A Nature Story

Just a quick one here.  I would like to do more posts in which I make up some possible stories to explain a photo or photos that seem like they would have some interesting story behind them.  I recently did another trip up the Stikine River to gillnet sockeye and went for a hike in one of the mostly water-free sloughs in the hopes of seeing some wildlife or interesting tracks.  Bear, moose, and wolf tracks are pretty ubiquitous up there so it was no surprise to see plenty of sign of those animals but the less common track that I found was quite a few deer tracks.  It is a rare sight to see a deer up the Stikine so seeing tracks was interesting.

These are some of the ubiquitous moose and bear tracks commonly found up the Stikine.  What makes them interesting is their proximity to each other and the time in which they were made.  The big, deep track near the top of the photo is that of a cow moose, the smaller but similar track to the left is the track of her young calf.  The tracks behind them near the bottom of the photo are of an average size brown bear.  These tracks were made fairly close together in time as far as I could tell and the moose tracks appeared to show that they ran for a short stretch before resuming a more normal gait.  The bear tracks showed this bear to be following at some distance behind most likely, and at a normal but determined pace.  An ominous follower for that moose and her calf.  These tracks led across this muddy slough into the willows and then further into a grove of Cottonwood trees into which I did not follow as I am woods wise enough to know that if that bear had been successful in making a meal of that moose calf, I did not want to stumble upon it on its meal in that thick jungle of Devil's Club and willows.  I veered off down the slough and soon came upon another set of brown bear tracks that looked like the same bear, or at least a bear of pretty much exactly the same size.  These tracks were leading away from the Cottonwood grove into which the others had gone into.  I feel pretty sure that this was the same bear, what the interesting story part could be is what might have happened in that Cottonwood grove.  Was there a confrontation between moose and bear?  If so, did the cow moose successfully defend her calf from the predatory bruin?  Did the cow and calf avoid an encounter by picking up their pace and outdistancing the bear or did they swim across the river?  Did the bear have a successful stalk and hunt and get a meal of moose calf?  I wish I knew.  There are so many stories out there!  I do have a personal story involving a cow moose and calf and a lone wolf in which the wolf pursued the cow and calf across the very swift and strong Iskut River.  While I got to witness a lot of that story, I did not see the ending.  I'll go into more detail about that in a later post.

Independence Day

I decided to escape to the Stikine River for the 4th of July to spend a couple days away from the chaos and revelry that always accompanies the birth of our nation in Wrangell.  Wrangell REALLY enjoys the 4th, patriotism is still admired and unashamedly openly expressed.  One of the many reasons this place is a great place.  We love our country but many of us have a healthy skepticism and criticism of our government.  I think that is a general feeling in Alaska.

I spent a night camping up the river with a few friends gillnetting sockeye salmon during our latest stretch of very hot weather.  We have had another string of sunny clear days with temperatures nearing 80 so it was a great time to be in one of the most beautiful places on Earth catching food for the coming year.

This post isn't really much about the gillnetting portion of the trip, I just wanted to share a few photos of one of my favorite places (again).  This photo of our jet skiffs with one of the buoys of one of the nets off to the right is the only photo of actual gillnetting or salmon this post will have.

Almost a thunderstorm there over the distant mountains in Canada.

An eagle silhouette in a tree silhouette.

Same mountains, later in the evening.

The majority of the town of Wrangell plus hundreds of their family and friends from other places watching the boat races from the cruise ship dock.  We watched a few heats of the race from the boat on our way back to town on the 4th.

The Coast Guard was obviously poised to respond to any mishaps which fortunately did not occur.  I didn't get any good shots of the fast boats but there were some very speedy ones!  The fun of gillnetting was done for this trip and now the work of preparing and canning it begins!  I just bought a second canner so the work will be twice as fast at least.