The wind blowing off the glacier has a familiar bite, as familiar as the feel of these boots moving through soft wet snow, as comfortable as this trail bisecting a young willow thicket. I could be in Bethel on the trail to Steamboat Slough. It would have to be Spring there because of the warm temperature and I would be pumping along behind a small team of sled dogs, not following a poodle mix in a red coat. Somehow the memories power through all the differences between then and now and I ignore the negative of this place, pushing aside the beep beep beep of machines clearing the runway and the dominating noise of the Coast Guard rescue helicopter landing in a snow storm.

If I could I would dial back my color receptors until all becomes gray, black and white and fall into the richness of a black and white movie made just before Technicolor.  This stormy day is  about values, not colors, and the push and pull of snow pasted on dark tree bark by a persistent wind.

Aki, for whom everything is black and white, cringes when the wind lifts her ears so I take a shortcut back to the car and drive over to the old Thlinght village site. There we walk in the lee of old growth spruce and listen to waves on the beach. Once I follow Aki through the trees, and across a foot thick blanket of snow to the beach. Here again is a time to dial back the color and concentrate of the stark lines between sea, gravel beach and snow that converge together in my mind where the point pushes out to sea.