Poor man's puffins and lucky man's landscapes

More snapshots from an April week in Haines. I'd been told that hitch hiking wasn't easy in Haines, but if I may, I beg to differ. Not only were the rides relatively easy, but we also met a great lady who after driving us one direction offered to take us on a hike and then give us a lift back to town. If that wasn't enough, she offered to let us use her bicycles for the weekend, which was rather fortunate, since the Chilkat Valley happens to be among the finer locations for weekend bike rides I've ever known. If you'd like to talk about warmth, trust, and authentic generosity, you'd better include her in your description.

Sitting on the beach on a Thursday afternoon with a few hundred surf scoters. Scoters have "whistling wings," and on a calm day you can hear their wings whistle from huge distances. Surf scoters are fairly spooky sea ducks and will flee at the approach of anything on the water or on the beach. A river otter approached this group from somewhat of a discreet location, but before it was within 100 yards, the several hundred poor man's puffins packed their bags and headed toward another location a quarter mile down the bay.

Alaska's clean waters and healthy wildlife are up against enormous threats (and given the mentality, philosophy, and politics of the vast majority of Alaskans and their corresponding lawmakers, the current outlook for clean water and stable ecosystem dynamics is pretty scary). Surf scoters' numbers have declined an estimated 50 - 75% in the last 50 years, which should be sufficiently alarming to anybody who understands that losing 3/4 of the population of a species in a half century is not a healthy trend for the region's ecological stability. However, it is still possible to head to the beach and see hundreds of these birds diving in the shallows for tasty crustaceans.


Ripple remnants on the Mud Bay mudflats at low tide.


Looking south into Mud Bay and at the approach of a wintery mixed bag of precipitation..