Tag Archives: writing

Around Shikotsu-Toya National Park: Part I

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Hokkaido is rich in the world’s most valuable natural resource: clean, fresh water. This falls was one of many we’ve encountered so far this summer.

The most frequently visited of the six national parks in Hokkaido, Shikotsu-Toya as a fragmented network of lakes, mountains and geothermal features. Japan’s national parks represent a much looser management philosophy than those of the United States and Canada. Visitors’ centers are fairly minimalistic, featuring perhaps a few pamphlets in Japanese, Chinese, Korean, English and occasionally Russian. There are no entry fees. Tent camping may range from a high of about ¥1,000 per person (about $9 at current exchange rates) per night at privately run campgrounds to free. Although campgrounds generally lack picnic shelters, most have areas to wash dishes as well as clean restrooms. Some also offer showers for an additional fee of ¥300 – ¥500 ($3 – $5).

Several hundred brown bears roam Hokkaido’s forests, beaches and mountains. Although uncommon, attacks do occur – prompting these stylized, imaginative renditions of the bears.

Two species of crows inhabit Hokkaido. This aptly named Large-billed Crow was gathering a morning meal of insects. Opportunistic and intelligent birds, we quickly learned that you can’t leave any food unattended.

Finding drinking water has been no problem; our favorite sources are the many natural springs we’ve come across.

With schools still in session and nights chilly, early June is still considered the off season in Hokkaido. Campgrounds are often empty on weekdays, and even on weekends it’s possible to find seclusion. 

Caterpillars of every description seem to be everywhere. Butterfly season soon.

Conical mountains and hot springs belie Hokkaido’s volcanic origins. This beach on Shikotsu-ko (Shikotsu Lake) was covered with pumice – a good bit of which floated nicely!

The last evening light on Shikotsuko.

The following day, we rode our bikes along Shikotsuko’s shoreline and happened upon these fishing boats. Rigged for kokanee (land locked Sockeye Salmon), the fishermen hit the water at the first crack of light, take the afternoon off, and then hit it again in the evening.

Centerpin reels, long, limber rods, small flashers to attract the fish’s attention and hooks baited with fly larvae were the tackle and bait choices the experts preferred.

I struck up a conversation with one of the fisherman who then invited me aboard to see his catch – half-a-dozen blue-backed, silver-flanked kokanee in a live well. At 12 inches each, he told me they were running a little small this year, but they still make excellent sashimi.

June is the best season… and I’m guessing that had we had the time it wouldn’t have taken much to get an invite to join him for the evening bite.

Carrying as much gear as we’re carrying, we expected a fair amount of pushing our bikes up hills and mountains. We were less psychologically prepared for the many tunnels we’ve gone through. Marvels of engineering, they certainly are physically easier than slogging up steep slopes. But with some of them running two miles long and longer – dark, damp, no bike lanes, the slimmest of sidewalks (or none at all) and echoing with the roar of trucks and other traffic – they can wear on your nerves. 

A roadside park where we stopped to check out a waterfall featured a number of totem poles presented to Hokkaido by First Nation’s people of Canada. 

The colors and style of the carvings seemed to fit with Hokkaido’s indigenous Ainu culture.

Most of the tunnels weren’t as cool as this one. Nice shot, Bar!

A Little Glitch & a Lotta Help: Welcome to Japan (and Murray is not your friend)

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Just south of Sapporo, the beautiful city of Chitose was our entry point into Hokkaido.

Having lived in Japan both as a 7th Fleet sailor stationed in Yokosuka onboard USS Blue Ridge and as an English language teacher after that, I’m familiar with Japan – its ins and outs, the aspects of life here that make it fascinating and wonderful as well as – at times – puzzling and frustrating. In selling Barbra on the idea of doing our first bike tour in Hokkaido, I’d pretty much painted for her a picture of paradise. I described a land of exceptionally low crime, cleanliness, every modern convenience conceivable, incredibly kind people, great camping spots, and a culture different enough from our own to keep things interesting. There might even be some decent fishing, I offered. She already knew about the food – some of the best seafood, beef, pork and noodle dishes in the world. Given that Hokkaido is the least populated and least visited part of Japan, we probably wouldn’t even have to deal with the crowds that often plague other parts of the country. In fact, the only con I conceded was that Japan can be quite expensive; but even that deficit could be offset by the inexpensive (sometimes free) camping I anticipated.

However, as the trip got closer I began to have a tiny, nagging doubt. Maybe I’d oversold Japan. After all, it had been awhile since I’d lived there. In the interim, Japan had experienced a bubble economy collapse, a disastrous nuclear energy plant melt down, and the passing of time along with the challenges an ever changing world presents to all of us. And then there are the tricks our own memories play on us. What if it turned out to not be as good as I remembered it?

Anchorage to Seattle to San Francisco marked the first leg of our flight schedule, and it wasn’t until the final stop on that leg, San Francisco, that we realized we had not allowed enough time between landing at Haneda Airport, Tokyo and our connecting flight to Chitose, Hokkaido. An optimistic Japan Airlines ticketing agent in San Francisco assured us we’d make our connection – but I was fairly certain we’d made a mistake.

Upon arriving in Haneda we scurried to baggage claim where I had my first opportunity to dust off my never-was-very-good Japanese and explain our situation. Incredibly – and impressively – the baggage handler at the luggage carousel already knew about us and our bikes. He smiled and nodded in their direction as a baggage handler approached pushing a handtruck loaded with three boxes – our two bikes and our bike trailer. Almost simultaneously, our two “luggage” boxes with their brilliant orange duck tape emerged onto the carousel. Phew! Next…

A woman in a JAL uniform seemed to materialize out of thin air. While Yamamoto-San (Ms. Yamamoto) explained to us that we needed to get over to the domestic flights air terminal as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, two baggage handlers helped us load our luggage onto two smaller hand carts – which, by the way, are free in Japan. The race was on.

We followed Yamamoto-San to the baggage check-in counter where she consulted with other JAL agents, and then she made what appeared to be a “command decision” to circumvent normal baggage check-in procedures and get us and our luggage directly over to the boarding gate. With the perfectly quaffed, calm Yamamoto-San alternately leading the way and helping to load these huge boxes onto the elevator to the train shuttle platform, we were all perspiring a little. Arriving on the shuttle deck it looked like we just might make it. Yamamoto-San was on a radio, talking urgently and quickly enough that I could understand almost nothing…

…until she mentioned Murray. Murray… Murray… The word sounded so familiar and yet I couldn’t quite recall its meaning. And then, with what sounded like disappointment in her voice, she said the word again. Muri. 

Muri! As language sometimes does, the meaning suddenly came back to me. Muri means impossible. 

We were not going to make our connecting flight. Despite our assurances that we weren’t really bothered by this turn of events, Yamamoto-San seemed truly disappointed. Back at the baggage check-in counter, she offered to book us into a hotel. I explained that the glitch was really our fault for not allowing sufficient time between flights, but she insisted that, no, it was her airline’s responsibility. In all of my glowing descriptions to Barbra regarding Japan, I had probably not payed sufficient homage to the legendary customer service the Japanese people are known for. 

In the end, we declined the hotel, reasoning it would be simpler to spend the night stretched out on the comfortable seats in the waiting area, grab a cup of coffee in the morning and board a flight that would get us into Chitose at a time coinciding with check-in at our hotel. Our hotel in Chitose, by the way, did not charge us for the cancelled reservation.

Udon & Iced Coffee – our first breakfast in Japan!

And so, rather than arriving in Chitose on the night of May 29 as planned, we spent the night in Haneda Airport, sleeping relatively soundly in the seating area. The floors were so clean they gleamed. The restrooms were spotless. The coffee and bowl of udon we had for breakfast were excellent. And when we finally arrived at our modestly-priced hotel in Chitose, our room, though perhaps a bit small by American standards, was utterly immaculate, appointed with an excellent bathroom (including a nice, deep tub and more features on the toilet than either one of us is likely to ever use), a comfortable bed and truly plush bathrobes. 

Welcome to Japan.

Almost There, or… Who Does This? Hokkaido Bicycle Trek 2018

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Made it to Haneda! Bicycles, trailer, gear & clothing. On to Chitose!

Planning a bike trek around Hokkaido, Japan has been quite a challenge. People travel abroad. We’ve traveled abroad. People go on fishing sojourns. We’ve gone on fishing sojourns. People undertake photography safaris. We’ve undertaken photo safaris. People bike trek. We’ve… ridden our bikes. The challenge has been that people don’t typically do all these things in one, long, self-guided camping trip. Nor do they normally wait until they’re in their 50’s to attempt their first foray into something like this. 

To prepare, we read books on bike trekking – from words of wisdom on ultra light traveling to advice from folks who tote along babies and dogs. We watched countless videos on how people pack and camp with their bikes. Along the way we feathered in fishing. And photography. And pack-rafting. And camp cooking. And backpacking. And bird watching. And then there was the fitness training schedule to help us get into shape for this adventure. With as many people in the world who have already pioneered all of these different adventures, no one seems to have attempted the catch-all combination of what we are hoping to embark on. 

During the planning phase, we practice-packed several times. Each time, we realized another layer of equipment had to be fine-tuned. Without bringing a pack mule or a SAG wagon, we weren’t going to be able to carry along everything that we wanted to. 

The pack raft was the first thing to go. Our rafts compact into fairly small bags, but they necessitate paddles and PFDs. The amount of space and additional weight all of that entails wasn’t going to work. A subsequent trial packing made it clear that our plan to backpack and camp in the back country of the Shiretoko Peninsula, a world heritage site, also required too much stuff – mainly the backpacks themselves. We still plan to explore a backpacking trip, but we’ll look into renting backpacks. 

The next activity to get a hard look was fishing. Hokkaido is reported to have good populations of trout and char and even some salmon fishing as well as opportunities to ply ocean beaches and rocky shorelines for a variety of species. While we considered getting into at least some fishing to be a non-negotiable, we desperately had to figure out how to skinny down our equipment to one rod tube and one waist pouch. The compromise we settled was sharing gear instead of bringing two of everything. Additionally, we modified our lone fly rod to double as a spinning rod. (If it works, we’ll tell you all about it.) In the end, we packed a fly reel, a spinning reel, an 8-weight rod, a tenkara rod, a few small boxes of flies and lures and a small assortment of leaders and tippet material.

The next nonnegotiable was photography gear. Last summer, we limped through with substitute equipment and felt handicapped the entire summer. When we returned home and finally got our photos up on the computer screen for editing, they left us disappointed with the quality. So, our preparation for this summer involved numerous discussions and field tests regarding what gear would best capture the sights and experiences of our journey. What made the cut may seem like a lot to some, but we feel confident that we’ve streamlined our gear without sacrificing too much versatility.

The guiding question in all of this was, What kind of experiences do we most want to have? And the not-so-surprising lesson has been that if the trip is to be about going and doing rather than simply going and seeing, a certain amount of specialty gear is necessary. We know, for example, that we can enjoy first-rate food experiences while keeping our budget reasonably low by visiting markets and cooking for ourselves. But this strategy necessitates carrying with us cookware up to the task. Even birding pretty much requires that we take along a decent pair of compact binoculars and a field guide (which Jack went through with a box cutter and pared down to the bare essentials).

With our gear as fine-tuned as possible, we flew to Anchorage where Paramount bike shop took over the bike-packing – otherwise known as breaking down the bikes and packing them into big cardboard boxes. Meanwhile, we filled two much smaller cardboard moving boxes with the rest of our gear – boxes we’ll discard once we arrive in Hokkaido. And so, ready or not we’ve begun this summer’s adventure with three bicycle boxes and two moving boxes colorfully decorated with neon orange duck tape, packed to withstand the long journey down the West Coast and across the Pacific Ocean. 

At the Anchorage airport, a helpful Alaska Airlines ticket agent was ready to assist us with the puzzle of moving our over-sized bike boxes through the maze of four planes, four airports, two languages and two countries. We were nervous about our baggage surviving the journey or getting lost along the way. As unconventional as it is to travel with ducked-taped cardboard boxes, we are happy we did. At our San Francisco stop, we looked out the plane window and saw our boxes being loaded into the plane. And thanks to the day-glow orange tape, we quickly spotted our luggage as it hit the conveyor belt in Tokyo. Hi-vis tape was a great idea! By the way Big Kudos go out to Terrie at the Alaska Airlines desk-for-troubled-travelers. She was able to figure out how to check our bags all the way to Hokkaido from Anchorage. Amazingly, the cost for all of our baggage was a very-reasonable $200! (Go Club 49!)

As the nerve-wracking airplane travel segment of our journey comes to a happy conclusion, we can now focus on the next leg of the adventure: putting our bikes back together, finding stove fuel and purchasing a few groceries. And then we will answer the question that has been in the backs of our minds (and the pits of our stomachs) ever since we conceived this trip: Will we be able to balance, steer and propel these vehicles??? Stay tuned!

Planes, bikes, ferries & feet – Ready for 85 Days in Hokkaido, Japan

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Nowhere in particular to get to… and all summer to get there.

May 19: We’d saved a couple fingers of bourbon for this, our final evening in Chignik Lake. Measured out in a pair of our favorite glasses, the mellow amber-brown glow of the whisky suited a similar mellowness that had settled over us as we looked around a clean, tidy home that only a few days before had been an explosion of camping gear, bikes, technical clothing, camera gear, panniers and check lists. Our bicycles and camping gear had already been flown to Anchorage where they were waiting for us at Lake Clark Air. Scheduled to fly out of Chignik Lake the following day, ahead of us was a five-day scramble in the big city of Anchorage in which to reconnect with friends, make last-minute adjustments to our bikes and have them boxed for air travel, and to pick up necessities ranging from fly-fishing leaders to all-purpose hiking/biking/street/camp shoes as well as a couple of dozen additional odds and ends. Oh, and to get one of the three store-bought haircuts we treat ourselves to each year.

And then on Saturday, May 26, we’ll board Alaska Air bound for San Francisco where we’ll switch to Japan Airlines into Chitose, Hokkaido. If all goes according to plan, we’ll spend the next 85 days exploring Hokkaido, Japan by bike.

Why Hokkaido? I suppose it comes down to the fact that both of us have wanted to do a bicycle trek ever since we were kids but never did. Lacking experience in this sort of thing, it made sense to go for it in a country known for being safe and for having a bicycle friendly culture. Factor in campgrounds that typically range in price from free to $5 or $6 dollars, a cool, comfortable summer climate, beautifully diverse landscapes featuring smoking volcanoes, snow-capped mountains, bird-rich marshes and forests, fields of flowers, six national parks, seaside villages and the distinct possibility that we just might get into some decent trout and char fishing.  Japan’s northernmost island seemed to us to be the best possible place to make this leap into a new way of travel.

Hokkaido’s cuisine surely ranks among the world’s finest. Regional seafood specialties include scallops, oysters, several species of crab, shrimp, salmon, squid and succulent, softball-sized sea urchins. As Japan’s agricultural capital, Hokkaido is also known for its fresh fruits and vegetables as well as local beef and pork, and people rave about the rich ice-cream. There may even be opportunities to sample wild game. Soba – those tasty buckwheat noodles that are especially delicious served cold – is made from local grain, and it seems that virtually every city, town and village has its own unique twist on ramen. Visions of donburi – bowls of rice piled high with a variety of colorful, fresh seafood – have been dancing in our heads for months. If that’s not enough, micro-brews have caught on, there’s a nascent wine industry and even a couple of world-class single malt distilleries. Every yen we don’t spend on campground fees is another yen we’ll be able to spend eating our way around the island. 

So stay tuned. We intend to publish throughout the summer – food experiences that inspire, new birds, exotic species of trout of char, encounters with wildlife and the challenges and successes we’re bound to encounter pedaling our way along sea coasts and through mountain villages. But the thing we’re most looking forward to is meeting new people and immersing ourselves in a new culture. I’ve been practicing my Japanese, to be sure. But if experience is any guide, connections trump vocabulary. We can’t wait to share our loves of fly-fishing, photography, birds, food, camping and hiking with friends we haven’t yet met, half-a-world away, who find similar joy and fascination in such things. Hopefully our journeys will bring us into conversations with soba masters, commercial fishermen, trout chasers, farmers, ranchers, biologists and people who call Hokkaido home and love living there.

Wherever the coming summer finds you, we wish for you days filled with pleasant adventures, good food and deepened connections old and new.

Whale Bones and Crosses, the Cemetery at Point Hope

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Whale Bones & Crosses, Point Hope, Alaska

Perhaps its most iconic landmark, the cemetery at Point Hope, Alaska, is enclosed in Bowhead Whale ribs positioned as one would a picket fence. The above image was made at 2:25 PM, November 7. At that time of year, there are slightly less than six hours between sunrise and sunset. By early December, the sun sinks completely below the horizon and will not show itself again for 32 days.

In 1890, three years after a commercial whaling base called Jabbertown had been established near the village, the first Christian missionary arrived in Point Hope. A doctor by profession, it is reported that John Driggs performed “heroic” medical work, but his attempts at converting the village’s inhabitants to his religious beliefs were unsuccessful. In fact, the Episcopal Church that sponsored him reported that Driggs had become “eccentric and absent” in his duties to proselytize. Nonetheless, by 1910 Christianity had become predominant throughout Arctic Alaska. By this point the new religion had been spread from village to village by converts among the Inupiat themselves.*

*See: The Inupiat and the christianization of Arctic Alaska, Ernest S. Burch, Jr., Etudes/Inuit/Studies,1994

Looking for Love

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His colors will never be brighter than they are right now, nor his call more cheerful. Pine Grosbeaks tend to be irregular in their presence, but for the past two years in Chignik Lake they’ve been regular residents. For a look at a nearby female, which is very differently colored, see below. (Note the midges flying around to the right in the above photo. With big insect hatches coming off the lake and river, our swallows should be here any day!) 

Most days in the village the optimistic Peee-Peeet! of Pine Grosbeaks can be heard as they fly overhead or perch atop the tallest spruce trees. Always striking, the males are particularly colorful during springtime. Like their crossbill cousins, Pine Grosbeaks can be remarkably unwary. Move slowly around them, sit quietly, and they may forage on the ground practically at your feet. I’ve even had one perch on my head!

Female Pine Grosbeaks feature a rich olive-gold on their head, upper back, rump and often on their upper breast. This time of year, the leaf buds of deciduous trees figure heavily in Pine Grosbeaks’ diets. During wintertime they can be attracted to feeders featuring black oil sunflower seeds, suet or (I’m guessing) peanuts. They also love small fruit and during warmer months will include insects in their diet.

The “gros” of grosbeak is from the French gros, which means large. This is a species we’ll be looking for this summer in Hokkaido, Japan – part of their ranged across the Northern Hemisphere.

Chignik Lake Bald Eagle

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Waiting for Salmon, Chignik Lake, Alaska

May 1, Tuesday Morning, frost: Eagles are once again daily encounters as they take up familiar roosts and join the village in watching for salmon. A few fish have trickled in, but usually it’s June before the run really gets going. A couple of nice char have been caught. Catkins on the willows, leaf buds everywhere ready to burst. A small flock of Pine Grosbeaks was in the village yesterday, the males as brilliant pinkish-red as they’ll ever be.

Point Hope Aerial, 2013

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Point Hope, Alaska, February 22, 2013

One of the great privileges in our life was to live for three years in the Inupiat village of Point Hope, Alaska. Lying 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle and still deeply connected to a whaling-based subsistence culture, it is said that the Tikigaq Peninsula has been inhabited for some 9,000 years, making it one of the oldest continuously inhabited sites in North America. It is a place of aqpik berries and caribou, snowy owls and arctic foxes, fierce winds and frozen seas, a full month of darkness and the most magically soft pink, gold and orange morning and evening light we’ve ever seen. One day in early fall we hiked out to the end of the peninsula, stood on the beach, and watched in wonder as thousands upon thousands of murres, puffins, auklets and other seabirds streamed by on their way to the open ocean to spend the winter, their nesting season complete – surely one of the planet’s greatest migratory events. We endured a mid-winter three-day blow of hurricane force winds that forced most of the village to huddle together in the school which had its own generating system and could offer warm shelter and hot meals. Polar bears sauntered through the village right past our house and there were nights when the Northern lights danced above our heads in electric greens, pinks, purples and reds.  And it was a place of friends, some of the toughest, most generous people we’ve ever known. Tikiġaġmiut – the people of this peninsula in the Chukchi sea.

Migration

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Migration

April 18, early morning

The big picture window with a view across the lake was open just enough when the first group came through. Honking, chattering, noisy, at first distant then growing closer and then distant again till a silence was left where they had been. When the next group came through, I scrambled from behind my desk and dashed out the door, searching the morning’s gray sky till their thin, fluid lines came into view, sentences of sorts arcing northwest toward the big bays on the other side of the peninsula – Mud, Henderson, Nelson’s Lagoon – waters far from any town or village, remote even by standards up here.

All morning it was like that, wave upon wave of Canada Geese having decided that this was the day. When Barbra and I went for an evening walk, they were still coming, clamorous, easy to identify in the good light with their clean black heads and necks and bright white chins against the blue sky.

That night I opened the bedroom window a little, lay on my back not wanting to sleep, listening as the geese continued to write their way home even in the dark.

A Chignik River Springtime Float

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We began the float by paddling our Alpacka Gnu to the north shore of Chignik Lake opposite of Chignik Lake village, which looks as tiny as it actually is tucked up against the Chignik Mountains. Chignik means “big winds.” Not on the morning of April 14. (For a look at this same float in December, 2017, see: Early December in Paradise – a Float down the Chignik River.)

It was one of those days when we woke with no plans, and now the day was making a plan for us. The sun slid through a few thin clouds hovering above snowcapped mountains downriver to the east, casting a silvery light across the glassy lake. From our dining room window we could see fish rising, leaving little rings on the lake’s surface.

“We should do a float,” Barbra said. “It’s beautiful.”

“I’ll get breakfast going if you’ll start putting our gear together,” I replied.

Within an hour we were on the water, our inflatable canoe gliding down the lake to the narrows where the water quickens to become Chignik River. Magpies and chickadees called from the banks and as we slipped past the White Spruce Grove we could hear a cacophony rising from the 30 or so Pine Siskins that have spent the winter here. Salmon fry, fingerlings and parr dimpled the river surface all round us, occasionally leaping clear to add a shimmer of silver to the morning light. A kingfisher rattled as it flew overhead. With the shoreline suddenly teaming with small salmon and sticklebacks, our kingfishers will soon be back in numbers. Maybe this will be the year I find a nest.

Behind polarized sunglasses we let our eyes to adjust to the water’s clear-green depths, searching the cobblestone riverbed for the year’s first Sockeyes, a big Dolly Varden or a rare steelhead. No luck, but a neighbor has already found two ocean-bright salmon in his net, the year’s first. A million more are on their way, and with them eagles, harbor seals and bears.

With the wind down and as much time as we cared to take to float the two miles to the barge landing, we let the easy current do most of the work, dipping in our paddles mainly to keep a true course. Being the first boat on the water, we had a good chance to encounter any ducks or swans that might be around. And you never know: bears are just beginning to wake up, and the shores are frequently patrolled by foxes, otters and mink and less frequently by wolves, lynxes and wolverines. We spoke softly, scanned the banks, and listened.

Long before we came around a bend and saw them, we could hear Tundra Swans and mallards honking and quacking in one of their favorite stretches of water. There were just two swans, stately, regal, gracefully gliding along the shoreline to our left. The mallards were a bit of a surprise. There must’ve been 20 or more drakes and hens paired up, feeding on vegetation in the shallows, warily bursting into fight as our raft drifted close.

Further down the river, we came upon a pair of Barrow’s Goldeneyes, a rare species in the Chigniks. We sometimes get Common Goldeneyes in the dozens, but years go by between reports of Barrow’s. It’s possible that they might nest here if they can find the right sort of rocky crevice or opening in an abandoned structure of some sort.

On the North side of the river there’s a feeder stream we’d been talking about exploring. So when we came to it, we beached the raft, tied it down and began hiking. The stream is just eight to 15 feet wide on average and shallow enough in places to cross in Muck boots. But the water runs cold and fast and clear over clean rocks and gravel, pooling and eddying in ways that are attractive to salmon. Peering into a riffle, I noticed what appeared to be one long, continuous set of redds – salmon nests – before I thought to give the banks a closer look.

Above are the remains of a couple of salmon that became a brown bear banquet. Last fall, the Chignik system filled with the highest number of Pink and Silver Salmon anyone had seen in a long time. Fat autumn bears make for fat spring cubs. 

On both sides of the creek, the vegetation had been trampled down in broad swaths, a sure sign that bears heavily use this stream. Sure enough, when we looked down we found the area littered with the winter-bleached spines, gill plates, and tooth-filled jaws of Pink Salmon. We agreed that we’d have to make sure to fish the stream this fall when sea-run char marked in spectacular greens, reds and oranges would follow Pinks into the stream to pick off eggs that aren’t successfully buried in the redds. In places where stands of alder choked down foot traffic, the narrow trails had been worn inches deep into the soil, the work of centuries or perhaps millennia of brown bear comings and goings. Along the shoreline, every patch of sand held a carpet of fox tracks, some old, some fresh.

By the time we returned to our raft, the morning sun was high and temperatures had climbed into the 40s. Millions of tiny black midges were hatching, skittering across the water as they struggled to free themselves from the husks of their pupal stage – activity that was eliciting slashing rises from pinky-sized salmon as well as a few larger char. Mixed in with the midge hatch were a few dark stoneflies as well as big, creamy-brown caddisflies. With days warming and insects hatching, our swallows should be on their way.

They’re small, but to some of our favorite fish and bird species (trout, char, salmon and swallows) they are indispensable food items. They’re midges, order Diptera from the Greek indicating that they use two wings to fly. During a hatch such as the one we found ourself in the midst of, midge pupae trap gas in their thorax, ascend to the water’s surface, shake off their pupal exoskeleton and emerge as winged adults – as this one on my ring finger has just done.

Drifting along the rocky bluff across from the salmon-counting weir that the Department of Fish & Game operates from June through September, we came across two large piles of sticks in the still leafless alders – active magpie nests, egg-shaped and roughly the size of a couple of basketballs. Our chickadees, too, seem to be establishing territory and selecting mates, and everywhere new green shoots are pushing up through winter-browned grass.

Chignik’s magpies began nesting about two weeks ago, giving away locations as they ferry large sticks into thick, brush growth along banks or into spruce trees. Somewhere in that jumble there very likely are half-a-dozen or so lightly speckled gray-green eggs. 

We beached the boat at the barge landing, deflated it, rolled it up, stuffed it in a backpack and began the three-mile hike home. Along the way we took note of bright green salmonberry shoots, the beginnings of wild irises, an unfamiliar warmth in the air. Earlier in the week it had snowed. But winter’s fighting a losing battle at this point. And every living thing knows it.