We spend today’s tiny allotment of sunshine at the Glacier. Tomorrow our rains return, possibly with enough strength to melt away winter’s beauty. A line of Juneauites stretches out toward a giant ice river. The little dog and her three humans join the line, feeling like theatre goers trying to catch a popular play before it closes. Some of us might be able to memorize a play’s plot, maybe even retain some of the actor’s lines. None of today’s visitors to the glacier will be able to recite the mountains’ crisp lines, the rich confusion of Nugget Falls, the dark blue of a patch of ancient ice set to collapse into ice bergs during next spring’s thaw, or the cloud dervishes that dance around the rising sun.

Winter is loosing its grip on Chicken Ridge. Spring doesn’t assault his position. It’s autumn, the stubborn dude, who, in an effort to roll back the clock, invited in a Central Pacific storm to Southeast Alaska. It took several days of warming to turn our snowy beauty to a slushy bother. Some snow still brightens the spruce and alders but much of the overburden has already fallen to the ground. I’d stay inside today if not for the little dog. She charges out of the house, drawn by the smells released in the snowmelt. We wander up Basin Road, cross the old wooden trestle bridge and plod up the old mine trail. I lead Aki onto an almost hidden trail that parallels Gold Creek. Sharp tracks of a small deer pock the path. Snow must have driven it down the mountain to the protection of the woods. “Hang in there little doe,” I say in Aki’s direction, “Only two more days until the end of hunting season.” The little dog ignores me as she sniffs the tracks.

Juneau looks as it should this time of year—a tourist town at rest. Aki, my daughter and I walk past the state capitol that will soon fill with legislators. But no one will open the Franklin Street tourist traps until the first Princess boat next May. Our boots make little noise punching into the snow that covers streets and sidewalks.

At first, it’s too cold for the snow to adhere to the little poodle-mix so she walks unencumbered by snowballs. This changes when we reach to the Steamship Dock and watch a cormorant float down onto Gastineau Channel. It joins six others that already bob on the water. I think they are loons because loons show are common here in winter. But each of these birds has a cormorant’s pencil thin beak.

Snow starts to cling to Aki’s fur, not through some mystical power of the cormorants, but because it is warmer here near the ocean than up on Chicken Ridge. Falling snow blurs the outline of the birds and obscures our view of Mt. Juneau. Ravens glide across the downtown streets to catch an uplifting wind or chase others off their territory. They act like football fans in need of exercise after hours in front of a TV. Maybe they just left the Viking Bar after the end of the Arsenal game.

I should take a picture of Aki, who looks pretty cute in her Christmas-red sweater. Instead, I am drawn to the new ice formed last night on the beaver pond and the frost/snow mixture that brightens the bare alder limbs. A layer of snow clouds with a table-flat top and bottom, as if being squeezed by invisible presses, pulls my camera lens away from the little dog and my daughter, whose boots crunch on snow-covered beach gravel.

         Mallard ducks search for food, apparently unaware of us or that it is Christmas Day. I should tell them, because it is Christmas, thank you for spicing up winter gray with their party-colored feathered coat. Because it is Christmas, I should thank God for His gifts of nature and Love.

The best symbol of Christmas in Juneau may be this stunted spruce. It survives on the top of a boulder dropped by the retreating glacier in the middle of Gold Creek. To live, the little tree forced its root into the boulder cracks. Today, with new snow flocking its green boughs, it is a combination of the beauty and hopeful earnestness of the season.

Leaden skies that could have posed for one of Mr. Turner’s seascapes hang over the moraine. The clouds brighten above Thunder Mountain and diffused light injects the clouds with pastel pinks and yellows. Sunlight breaks through and hits the glacier and the slopes of Mt. McGinnis, making them, for a moment, bright white. Minutes later the gray monopoly returns.

Aki ignores the sky drama. She is too busy charging up and down the trail. The dog does love snow.

Rain followed the last snowstorm but there is enough white stuff on the meadow to require snowshoes for transit. Aki trots along in the track of a cross-country ski as I break trail on wet snow, motivated by views, more than a destination. She stops from time to make sure I haven’t lost my mind. Someone finding my tracks later might assume that I had tried to find my way off the meadow during the dark of last night. I am being a little irresponsible, taking a chance that my tracks could lead someone away from the trail home. But they could follow the ski tracks, which lead back to the trailhead.