
We find the rain forest trail between downpours. Only one car sits in the trailhead parking lot. In minutes Aki will find it’s occupants, a brace of identical chocolate colored malemutes—great brutes just barely controlled by their owner with stout ropes. After they pass we only share the forest with its occupants.
Perhaps it’s being between storms but Aki and I want to press on rather than stop to watch, maybe see something wonderful in this monopoly of green. While she pees, I do notice rain from the last downpour beading up on plump blueberry leaves; rain from earlier storms soaking into white eagle scat trapped in the leaves’ vein channels. With patience we might see rain wash the scat away, might see a branch above bend with the weight of an arriving eagle, hear the new occupant complain to God of our presence.
My red jacket, the color of wild columbine flowers, attracts a hovering hummingbird. I could patiently stand here while Aki whined and the red and orange blur might land on my shoulder then poke at the red cloth. I could camp out down at the beaver pond until a lodge occupant swam over to check me for weapons. I could squat on the beach, starring over the grey of sea until humpbacks, maybe two or three, broke the surface to breathe. I could simply be for while, taking in the empty beauty of forest, beach and a sea surface only broken by crab pot floats; smell the sweetness of beached seaweed and the sour assault of beach grass.
My mind and heart tell me to wait and watch, ignore the line of rain clouds moving down from Lena Point, block out the drumming of passing float places, curse the bass hum of a fish buyer’s tender moving slowly up Lynn Canal. When the rising tide dislodges a gang of gulls huddling on an off shore rock, their loud complaints push me back to the woods and up the trail as the first drops of rain spot beach rocks like holy water sprayed on a shirt freshly laundered for Easter. 