Aki can’t see geese clustered on a shrinking sandbar. I spot them as the 12:57 jet from Seattle enters final approach to Juneau. It carries kids returning home from colleges in the Lower 48. (That’s how we refer to mainland America.) Few of our students attend the small college in Juneau so almost all will disembark through the airport this month.  Soon it will fill several times a day with parents, relatives, and friends of the returnees. Like these sandbar geese, they will huddle together cackling, watching, and showing affection.

The geese disburse as a flood tide covers the bar, swimming away in different directions to make their living, Now I’m thinking, with a little sadness, of January, when the human tide of college kids will ebb south.