We find the first part of the Indian Point Trail inhospitable — just a root and mud path moving through thick blue berry brush and wind hammered trees. Aki moves with delicate steps around the hazards while I slip from one slick tree root to the next, falling from sometimes into devil club thickets or bog holes. We break for the beach at the first opportunity where low tide has set a fair table for eagles, crows, and gulls.

At first I watch Aki to make sure she doesn’t roll in one of the ripening salmon carcasses lying in the tidal grass. When she passes them by I turn to watch a mature bald eagle lift off from the beach. The water behind her reflects two large domestic maples, one burning yellow and the other orange. I thank the person who planted them when Alaska was a territory and you needed a boat to reach his homestead. Back then, planting a maple was an act of faith that the fish would come, the deer make themselves available, or the A.J. Mine wouldn’t play out.

More eagles sun themselves on Indian Point. Watching us with exaggerated nonchalance, they let us get within 30 feet before lifting calmly in the air. Moving into their sun, I stand with eyes closed against the glare while Aki sniffs for sign at my feet. Nearby a volunteer Sitka Ash, having forced itself between alders and spruce, mimics the maples’ fall colors.

The rising tide has closed off the beach path so we turn into the woods. Here, it is said, his beloved buried a holy man. We see only an old growth forest and the return trail to the car. Just off it an odd shaped spruce grows alone in a small clearly. Squirrels have created a smooth and even mound beneath the tree with gnawed spruce cones. The tree rises straight for five feet where a goiter of severed limb stumps and burls has formed in the shape of a pregnant womb. Several trunks grow up from here to the forest canopy. Sunlight floods most of the forest surrounding the clearing but little reaches the tree. Turing our backs to this special tree we hear gulls complaining and the chat of eagles and enjoy a filtered view of the silverly sea.