Even when living in California I preferred a winter beach to one crowded in summer. An empty beach is the best place to calm jangled nerves or indulge a funk. Even one in a mellow mood can appreciate the offered solitude. So, on this gray Sunday morning with rain in the forecast, I head out with Aki to a crescent of gravel near the old Auk Village site.

We drop down steep stairs to a trail that winds through a forest of alders and old growth spruce trees. I can see, through gaps in the trees, that the beach is empty but keep to the forest trail. The large spruce offer the kind of comfort that can only be provided by living things that have withstood storms for over two hundred years.

The beach is still empty when we leave the woods. We have it to ourselves for ten minutes. Then, a family of toddlers and water dogs crash out of the trees barking and giggling and sending a roosting eagle to flight. Another eagle screams when the startled one tries to land in its tree. Soon both are in the air, struggling to master strong gusts of a storm front. We will all be wet soon, the birds, dogs, and toddlers.

It’s early morning on the Treadwell ruins. Aki and I head over to the Glory Hole to check out the kingfishers. The forecasted heavy rain has yet to appear but clouds hang low over the channel. Eagles and gulls mew from the beach but we can’t see anything through the thick hardwood forest that has taken over the ruins.

Red “Xs” mark a dozen of the alder and cottonwoods that grow close to the old power plant building. While Aki sniffs for sign, I read a sign affixed to the largest of the marked trees. It lets the reader know that all the marked trees will soon be cut down to protect the ruin. “How odd,” I think that the city officials feel the need to notify people of the logging project. How strange, that they want to cut down the things that make this peaceful place even during a storm.

On the beach, I spot one of the kingfishers apparently asleep on a jagged-topped piling. The flooding tide has created a moot of channel water around him. The bird lets me reach the edge of its moat before flying off. I take as many pictures of it as I can before it flies off. A minute later the bird settles in another piling several hundred meters off away. I feel a little guilty for disturbing its sleep.

Down the beach, on top of the old mine’s ventilation shaft, a bald eagle squats. A surrounding murder of crows imprisons the eagle. Something startles the crows into the air after another eagle takes a roost on a nearby snag.

We arrive at the false outer point trail before the mist burns off and the tourist guide buses. It’s not too early for the Stellar jay who squats near the trail, ready to curse our passing. Aki feints a charge at the bird and it flies up to low branch. Both probably consider theirs a job done well.

I lead Aki out of the woods and onto a rough beach trail, surprised at the how much algae now grows on the rocks. The green stuff seems to be creeping north as our climate warms. It makes the rocks too slick for walking so I have to find a work-around in the rockweed. A bald eagle that had been waiting on the beach for the tide to ebb flies off and lands on a stranded glacier erratic a hundred yards away. Its flight temporarily sends a gang of gulls airborne but they are on the beach seconds after the eagle lands. The big bird might make the gulls nervous, but not enough to abandon a chance to chow down on the critters soon to be exposed by the retreating tide.

As the crow squawks curses at the little dog, I wonder whether the designs made by snail slime on False Outer Point rocks is a communication from God. Aki gives no push back to the idea so I turn it over in mind like this noisy crow might play with a mussel shell after his chicks fledge. After all, the snail tracks do loop like cursive written by a steady hand. Our God of miracles is fully capable of the attempt. But do we have the smarts to translate?

The crows dominate the high ground on our walk except for the last little headland we have to round to reach the Rainforest Trail. There, a stuffy looking bald eagle roosts higher than a crow, which appears to skulk in the lower branches of a hemlock. Below, years worth of eagle’s scat have fertilized Bluebells of Scotland and Columbine plants. The flowers of both give some color to this gray day.