I found little silence in California, even on early morning bike rides. Cars and trucks could always be hear over sea lion barks, gull shrieks, and the more soothing mutter made by waves collapsing on Monterey Bay beaches. But it is a place where the stars of nature seem to have negotiated peace with the tourist trade. We biked out 17 Mile Drive along the edge of a famous golf course to Bird Rock. After maneuvering around tourist buses decorated with kanji and slim Asian women trying to capture airborne pelicans in their selfies, we stopped to watch the animals and birds crowd onto the offshore rock. For two quarters we used a high-powered telescope to spy on jostling sea lions and cormorants drying their wings. In closer kelp beds sea otters floated on their backs. Before returning our rental bikes, we watched harbor seals in Monterey Harbor relax, motionless on rocks like plump politicians in steam bath.

During a Seattle flight delay on return to the rain forest, we walked through the Chihuly Glass in the Garden exhibit at Seattle Center. I enjoyed the manufactured beauty— glass shaped into pleasing shapes with colors only found on tropical fish. The music of a street musician’s flute mixed with the spring smell of hyacinth bloom. Bird sound couldn’t be heard. The last wild flower had been rooted out by the gardener.

After surviving heavy turbulence on the descent into Ketchikan, Flight 69 bounced me into Juneau last night. This morning, Aki and I wander the meadows around a favorite salt chuck. While Aki springs through the thin snow cover I spot four river otters hauled up on slough ice. Since she has bad eyesight and we are downwind of the otters, the little dog will never know they were there. I have no problem leading her into the forest were we make a wide detour around them.

After, we walk through clouds of small birds (chickadees, wrens, red poles, kinglets) all singing their work songs. Other than flying from the ground we occupy, the birds give little reaction to our presence. Do we, the otters, birds, dog, and I, live under the sort of armistice reached by animal and man in California? I just know that today we tolerate each other. Aki acted out of ignorance with the otters, but the others, like the people and animals in California have knowledge.