Aki looks worried as we move off shore. We are canoeing on Mendenhall Lake. Rain stops as we approached the glacier. The sun, breaking through a sucker hole about a hand’s width above the Mt. McGinnis shoulder, sends shafts of light on Mendenhall Lake and its new ice bergs. We have never seen so much ice on the lake. Using a canoe we weave thorough the bergs to get near enough to the glacier to see the new scars left by calving ice bergs. Each is a electric blue bruise with the darkest shades showing where deep cracks enter the glacier’s face.

The sound of arctic terns is constant. Some of the ice bergs we pass have a single  tern scout on them but most of the flock fly air cover over the wide sand islands where they nest.  One tern hovers a few feet over us making clicking sounds rather than their usual scary screech.

With no wind, our mottled gray sky mirrors on the lake water except where covered with floating ice. Without first seeing him, we surprise an adult merganser, forcing he and his family off their berg home. Watching them paddle away leaves a guilty pleasure.

Later, we float without paddling up a stream blocked by a beaver dam. Again we disturb someone — this time a black bear on the other side of the pond who ambles calmly up a grass green slope until screened by spruce trees.

They sit on a log staring at the river. He wears a bright yellow pullover that gives lie to the look of great sadness on his face.  Her more subdued outfit better matches their mood. On this overcast day why do they  concentrate on the river muddied with Herbert Glacier silt when they could admire the snow covered Chilkat Mountains across Favorite Channel?  Perhaps they have accepted existentialism as their faith and expect the river and the outgoing tide to carry away their sadness.

Aki starts to break toward them but stops when I turn and move deeper into the tidal meadow. We take this trail often and find it different each time. Today in the meadow, blue and the rarer white lupine flowers have reached their peak. Some are already forming seeds. Fire weed shoots are starting to muscle out a space for their magenta blossoms. In the woods, low growing sorrel cover open spaces with their simple white flowers, aided by orchid spikes and the blossoms of famine berries.

From the meadow, with the tide out we see great expanses of exposed sand bars and fine clouds of glacier silt curling like fog over the river bank to settle on meadow grass.  I turn back to the couple on their seat of sadness just as a tendril of silty fog blows over them.

Each try for king salmon starts with a purchase of frozen herring, label blue. A bad choice could render meaningless hours of trolling for fish. Staring into the bait freezer I start to dig through the blues looking for the best bait. Without a king salmon to advise me it is really a matter of guess work so I drop all pretense of knowledge and grab two packs, pick out some solid tied hooks and check out.

After loading and unmooring the boat we motor out into Favorite Passage, thankful that the predicted wind storm went some where else. I think of Aki and the look she gave me as I left, rod and lunch in hand, without her. She, with a dog’s famously short memory, will welcome me home this afternoon. Besides, she wouldn’t like the whacking sound the boat makes hitting wave tops and wakes or the crash of gear when we cross the particularly nasty wake of a deep hulled man hauler.

The day is gray with a complex intersection of clouds reflected in a salt water sea  colored with glacier silt. We welcome these days even with their promise of rain. Years of life in a rain forest have shown us how to find beauty in overcast. Perhaps this makes us like the English, able to admire Turner for his ability to find true beauty in the gray variation of each cloud and the way each wins a place for reflection in the sea.

After putting out our lines we listen  to a love song sung in French by a beautiful woman on the radio.  Aki might like this but she is not here. Neither are the fish. We fish hard for hours without luck, trolling the edge of shoals of herring made nervous by charging chum salmon that occasionally leap into air while pursuing their prey.

In the afternoon we listen to the Dodger game, saddened when their bull pen blows another one.  The tide pushes a field of weed and debris across our path, which tangles in our gear.  Abandoning these traditional king salmon grounds we motor over to Portland Island and troll alone along its west side. Here we watch a flock of terns form changeable clouds over a rocky spit, flying over a furtive mink, stalking heron, and oyster catchers, jet black with screaming orange beaks. The Captain hooks a large dog salmon which we carefully release without lifting it from the water. It is a powerful and large male already showing his spawning stripes who seems to demand an apology for the inconvenience visited upon him.  “Go,” I tell him silently, “and tell the king salmon that we treated you well.”

This morning’s good weather drew me out to the side yard for guitar practice where a cloud of song sparrows were waiting to jam.  These guys are Bach fans.  Halfway through Sleepers Awake the bird song vanished, replaced by the sound of a plastic garbage bag being dragged by a bear down Chicken Ridge.

The black bear dragged its trashy breakfast to within a few feet from me then turned to settle into a spot across the street to eat.

Living on the edge of true wilderness we practice good garbage practices to avoid creating trash addicted bears. The neighborhood failed this one. We also failed its cub which was waiting for mom to bring her someone’s cast away food.

Tiny lilac colored violets line this trail. Each turns it face downward as if afraid of the rain. Carefully lifting one flower to face me, I see the delicate beauty we expect from Alaska wildflowers. “Look up and show off for soon you will be making seeds while insects use your leaves for folder.”

Aki doesn’t care about these shy maidens. She is here to harvest the rich smells of this forest and the creek draining it.

In a few weeks salmon will battle for space on the spawning redds. Bears, eagles and ravens will follow to fatten on fish flesh and eggs. If I return then it will be with a fly rod, not Aki. Today’s hike is about the forest and its plants — a feast of subtle colors and shapes with the running river sound for accompaniment. Simple  things draw my eye like these rain drops standing up on the leaves of a wild cucumber. I measure the berry and current crops and plan a return trip in late summer for harvest. So rich in food this place of simple greens and browns that make a star of even the shy violet.