.

Why worry now? With bellies full and warm rocks to rest on.

Storms come and storms go. We can’t always forecast when they’ll begin, end, or start again. Some may never end. Some may never come. I saw myself in these deer, huddled beneath a big hemlock, waiting for the blizzard to end, not knowing when. Clinging to the faith that the clouds will lift, the sun will return. There will be warm rocks and bull kelp for everyone.

I begin to feel that sun. Stepping out of the woods and powering through the drifts, knowing relief is near if I plunge forward just a little further. I can feel their eyes on me. And through the distance and isolation, sense the eyes and love of my own pack. The winds may howl, but I am not alone. The bow spins, the water parts around the keel and points for home, grateful that when the sun sets and the tide touches snow that I don’t have to retreat to the woods for shelter.

Inside the cabin, I pull out my notepad and consult my notes. 12 miles traveled in total, and somewhere between 38 and 45 deer depending on how confident I am I’m not double counting.

Minerva coils around my legs, reminding me it’s almost dinner time. I step outside and am greeted by a crescent moon. The hills are bathed in purple again. The winds have begun to rise, and the trees start to bend. I wrap my jacket around me, step back inside, and whisper thanks to the neighbors hovering somewhere between ocean and snow.

The New Chapter

Of the Woods. With the Woods.

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My boots crunch frozen grass and I grimace. There’s no quiet way to move from the intertidal to the woods in these conditions, the world softly frozen around me, beads of water suspended and solid on every blade. I tighten the straps on my backpack and try to think like a deer, move like a deer. I walk on the balls of my feet to soften my footfalls, body tensed and alert. I have been walking for only twenty minutes but sweat already beads beneath the bright orange hat.

I feel the blunt object slung around my shoulders slam against my hip. I adjust, brush aside the first layer of alder, and hear branches scratch against my pack. Breath thunders in my ears and boots squish into soft, wet earth. Inside the forest, nothing is disturbed. I take a moment to marvel at my good fortune.

As I child I read and reread every Calvin & Hobbes comic, staring enviously at the apparent national forest Calvin and his stuffed tiger had at their disposal to ride their red wagon in summer and toboggan in winter. Complete with cliffs, ravines, swamps, creeks, and lakes. Now, I have my own National Forest. Tongass, and the designated wilderness that is the Inians. Me, some deer, a curious raven, a chattering squirrel.

I move up a gently sloping hill until it meets the steep cliff that shoots up at a 90-degree angle to the summit of the island a thousand feet above. The forest abruptly ends, surrendering to gravity and salmonberry bushes clinging to this steep and harsh stretch of the island.

I have been here before, know where I’m trying to go. The forest frames this steep hillside for two miles before the cliffs jut out to meet the waters of North Inian Pass. By staying just inside the trees, I can have a full view of the big, west-facing woods below. A haven for deer regardless of the weather. I touch the object around my shoulder, to reassure myself it’s still there, and drop into a drainage to hide myself from view.

The sound of the creek covers my tracks and masks my scent as good as I can hope for. I follow the drainage for a quarter mile, allowing just my toes to touch earth. Quiet as I can be, crawling on hands and knees beneath fallen logs and feeling the water-soaked earth crawl up my pants. At last, the drainage meets the top of the hill, the little valley flattening out. I pause, crouched behind a fallen hemlock hiding me from view. Sometimes the first look is the only chance you get.

I ease myself around the root ball, turn, and am greeted by a flashing white tail and startled bleat. I freeze, and so does the deer. A young buck, his antlers nothing more than knobs on the top of his skull. I’ve caught him unawares, but he only bounds about ten feet before stopping. He looks back at me with a politely curious expression.

The object knocks against my shoulder, demands my attention. I don’t dare move. The deer remains frozen, obsidian eyes unblinking, impossible to imagine what is going through that young mind. He glances away from me, looking back down the hill. Very slowly, I move my right hand across my chest, feel the strap slide, come loose… and the binoculars slide into my hands.

My freezer is full. I am not here to harvest. I am here to learn. To soak up whatever secrets and knowledge my neighbors are willing to share.

“I sought fuller comprehension of an animal I am made from,” wrote writer and hunter Richard Nelson in his book Heart and Blood, “the life outside of me which becomes the life within me.”

As do I.

From the beginning, the deer of the Inians were more than “stock” or “herd” for us. They are revered and honored. And like anything we revere, I am innately curious about these phantoms of the woods. I love how they appear just when I’ve given up. When I get lazy and round a corner or snap a twig, rewarded with the sight of a whitetail trimmed with black bounding effortlessly through the wood with nary a sound.

I bring the binoculars to my eyes and drink him in. Even if I’d brought a rifle, even if the freezer was empty, I’d have a hard time pulling the trigger. He still has that “fawn face,” short and stumpy with all the characteristics of a baby animal that make us coo. In the low light, even though he is just feet away, he seems to evaporate into the woods around him. Perfectly camouflaged in the weak January sun and a forest floor free of snow.

Lowering the binoculars doesn’t startle him. He continues to oscillate between me and glancing down the hill. There have been several times over the last few years where I have sat in the company of deer. Many times, using the “call” brings either does, fawns, or both, leaving me to wait and hope that something with antlers will wander by. But in those moments my attention was never on them, instead scanning the woods beyond for something that would bring the scope to my eye.

Now, this little buck has my rapt attention, and I decide on a little experiment. I tap one nail against the glass of the binos, the sound barely registers in my ears from less than a foot away. The fawn responds instantly, tilting his head like a dog at the sound of the treat bin opening. He stares directly at my binoculars and takes a step towards me.

No way.

I tap again. A few more steps. 15-feet away. The closest I’ve been to a wild animal in a long time. I don’t dare breathe. Sweat drips down my face, every muscle tensed with the effort of staying perfectly still. Through it all, the fawn has not made a sound. Nature has perfectly sculpted him for a life of silence. What next? The seconds hang in the air. I hear footfalls behind me.

I turn my head instinctively and see something grayish and sleek move through the brush. The doe looks down on us and gives a disapproving huff. The fawn immediately snaps out of his trance, cantering over to mom and attempting to nurse, only to be forcibly rebuffed.

It’s not unusual for fawns to return to their mother for a time once the rut is concluded. And judging by his eagerness he is something of a mama’s boy. While not alarmed, the doe has no interest in this staring contest. She moves down the trail, her kiddo in tow. I don’t wait for an invitation and step softly into their trail and follow. The pair canter at a casual gait 30 feet ahead before weaving around a large spruce.

With them out of sight, I increase my pace, trying to keep them in sight as long as I can. I reach the spruce and slowly tilt my head around the corner. The forest is empty. Spruce, hemlock, blueberry, and menziesia trees and shrubs interspersed at intervals with no deer between their gaps. I bring my deer call to my lips, give two short bleats, and settle against the trunk. But there is nothing, no evidence that I share the woods.

I begin to make my way down the hillside, eyes still scanning for a pair of ears trained like satellites in my direction. But I once again walk alone. I’m getting cold and tired, ready for a mug of tea and a sandwich as the short winter days pass like sand through my fingers. But I cannot bring myself to crash through these woods. Every step needs to be quiet, as stealthy as I can be on the off chance that another of these creatures will wander into view. Can I not take a simple walk in the woods anymore?

“I wonder if hawks or herons, wolves and killer whales are ever astounded by the loveliness, the grace, the perfection of their prey,” Nelson continues.

I have often claimed orcas match us in intelligence, that they may be smarter than many humans. I include myself in that category. The corvids of the sky are whip-smart, anyone lucky enough to stare into the eyes of a wolf has seen a soul staring back. One could certainly argue that the intricate and complex languages these animals have room to marvel at and appreciate the voles, seals, and moose that sustain them.

But humans undeniably have this capacity, if we choose to acknowledge and accept the burden and gratitude that comes from appreciating the things we eat. It has forced me to come to terms with my omnivorous evolution, the power it has given me, and in turn, the responsibility to not abuse.

***

I open the freezer and retrieve a parcel of butcher paper. The outside is covered in brightly colored scribbles courtesy of Elm and Beth’s daughter, Claire who assists in butchering by making sure every piece of venison is lavishly wrapped in artwork. The antlers on her drawing of a deer are unmistakable. I set the meat on a plate to thaw with grand designs of spaghetti, meatballs, and a liberal dusting of parmesan.

I didn’t just come to the Hobbit Hole to grieve and rebuild. I came to explore, to learn the forests and muskegs and hills as intimately as an overcivilized and domesticated human can.

The “Hobbit Hole” from the far side of the inner lagoon.

To discover the trails and beaches and shortcuts through these marvelous, old, protected woods that will be standing long after I’m gone. To grow as close to this special patch of earth as I can over three months. A huge part of that education was the deer, one of the forest’s rightful tenants.

To eat of deer is to eat of the forest. Of blueberry and devil’s club. Skunk and deer cabbage. Alpine and beach. Forest and muskeg.

I never fancied myself a hunter, never imagined I’d walk into the woods with the intent of dragging something out. But it has granted me a gift I didn’t expect, drawing me closer to the wild places that sustain me like a spring welling up amongst forested acres.

It has turned me from an idle hiker to an explorer, asking questions and taking copious notes of the places I visit. The knowledge that I will never understand or grasp the intricacies and relationships of these animals and ecosystems only makes it more alluring. Be it a rifle or binoculars against my hip, my days of crashing woodland hikes are now a thing of the past.