Leaving Juneau

The September Exodus: Fall Travel 2025

September 15, 2025

September is a good time to leave Juneau. The wood shed and freezers are full. The garden is put to bed. Next year's garlic is planted. Rain has returned. Wet, dark, gloomy, cold, windy rain.

Fireweed blossoms tell us the end of summer is near.

The two times a falling tree narrowly missed our roof were during a September storm. The first time, we went to Aurora Harbor to check on our boat. The storm was bad, and the harbor master posted photos on Facebook of half-sunken vessels. Please check your boats, the post said.

The Dawntreader was fine, but when we arrived home, a strange sight took us a few minutes to decipher. A tree lay between us in the driveway and our front door. It was a bizarre experience to see a tree where one wasn't supposed to be. So strange, we just about walked into it before realizing it was there. Which would have been impossible because it was a large spruce tree with many branches, some of which had plunged into the earth like King Arthur's sword in the stone.

When we eventually realized what we were seeing, Roger and I looked at each other without speaking. Our expressions said it all, “WTF?”

The second tree that nearly destroyed our house.

In the hour and a half while we were gone, a tree in the back yard had fallen, grazing the side of our house and pulling off the utility connections. To get in, we had to walk down the road and approach the front door from our neighbor's driveway.

Roger, my logistical hero, was immediately on the phone with tree cutters and utility companies, intuitively knowing they would be in high demand in the coming hours during this intense rain and windstorm. In a relatively short amount of time, our entryway was cleared, power was restored, and the fish we had spent the summer catching and processing were safe in the freezer, alongside frozen bags of salmonberries, blueberries, and rhubarb.

Salmonberries turn ruby red as they ripen.

The following year, while we were golfing at Lakewood in Skowhegan, Maine, our phones blew up with messages from home. Another tree had fallen, during another September storm, in the exact same spot as the year before. When the root systems of these massive trees are disturbed, their viability is compromised. So when one tree falls, you can expect others in the same area to also fall.

Thanks to our experience from the year before, Roger immediately got on the phone and called for help from a nearby tree cutter and the utility companies. A relative helped cut up the tree until he reached a diameter too large for his chainsaw. Later that night, the tree, relieved of the weight of its branches and top section, sprang back up into its vertical position, flinging off the partially cut round that had missed hitting a car, person, or house when it landed in our neighbor's driveway. Earlier that day, our neighbor's children had been playing in the gravel root hole the fallen tree had exposed. We shudder to think what could have happened if the tree had popped back up during the daytime.

The storm on Engineer's Cutoff and Mendenhall Peninsula that year (2022?) was called a microburst. It was as if a mini tornado had whipped through the area, ripping and toppling trees, one after another, like dominoes. Our neighbors, who had retreated to the safety of their boat in the marina, sent us a video of our unrecognizable neighborhood.

Trees flagged to be cut and the remains of the fallen one on the ground.

The following summer, we partnered with the same neighbor to hire a tree cutter to cut down the remaining threatening trees.

Now, we can leave Juneau in relative peace, with the help of friends and family who house sit and water plants, knowing that, of all the things that could happen to our home while we are gone, a tree falling on it is probably not one of them.

Our Alaska Airlines flight lifted away from Juneau. The airport, the wetlands, Lemon Creek, and Twin Lakes receded from view as we reached bird's eye level with Mount Juneau and Mount Roberts. I glanced toward Perseverance Trail and looked toward Granite Creek Basin, an area I hiked during the COVID summer.

Mount Juneau view from the Dawntreader on a summer day.

Soon we were above the peaks, bare of snow, looking for the white dots that might be mountain goats grazing in the mid-September alpine pastures. We will miss the first signs of winter, a coating of termination dust that looks like confectionery sugar across the mountain peaks.

Just like clockwork, September reared her ugly head as we were landing on the East Coast. “The weather is terrible,” our friends texted us. “High gusts downtown. Messing with cruise ships. Some can't leave, and a couple can't get in and have cancelled their Juneau stop.” The National Weather Service warned of 60 mph gale-force winds and flooding. Heavy rainfall could cause landslides as saturated mountainsides can't hold back soil and trees.

We turned our rental car north on Route 1 to Maine with a big blue sky and warm sun overhead, beckoning us forward. Ah! September in Maine. The way life should be.

© Copyright 2025. Patricia E. Harding. All rights reserved.

Updated 11/20/2025.