I didn’t expect beauty on this dull grey day. We walk through an older section of moraine forest. The glacier retreated from it 100 years ago. Since then a series of plant pioneers filled the open gravely space. First came the alders and willows, God’s Band-Aids. Slower growing majesties like the Sitka Spruce eventually forced them out after enough shed willow and alder leaves had built up a soil like medium for growth. Man threw nature a monkey wrench by mining the area for gravel. They left behind shallow lakes that attracted beavers and scared land for more willows and alders to grow. Now we have a wonderful mix of lakes, hardwood plains, and moss covered spruce forests.

Back to unexpected beauty. It shows mostly in reflections — some in the lakes and others in the parts of trails flooded by beavers. My favorite reflections may be those in tense rain spheres holding on the tops of spreading ferns.

The area borders a bedroom neighborhood and Aki soon has many opportunities to make new dog friends. A brace of basset hounds and a husky mix answer her barking call and charge down the trail to us. Aki ducks behind me but is soon chasing about with the bigger dogs. If they get too rough she is back between my legs. One of the basset hounds plants his front paws on my chest and smiles like a used car salesman.

Hoping for a little more solitude I lead us away from the main trail and onto a barely used one that follows the undulates of a rise of gravel that snakes through the forest between two beaver ponds. It’s quiet enough for me to think of the morning bike ride in the rain. Even though I took a road that runs along Gasteneau Channel for miles, the ride was for exercise, not beauty. Then I saw the Orcas (Killer Whales).

Five or six whales formed a pod moving up channel toward town. They must be hunting the king salmon now returning to the hatchery. By rubbing my glasses free of rain I just make them out. A mature male, with a massive dorsal fin was the easiest to follow as he rolled to the surface, exhaled and then immediately dipped below the water. Soon I saw the others, their dorsal fins moving up out the water and then down like so many saw blade teeth. Earlier in the ride someone told me about the whales. I figured that I had ridden right by them on the way out of town and wouldn’t see them on my return trip. Did it matter? The amazement should come from the whales’ presence in my home waters. It should be enough to know that they are there but it is not. I found that out when I saw them. That’s when you get the connection, the affirmation that they are swimming in local waters and breathing the same air as you.