The rain doesn’t bother Aki.  I’m not surprised because it falls like a gentle cloth onto the wild flowers of Kowee Meadows. Remembering past sunny days on the meadow, I do wish for a shaft of sunlight to break through the marine layer. But that might wash out the purples of the iris and the magenta color of the river of shooting stars we skirt.

We continue walking over the meadow and then drop down onto a gravel beach where iris and the purple flowers of beach peas color the bordering grass. While we eat lunch a doe deer approaches. It stops when thirty meters off, gives us a hard look, and continues in our direction. Could it be curious or is it just foolish with trust.

I grab Aki and hold her in my lap as the deer approaches. When it reaches the ten-meter line that marks the border of my little dog’s comfort zone, Aki growls. The deer slowly walks into grass and disappears.

We won’t see another deer but will hear the warning scream of marmots and step carefully over countless piles of bear scat. The scat and holes in the meadow dug by foraging bears will keep us aware that we are in a wild, maybe dangerous place and not a tame flower garden.