The first night in Juneau, Chris invited us to the old-timey jam at a loft in the Alaska Bar and Grille. A group of musicians who have been playing together for a long time show up. What they play, one of the players told me, pre-dates bluegrass and developed in Appalachia before the age of recorded music. Its roots are in fiddle music from Scotland. They let me follow along on a couple of numbers. It’s really, I mean really fast.
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Our friend and longtime Juneau resident Chris took us up north to look at a rainforest. It was about as far as you can drive before the road ends at Echo Cove, just past Point Bridget State Park. It was becoming a wet afternoon, the rain was starting to pick up. Chris was well prepared for our leisurely stroll, wearing jeans, a T-shirt and flip-flops. (It actually wasn’t that wet on the forest floor)
Moss covers the lower branches of hemlock, devils club showing at the top of the understory
The most common trees are Sitka spruce, western hemlock, western red cedar (also common in the Pacific Northwest (there’s one here in the backyard).
A closer look at devils club, and moss at right on tree trunk
Devils club, above was growing as high as 6 feet in some places. It has spines so long and sharp if they apparently are really difficult to remove .
Close up
Thick understory
Above, devils club is interspersed with what looks a little like a sword fern although it could also be wood fern, a beech fern, or a number of others among the dozens of ferns that grow in the rain forests of southeast Alaska (see below link),. You have to know what you are doing to properly identify it, not looking at a photo.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5391721.pdf
Below, someone’s car got left here a really long time ago, and it’s still here, right on the trail, slowly being buried.
Here is a short video:
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Juneau isn’t on nearby Lynn Canal, the deepest fjord in North America, 2600′ in depth in some places. It’s on a tributary, Gastineau channel. But downtown Juneau is perched on a little spot of flat land between the channel and the mountains right behind. When you take this tram straight up the mountain and look back down, with more mountains right across the way on Douglas Island, it almost as though Juneau sits in a natural trench.
Top of Mount Roberts tram, at 1800′, looking back at downtown Juneau
Looking slightly to the south at Douglas Island across the channel
View slightly to the north, where Gastineau channel becomes an estuarine wetland near the airport. A bald eagle is perched in a treetop in the foreground
The top of the tram is right at tree line, where conditions become too harsh and cold for trees to survive.
Looking upslope past tree line
Tree line is easier to see on the opposite slope.
Understory plants along the side of the trail
Native Alaska Totems being worked on at the tram visitor’s center.
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That’s the difference …. there are a lot of glaciers in the State of Washington, where I live, but most are in very inaccessible alpine areas. In Juneau, things are different. The Mendenhall Glacier is just minutes from downtown Juneau and the toe of the glacier is just 20 feet above sea level.
Mendenhall Glacier from near the Visitor’s Center
It’s a one-mile walk from about where the above photo was taken to the waterfall.
In 1929, the glacier covered what is now Mendenhall Lake, foreground. It has retreated 1 3/4 miles since then.
My wife Urania’s had long had a dream to actually set foot on a glacier. So naturally we wanted to get a closer look. Helicopters work really well to get you there and there are some in town for hire. It was about an 8-minute hop from Juneau Airport uphill to Herbert Glacier.
Walking on Herbert Glacier. The glacial blue shows well from this angle
First thing we noticed was glacial blue appears just as I’d heard it described, but it only looks blue. Glacial ice is very old and very compacted. It’s crystalline structure is extremely dense and very efficient at absorbing most light very well, except blue light, which scatters. So that’s what we see.
Up at least several hundred feet here, looking back down toward the Herbert River and Lynn Canal. Glaciers are in constant motion, but way too slow for the naked eye to see. You can sort of imagine that here.
Realizing the dream
Young Miles frolics while the rest of us step more carefully.
Flying over a Muskeg Peat bog on the way up the mountain. Casey told me the saturated soil is so soft, people can quickly sink in up to their waist or deeper.
Looking uphill toward distant Juneau ice field.
Later we took a whale watching tour and got a different view of Herbert glacier.
Herbert Glacier from marine waters off Juneau
And while we’re at it, here’s a great view off the back of the boat –
More distant view of mountains off rear of boat
and, the only fauna I managed to get a photo of, through a window
bald eagle and sea lions lounge on buoy
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The Seattle Arboretum was founded in 1934, but the Pacific Connections garden is a brand new piece of it – five eco-geographic forests planted in the last 10 years. As the below metal sculpture sign displays, they represent the Pacific Northwest (Cascadia), Chile, New Zealand, Australia, and China, all areas with temperate climates. Many of the species planted at the garden are threatened in their natural habitat.
Below is another metal-sculpture sign comparing rainfall in the five regions. All of them are similar in total annual precipitation, but China has more summer rainfall than the other four regions.
Features of the existing arboretum are all around: below are a walkway and a drainage hardscaped with large and small rock.
The first area I came to was the Australia forest.
This young Eucalyptus is leaning west, looking for more sun. The area behind the camera has been cleared to give it more morning light
In the New Zealand section, the unusual shrub known as the wire netting cotoneaster, a distant relative of our Pacific Northwest dogwood. You can see how it got its name.nickname.
New Zealand has so many plants that are found nowhere else. Below is another odd looking native tree / large shrub, the narrow leafed lacebark.
Narrow leafed lacebark’s weepy habit
Here is a Pacific Northwest native western red cedar, Thuja plicata, common to moist forests in this area. But this one looks completely different because it is a cultivar (a plant found in the wild and selectively bred to attenuate its form or growth habit). It is known as the whipcord, a shrub or even grass-like dwarf,
Whipcord, the Western red cedar cultivar
The bottom of the original wild form – a tall western red cedar tree
Western red cedar is revered by Native Americans, who have used almost every part of it for something
The idea behind the Pacific Connections garden fascinates me. When in grad school studying the semi-arid chaparral vegetation along the U.S. – Mexico border, I learned that similar looking, but completely unrelated plants grew in central Chile, where climate and rainfall were like California. Chile’s flora is almost completely isolated from the rest of the world, yet its coast is a mirror image of our west coast. As one heads south, desert grades into semi-desert, then dry coniferous forest, humid coniferous forest like the Pacific Northwest, Canada, and southeast Alaska, and finally into sub-polar Patagonia at the southern tip of America.
Below are shots of the Chilean conifer, Araucaria arcancana. Chilean pine or Pehuén, it’s common name in Chile. The taxonomic name is from the indigenous Pahuénche Araucanian peoples of southern Chile.
Striking Araucaria branches. The tree is described as almost “reptilian” in botanical literature, and as fossil-like, because individual trees can live 1,000 years, and because they have grown in Chile for 200 million years, since the dinosaur era.
An Araucaria catches some winter sun. The Cahuénche Araucarians collected its edible nuts which are said to taste something like pine nuts.
Oddly enough, the Araucaria is known here and elsewhere in the world as the “monkey puzzle”. The Missouri Botanical Garden website attributes the name to a comment made by an 19th century English botanist who mused that a monkey would be confused trying to climb its branches. Well there are no monkeys in Chile, just sayin’. A pretty misleading name.
Chinese Paperbush shrub also known as “Nanging gold”. In the past its bark was used to produce high quality ornamental paper
Well, there’s lots more, but that’s enough for now. if you have the chance, go there. It’s a place of beauty, and also very relaxing …. see below
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I saw two more botanical gardens on Oahu, Ho’omaluhia Garden, a giant 400-acre garden on the wet windward side of Oahu, upslope from Kailua, and Wiahiawā Botanical garden, a garden in the center of the island at much higher elevation.that despite its small size (27-acres) feels equally “wild” in places.
Steep scarp looking west from Ho’omaluhia Botanical Garden on Oahu
Taro plantings
Taro or Kalo, unlike so many plants that were brought in by accident in modern times, was probably a “canoe” plant, carried in by the original Polynesians who settled the islands, according to the Hawaii Horticulture blog. The Hawaii Ocean project says it was “once a staple of the Hawaiian diet, and still an integral part of the culture,” Polynesians who brought taro planted it near rivers and streams.
It has a place in Hawaiian mythology, Wakea (the sky father), and the beautiful goddess, Hoʻohokukalani (the heavenly one who made the stars), wished to have a child. Their first attempt, however, resulted in a still birth. The body of the stillborn child was buried near their home. From this buried child grew a taro plant.
Turmeric grows really well in Hawaii,
Tumeric, or ‘Ōlena is also believed to be a “canoe” plant, carried in by the original Polynesians. It does not spread readily by seed, but it can be found growing wild at very old planting sites on the big island, Molokai, and Maui.
Smooth, striking trunk of the Brownea Macrophylla, also known as Panama Flame or Rose of Venezuela, at Waihaiwā Garden
Brownea Macrophylla flower
Another striking tree at Wiahiawā Garden. If anyone recognizes it, let me know what it is.
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Arriving at the beach looking out at Mokoli’i rock, known to residents as Chinaman’s Hat, it was a fine view on a fine afternoon. We could see the tide was in, and small but persistent waves were thrashing at a very steep and narrow beach. Just a short distance off the beach, a berm had been placed, apparently to slow beach erosion. It was a fine view. People can paddle out to the rock at low tide, when much of the distance from the beach can be walked.
View of Chinaman’s Hat from the beach. Berm is just offshore
The fine beach sands had been removed, sorted out by waves. Only the large, coarse grains remained. Taking a closer look, there were scattered objects of unnatural color all over.
Welcome friends, to ocean plastics.
I knelt down where the debris stopped and began picking bits of plastic out of the sand. I set down small pieces of driftwood to bound a sampling area. I only picked off what was on the sand surface, I did not dig down.
Sample area, with plastic debris at bottom center. Area is roughly 16″ on a side
Closer view: some pieces looked like packaging material from personal care items. Walking stick at upper left for scale.
This is a travel blog, no preaching allowed, but ocean plastics used to be part of my work. Every bit of plastic that’s ever gotten into the ocean is still there, just becoming smaller and easier for fish to eat. It’s refined petroleum, so if we eat fish, well ….
Turning west from the beach, there is a beautiful and imposing ridge, site of Kualoa Ranch. Jurassic Park was filmed over the top of the ridge in the valley beyond.
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