Instead of the promised rain, Aki and I have unfettered sun. Feeling a little like Obi Wan Kenobi from Star Wars, I am wearing a heavy sweatshirt with hood pulled up so it covered my ears and neck. Yet I still feel comfortable. Another Jedi mind trick. We are climbing a gravel road that transverses a small mountain bowl. When the road crests we have fine views of Ben Stewart and other mountains in the Douglas Island ridge.

Aki is panting in the heat, looking for a water source. She finds it in a small, fast moving stream. Willows choke the stream banks except where a small gravel beach has formed. Aki wandering into the creek chest-deep and sips from the stream.