We are enjoying the confluence of raindrops and sunshine that can form between storms. The twenty-four hours of rain just ended glistened the new understory growth and hung fat drops on the tips of blueberry leafs. Even though this is a weekend morning, no one else is using the Rain Forest trail. Aki doesn’t sulk. There are enough left over smells to keep her occupied as we drop through the old growth forest to the beach.

Other than the pale pink blueberry blooms, only the butter-yellow skunk cabbage flowers challenge the forest’s green monopoly. Shafts of sunlight spot light both kinds of flowers and shine through leaves and lattices of old man beard lichen. The air is full of the songs of working birds but the vared thrush’s shrill whistles and the jack-hammer sound of woodpeckers make it hard to hear the sweeter tunes.

Sun shafts bring out streaks of intense color on the beach after we leave the forest. A great blue heron grooms itself on an exposed rock at the water’s edge. When it stops to face Lynn Canal, it looks like a messy-haired preacher about to deliver a Sunday sermon to the congregation of gulls and ducks that has formed in the nearby waters.