Needing to have the afternoon free so I can prepare for writing school, I leave the house early this morning. Aki has had her cheese so she doesn’t mind the pre-sunrise departure. We stop at the whale sculpture to watch the sun crack the darkness over Gastineau Channel. Our presence encourages a raft of mallards to slip into the cold water. They work their way over to a patch of water colored yellow by the sunrise. After relieving herself, Aki is ready to go. But she doesn’t complain when I linger to watch the ducks. 

In a dusk-like gloam we drive out to North Douglas Island where it is calm and 15 degrees F. Last night’s wind knocked the frost from the trees in Downtown Juneau. But frost feathers that still cling to the roadside brush near the trailhead. 

I have to carry the little dog over portions of the trail flooded by the water pouring over the tops of the beaver dams. It’s too cold for wet paws. The sun has reached a dead spruce in the middle of the pond. It draws my eye like a Las Vegas marquee.  Whether suffering from the indignity of being carried, or just uncomfortable with cold, Aki refuses to follow me on the trail to the beach. I press on, knowing that she will soon end her strike. She does, flying by me to take the lead. 

We are too early to see the sun light up the beach. But it does illuminate the mountains above the icefield. It also warms some offshore rocks and the gulls resting on them. Two golden eye ducks, lit by the same streak of sunlight, splash down near the rocks. It is so cold that I expect them to paddle over to the gulls’ rocks. But they are content to bob up and down in the surf. I, hands cold from handling the camera, body chilled in spite of multiple layers of clothing, feel very much the winter outsider.