Today Aki and I visit an old friend — the moraine trail.  Sunlight melts the remaining snow and rouses mosquitos. Soon these pests will close the more interesting sections of this ground where lightly traveled paths cross thick blankets of moss and skirt pot hole lakes. From such a path I spot a pair of Mallard ducks quietly feeding a few feet away. Aki, exploring ground recently mined for roots by a bear never sees the birds. They glide out of sight, every detail of the drake’s beauty emboldened by early morning light. Even the hen’s subtle coat of gray and brown draws a second glance.

Being so close to the glacier, this ground recovers slowly from winter.  The animals of summer must wait patiently for the bust out of spring. Things are changing. The manic chittery bird sounds of winter harvesters has been replaced with long sweet love songs.

When a bright yellow warbler lands near us on a still bare willow I know summer is near and silently urge these willows and alders to get on with it. Minutes later we reach the little wooden bridge that crosses a long thin pond. Each year meadow grass claims more and more of the pond. In my life time it will disappear but for now there is enough water to surround a handful of small glacier erratics that have spaced themselves like a chain of islands in the pond. I can’t explain the draw of the scene other than that it calms me like views of a Japanese rock garden. Behind a mountain blocks half the sky. With a ten minute walk I could have a world class view the glacier.  We return to the moss covered forest path as I carry the image of rocks reflecting in a dying pond back to the car.

The morning sun is a pleasant surprise as are the killer whales making expanding circles on the calm channel waters as they break the surface. From here they look like feeding trout on a pond. One breaches, throwing its body up to crash on its back into the sea. It is a glorious thing to see. The rest of the pod, a dozen or so, fed on homeward bound salmon.

Excitement of seeing them makes me useless with the camera. After a few efforts I turn it off and listen to their rhythm — the crash of surfacing, air forced through to clear their breathing tubes, the crash of retreating under water. In truth Orcas lack the graceful form of larger whales but seeing the early morning light catch a male’s glistening dorsal fin, well that is more than enough.

The whales push on and so do we to a creek side trail out the road. The creek would be called a river in a land less blessed with waterways. It one of the streams we have not clouded with glacier silt. On this sunny day, the light drives right to the creek bed, defining each pebble. Later in the summer sunlight will reveal the dark bodies of spawning salmon. Eagles will hang like vultures in the creek side spruce and we will constantly be on the lookout for bears. Today the water is as empty as the alder branches are bare. We walk alone along it to the sea.

After a mile or so we break out of old growth onto a great grass meadow where wild iris and chocolate lilies are already forming flower buds. Great white mountains rise above it at all compass points.  Aki runs mindless over this field of still dormant grass as I search for the first Shooting Stars. When the meadow reaches summer mode those flowers will form magenta islands on a sea of green grass.

My father loved the Shooting Star from the time he first found one near his Montana home.  He was dead before I found my first one in Alaska. He would love to see Shooting Stars blooming here in June, like he would have loved his granddaughter and the light sparkling on this creek water. I wish he could have started this day with me, Aki and the whales.

This is a day for firsts. The first fog horn bellow welcomed the first cruise ship. That woke us up in time to see fog filtered light highlight our emerging lilac leaves.  After the fog burned off Chicken Ridge I played Handel’s Fugetta on the guitar, warmed by the sun on our front porch. Another first for the year.

Later Aki takes the whole family hiking across the Wetlands which offer great views of glacier, ocean, and mountains. Aki only has eyes for her orange frisbee. Her three humans take turns tossing it over the still dead grasslands. When she  she watches its trajectory she manages a quick retrieve. Most times she breaks into a run before it is thrown, often in the opposite direction. This leads to a desperate search spiced with ignored hints of “warmer” and “cold” from her helpful family.

The daughter, just back from college graduation decompresses on the wetlands, finding a sun warmed drift log just right for a lie down. Aki sits beside her holding the frisbee in what she thinks is a seductive manner. When that fails she brings it over to me for a toss.

Reaching an estuary, Aki drops her frisbee in for a wash. Distracted by a raft of ducks she lets it drift off into deep water. A wader, not a swimmer, the poodle mix can only whine as the toy passes out to sea. So ends the life of frisbee number 4

She lost most of the other three in an attempt to wash them.  One was last seen clutched in the teeth of a husky that snatched it away from Aki while we were halfway up the East Glacier Trial.

Aki, like many dogs, suffers from a short term memory deficit which gets her through the loss of the frisbee.  A few minutes after her toy’s Viking funeral, she convinced herself that someone had secreted it away in one of the backpacks her human family members carry on hikes.  After giving us a series of “I know you have it take it out and throw it” looks, Aki falls into a trot besides us to return to the car. We buy frisbee 5 on the way home.

About a week before my daughter graduates from her Lower 48 college Aki and I hike the East Glacier Trail. While Aki, a poodle mix roams ahead I think about how I approached life at my child’s current age. Things like movies had a great influence over me. There was that time I watched Lost Horizon on the family’s black and white TV.  (Too young to catch it on the silver screen). That beautiful film seemed to lay out all of life answers and provide a great stage for the lovely Jane Wyatt and dashing Ronald Coleman.  I dreamed of dating Ms. Wyatt and vowed to grow a pencil thin mustache like Mr. Coleman. Neither happened but I still remember the plot.

Mr. Coleman plays a talented diplomat who is needed in London to end the threat of war. He is abducted and taken to Shangri-La, a magical  valley high in the Himalayan Mountains where the dying high lama asks him to take over his responsibilities.  The movie asks the audience to examine what is truly important and to consider adopting a different set of values.

I think of Lost Horizons today because the East Glacier Trail takes you to a Southeast Alaska version of Shangri-La. First you travel on the Trail of Time, passing markers commemorating the glacier’s edge in 1916 and 1920, far from its current face. Then you climb, sometimes negotiating, Ronald Coleman like, granite cliffs with the help of wire cable hand lines.   You also pass miniature moss framed waterfalls that cascade over granite grooved by the receding glacier. One is terraced like the orange orchards of Kishu Island.

A mile or so in the trail winds through moss covered boulders scattered like they fell from a giant’s pocket. These erratics form the doorway to a flat plain drained by a clearwater stream. The noise of town and the airport that were constant companions on the climb up the hill are gone, replaced by the sound of moving water and bird song,

I stop next to a chickadee just a foot from the trail and enjoy a rare opportunity to study one of these tiny earth tone masterpieces. He cocks his head and I find myself imitating the gesture. “Peace to your brother,” I say before moving off. In too short a time we approach the foot of a yellow cedar stairway that takes you 221 steps to the summit.  This too echos Shangri-La, with its grand staircase to the monastery where Mr. Coleman meets the high lama.

We climb the 221 steps but find no fount of wisdom at the top, just two complaining ravens amid relics of an old mining operation that emerge here and there from the moss covered ground.  I think again about my daughter and how we climbed these same 221 steps when she a child while she and a friend of the family sang “Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold.”   I can almost hear the echo of their refrain in the rushing of nearby Nugget Creek.

Stopping to photograph the glacier on the way down I find myself standing on a large pile of spruce needles, a sign of insect damage that we didn’t see before the current series of warm winters. The glacier also reflects the warming trend, having retreated quite a ways from where it stood when my child sang it her song of friendship.

We find one more echo of childhood down the trail when the sound of children playing  sends Aki scurrying to my feet. I expect two kids to plummet past us on bicycles. When they don’t, I listen again and realize that we are hearing the sound of bear cubs playing. Fortunately they are behind us so we press on to the car.