Aki and I are at cross-purposes. She works hard to keep her pack (she and I) together with another—two ladies and three Aki-sized dogs. I look for solitude.   The little dog’s loyalty defeats her as the gap grows between the gang of five and I. They are one molecule and I am the proton of another. Aki acts like an electron bouncing between the two. But, our bond is strongest so she constricts her orbit around me as I stop to photograph the glow of backlit skunk cabbage.