Across the channel from Treadwell, the marine layer cuts off the ridge line of the mainland mountains with a border between green and gray that couldn’t be drawn without a ruler. Between it and the equally straight Thane Road, a rain charged creek deepens its crooked channels in the Mt. Roberts’ avalanche chute. The straight line takes me aback. Nature favors curves and rarely tolerates a hard edge. Look at Aki, the little poodle-mix peeing on a scattering of curvy cottonwood leaves. Her form could be reproduced with ovoids and “o’s.”

The men and woman that replaced the Douglas Island old growth forest with a turn of the 20th century gold processing town were all about the straight line. The walls and floors of of their now windowless buildings are still square. But as the alder and cottonwood trees undulate the old town’s open spaces with their roots, shrubs, grasses, mosses, and even hemlock trees eat away at the town’s flat roots. They have reached the tipping point. Even now formerly sharp building edges are curved. An iron water pipe still cuts a straight line over an alder filled gap but I can see corrosive wounds on it’s underbelly.