Aki and I are out the road from Juneau berry picking. The little dog’s other human and I work diligently to fill the half-gallon soy sauce containers that now serve as our berry buckets. Aki dashes between her humans with an orange Frisbee in her mouth. When she drops the disc at my feet, I’m expected to immediately send it flying for her to chase.

Metaphors fill my mind in between Frisbee tosses. This happens often when picking blue berries. Today mine are ornate and a little strange. When an immature bald eagle rises slowly from the beach, disheveled looking in his spotted brown coat, I see a university don with a publication history that protects him from grooming criticisms, lift himself painfully from his chair. We pass several pickers on their knees to gather low growing nagoon berries and I imagine crones searching the threshing floor for forgotten grain that just may see their families through the winter. Near the tide line five or six mature eagles hunker over a salmon carcass. Another stands erect 30 feet away. They turn into a gang of dope smoking teenagers about to rousted by the law.