Flavors of Fall: Highbush Cranberries

Posted on September 26, 2026 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

We are nearing the end of our foraging for this calendar year, a year of slim pickins. Our normal berry goal is 20 – 25 gallons of berries. We usually start our year with salmonberries, then move on to strawberries, wineberries and blueberries in that order. We finish up the season with highbush cranberries and lingonberries. This year, there were very few berries. Here and there we picked a handfuls of one berry or another to eat fresh on waffles and cereal, but for the most part even what little there was weren’t of the high quality we’ve come to expect of Alaska’s wild fruit. We’ve been eyeing the highbush cranberry bushes because those have seemed the only plants that were producing good amounts of plump berries.

We’ve got our places, however picking highbush cranberries is not necessarily an easy activity. As has been the case the past few years, the bushes at our spot are loaded with bright red berries. From a little distance, one could be fooled into thinking that the picking might be as easy as simply sidling up to a bush, clawing fistfuls of berries into buckets and heading home. But… It’s a tough hike through dense growth of up-to-your-shoulders grasses, sedges and other plants to get to those berries – vegetation so thick you often don’t see the numerous tree trunks and thick branches remaining from a long-ago logging operation. You do your best to step up, over and around these old boles, but some of them are rotten enough to give way under your weight. That can result in a jarring spill. Other times you might step up a couple of feet onto a log… only to find that when you step off on the other side the drop is an additional foot or two – the added depth buried from view in the thick vegetation. Suddenly you’re reminded why you make sure to commit to your daily routine of stretching and yoga, holding that precious bucket of fruit you’ve already invested picking time into as though its a pot of gold. Still, occasionally a dump occurs… little more heartbreaking to a serious berryman. Meanwhile, as hard as you might be concentrating on the berrying – and staying in contact with your partner – you’ve always got at least one of your two ears keen for the crack of a branch, a a swish through the grass, or even a suddenly curious grunt and huff from a fellow berrier of the four-legged variety. These occasional bear encounters can send your heart straight up into your throat. You tap the canister of bear spray looped onto your belt, gently call out to let your presence be known, and hope the next thing you hear is the sound of something big heading in the opposite direction.

Sixteen seasons. So far, so good.

In spite of the work and the manageable risks, we love this fall tradition. Carefully weaving our way from bush to bush under and over the aforementioned trees, the plunking sound of berries filling the bucket, hollow and high-pitched at first, gradually becoming fuller and more resonate, the serenade of sandhill cranes trumpeting overhead as they make their way south for the winter, chevrons of honking geese, glorious fall gold, wine, crimson and amber, the tang of cooler weather… all of it a feast for the senses.

Back home, I set the gallons of berries collected in the steam juicer. The scent of the juice and pulp extracting from the berries stirs my culinary imagination. Jars of juice are prepared for the pantry. The pulp is made into a simple sweet and sour sauce, canned for the winter pantry, to reappear later as a glaze on something Jack has grilled. I’m already looking forward to hot cinnamon cranberry drinks and stir fries featuring the tangy sweet sauce.

Only a couple more foraging possibilities remain this year. Then it will be time to mulch the garden and dream about the next season of foraging.

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Worth the Wait – A Taste of Spring

Posted on June 8, 2026 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

We relish warming spring days, meals on our deck once again pleasant. Here charcoal-grilled fillets of the year’s very first Copper River Sockeye Salmon served with gemelli pasta tossed in devil’s club bud pesto and topped with a wild spring mix of sautéed twisted stalk, devil’s club buds, fiddle heads and fireweed shoots… an evening ray of sun catching the left side of the plate.
* * *

We’ve been waiting for it. And waiting. Day upon day, gray, cold rain. Buckets of the stuff. Birds late. Leaves late. Garden late. Everything late. And then a sudden two days of glorious sunshine and warmth, birds singing, plants waking up, all in agreement spring has officially sprung. Almost overnight lupine, fireweed, chocolate lily, iris and other flowering plants pushed through damp soil. Bursting buds on jostaberry and gooseberry bushes and cherry and apple trees we planted last year provided happy testimony that they had survived an especially cold winter.

Last summer’s berry season was on for the ages – salmonberries, blueberries, wine berries and wild strawberries in astonishing size and abundance. Of course, each summer is different. Here’s to hoping these spring blueberry flowers are a promise of summer fruit.
* * *

Late spring, coinciding with the return of salmon to local rivers, marks the beginning of our foraging and gathering season. Thrush song and morning sunshine beckoned us out to a favorite trail that winds through a diversity of biomes from sopping wet muskeg to a dark, moss-covered mixed cedar, hemlock and spruce forest. In boggy areas tiny sun dew plants were beginning new cycles of growth while pinhead-sized magenta bog rosemary blooms called attention to some of the year’s very first flowers, Along the forest edge, we noticed salmonberry plants sprouting new leaves and blueberry bushes covered with a promising profusion of delicate pink blooms. Here and there groggy bumblebees buzzed in and out of foliage.

Still tender and thornless, a devil’s club bud perfect for the kitchen. Note the thorns at the base.

Deeper into the forest the songs and trills of Varied Thrushes, Hermit Thrushes, Ruby-crowned Kinglets and Pacific Wrens filled the air. Suddenly we were happily startled by the eerie but unmistakable too-too-too-too call of a male Saw-whet Owl! A territorial call, we didn’t have to say anything to know that each of us was rooting for a nest of North America’s cutest owl. What a morning!

To celebrate, we collected a few greens to go along with a fillet of the year’s first Copper River Sockeye Salmon. Fireweed shoots (sometimes referred to as Alaska Asparagus), tender young twisted stalk, fiddle heads and delicately flavored devil’s club buds. Some people harvest these items, blanch them, and keep them in their freezer for later. It has been our tradition to harvest enough for the first celebratory meal and serve them sautéed with the first wild-caught salmon of the year. Every bite of this meal is in celebration and gratitude for the season to come.

A toast to the spring view from the deck. Still plenty of snow to on the mountains to ensure our rivers flow cool and full for returning salmon.
* * *

Tiny Totoro: Western Screech Owl

Posted on February 27, 2026 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

I’ve heard them a few times. In fact, we had one Tu Tu Tuu-ing outside our bedroom window in dark pre-dawn hours last fall. But until yesterday I’d never actually seen a Western Screech Owl before. This one had chosen a perch right outside the entrance to the elementary school here in Cordova, thereby acquiring instant celebrity status. Like most owls in daytime, he mostly slept, now and then barely opening his eyes for a sleepy look at the goings on near his perch.

Do you ever see owls where you live? What kinds?

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The Cali Girl is No Longer

Posted on October 27, 2025 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

I dreamed about living in the forest.

A place where the mountains meet the sea.

Where quiet paths allow for reflective solitude.

The dream is reality.

The Cali girl is no longer.

Quite Unnerving

Posted on August 6, 2025 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

It was a lovely hike. Blueberries and watermelon berries lined the trail. Birds were singing. Sounds of rushing water running downstream from a glacial lake. All was quiet and peaceful until I saw this. A Very Big reminder that we are picking berries in Bear Country. (We never did meet up with the maker of this pile.)

#wildalaska #brownbear #chefdonachy #alaskacooking #food #eatingwelloffthebeatenpath #alaskafood #alaskabush #fooddestination

Landscape with Horned Grebe

Posted on June 13, 2024 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

In the photo above, we’re standing on the beach not far from where Clarks River debouches into Chignik Lake. When the lake is glassed off like this, the view from the beach in Clarks Bay gives the impression of an infinity pool, the horizon disappearing in fog or low clouds. This is the only photograph I have of a Horned Grebe at The Lake, the species indiscernible in this color rendition but the bird’s “horns” really popping in the monochromatic (black and white) version of this image.

Hawk Chicks

Posted on June 12, 2024 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

When I had the opportunity to make images of the Rough-legged Hawk nest at the cliffs along the lower Chignik River, I was still thinking of myself as primarily a documentarian. Additionally, human proximity to the nest was clearly upsetting to the chicks as well as to the parents. And so, a couple of times I waded into the river, made quick photographs, and left. Documentation accomplished.

In hindsight, it might have been worthwhile to construct a blind at a respectful distance and to thereby more thoroughly record the nesting events that occurred every summer until recently at this little ledge about 60 feet up from the surface of the river. A regret is that I never made a video of the birds. Unfortunately, in July 2021, a magnitude 8.2 earthquake rocked the Chignik area and in so doing deposited a volleyball-sized boulder squarely in the center of the nest. The little ledge had always been a precarious site – exposed at times to high winds, vulnerable to potential predation by our resident Great Horned Owls, and subject to regular skiff traffic (and associated engine noise) – and in fact the summer of the big quake after laying just one egg, for unknown reasons the hawks abandoned the nest, before the earthquake struck.

After the big earthquake, with a large rock left in the middle of the nest, the site was no longer usable. We think we discovered a new nest further up the drainage, so hopefully Rough-legged Hawks will continue to be a part of Chignik fauna.

Paired Bluebills in Spring Rain

Posted on June 11, 2024 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

It hasn’t been until fairly recently, perhaps coinciding with a general interest in birding rather than mainly hunters looking closely at waterfowl, that the term Scaup has begun to supplant Bluebill when referring to the ducks in the above photo. These are Greater Scaup, a mated pair that paused at the lake along with several others of their kind for a little while in early June before heading off to find their own kettle pond nesting sight. There are also Lesser Scaup, very similar in appearance though slightly smaller and with a less rounded head. Though Greater Scaup were often abundant on the lake and in the river’s largest pools in winter and spring, I never encounter a Lesser there.

The term Scaup may be derived from the Scottish scalp which refers to bivalves such as clams and mussels, preferred food items for these diving ducks, though they also eat various types of aquatic vegetation. Interestingly, they are the only circumpolar diving duck – hence the European origin of their vernacular name. Their “quack” is a bit more hoarse or nasal than that of the familiar Mallard, and is often comparatively quiet. But at The Lake, it was a music we associated with spring, and we find now that we miss it.

Caption?

Posted on June 10, 2024 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

**The Triplets**
*Chignik Lake, Alaska Peninsula, June 22, 2020*

How about a caption?

Happy Monday everyone!

Watchful Dad

Posted on June 9, 2024 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

I’d always wanted to live where owls were my neighbors.

It was widely known that the village had owls. In fact, the village had always had owls. David Narver reported their presence in his study of the Chignik River Drainage in the early 1960’s. But no one knew, precisely, where the owls nested and roosted. I managed to unravel the mystery once and for all during our first winter at The Lake. After that, Barbra and I could fairly reliably locate at least one of our two resident owls on any given day.

But that didn’t make photographing them much easier. During daylight hours, the owls typically secreted themselves in the very thickest parts of an exceptionally healthy and dense copse of Sitka Spruce trees. Many times, only a hint of the large birds was visible – a patch of breast feathers, a vigilant eye, an alert ear tuft. In addition to the challenges presented by the dense spruce boughs, the copse of trees was situated in a hollow where the light was almost never what a photographer might call “good.” Not only did the owls bury themselves in the boughs of those trees, their favored roosts were fairly high up. And although I am fairly certain that I knew more or less exactly where the nest was, I was never able to put my eyes on it.

For awhile, I contemplated a variety of strategies to facilitate photographing the owls, but all of them involved bothering them in one fashion or another. I didn’t think I’d permanently spook them out of the grove, but I didn’t want to press them. Making a living in the wilderness by talon, hooked bill, eye and wit is tough enough without some human invading one’s personal space. Biologists (generally) no longer shoot specimens in order to “study” them, but I have to wonder about the merit of constant nest-watching and other practices involving invasive viewing of wildlife that are now in vogue.

And so although I regularly checked on our owls (they were along the way to one of our favorite fishing spots), I did my best not to disturb them. Every once in a while, they presented themselves, and when those times coincided with my having my camera along, I did my best to record an image.