Homeward Bound

The trails of the Eagle River Nature Center.  Not always the most stunning vista around, but good for a short local limp on a bum knee.  There are several miles of trail loops...and one could limp all the way through a river crossing and down the road to Girdwood, which is about 50 miles away if you take the highway.  The hiking trail is "as the crow flies" so a bit less.  There are many types of trails around there.  This one is less traveled.

It may not look it, but this one is slightly more traveled.  But you can still walk for miles without seeing a soul.

The trees always amaze me in the forest.  This path is lined with totally different trees than the other path.

And around a bend, the ecosystem changes yet again.

It's not just me that keeps coming back to this place.  After two, three, four, five, or even six years away, the salmon make their way back here to spawn.  How any make it back at all is an amazing feat.   Bears eat them.  Eagles eat them.  Whales eat them.  Fishermen stalk them in boats, with nets, and rivers are choked with arm to arm people with fishing poles (they call it combat fishing because it's so crowded).  Against all odds, these two little salmon made it through all of that to this peaceful spot at the Eagle River Nature Center.  To be fair, they still have bears to contend with, but at this moment, they were safe.

In the shallow offshoots of the Eagle River, the salmon have come home, to calmer waters.  A female salmon digs a hole by swooshing her tail in the gravel riverbed, and lays a few thousand eggs.  The male deposits his contribution later.  The baby salmon, called alevins, live under those rocks, absorbing nutrients from the yolk sac.  Nature gives these babies a chance -- the snow falls, the bears hibernate, the stream may freeze over to protect them.

 After about a year, these bigger babies, called fry or smolts, migrate downstream and spend time in the mouth of the river before entering the ocean.  Here they adapt from freshwater to ocean water, and when they are ready enter the ocean in schools of salmon, close to the shores.  Once they are fully mature, they move further out to the ocean and live a solitary life for years...until the are called home.  The salmon return to the exact stream where they were born, and undertake an amazing "homeward bound" style journey.

The salmon are only visible here for a short period each year.  The rest of the year you will have to content yourself with the beautiful mountain vista and their reflections in the stream.

Of course there is always potential for a bear or moose sighting, a fact nervously evident in the summer when the plants are taller than you.  I didn't realize that Alaska was a rainforest until I got here.  Of course it makes sense, but somehow I think we all expect it to be colder and more barren than it really is.

When the salmon return, the Nature Center closes one of the more popular trails...bears like an easy path too, and it's better to keep the humans and bears on different footpaths whenever possible.

The local flora can also be quite nutritious (although occassionally poisonous, so I would recommend you get some serious botany skill before trying this out).  There are bulletin boards with what you might find on the trails, but I have not yet been so brave.