It’s raining again on Chicken Ridge. It wasn’t this morning when Aki and I walked the old mining road up the Gold Creek Valley. The waterfalls coming off Mts. Juneau and Roberts struggled to carry last night’s storm load down to Gold Creek, itself swollen almost to flood stage. We passed a couple of prospectors searching the stream edges for gold flakes that might have been dislodged by the high water. Above, the now nude cottonwood boughs looked tormented or like the limbs of witches twisted by challenging evil. Little dog, is it time to head south for a little sun?