It’s 4:30 A.M. Aki is asleep in her kennel thirty miles away. I wonder what this hoary marmot would make of her. The oversized Guinea pig seems more interested in me than frightened. We sit on opposite sides of a narrow spit. I’m watching early morning sunlight clarifying Shelter Island. Minutes ago, while I spied on two harbor seals as they stalked a common merganser, the island was a dark mass interfering with my view of the Chilkat Mountains. Now every one of its trees has a distinct shape.

          This would be the quietest time of day. It might be if not for the crows. To protect their nests, a patrol of them are diving on a roosted eagle. They squawk and the interloper screams. They do this over and over again.

          If I was this close to a marmot in the high mountains it would pierce the air with a warning whistle.  She must have has grown used to the presence of people. Besides, her young are asleep and safe in their rock pile of a nest. Marmot doesn’t sound the alarm even when an eagle flies towards us on a low trajectory. She just dives into her nest, leaving me to watch the big bird return to its roost.

            In a few hours, after the sun has cleared the ridge behind me, It will be warm enough to doddle and dream on the spit. But its just ten degrees above freezing now. I try to tough it out in hopes of seeing the orcas. Yesterday, while I drank my first coffee of the day, a small pod swam past. A cow and calf surfaced not far from where the merganser just scooted away from a seal.

           I’d settle for a humpback whale, even one reduced by distance to a plume of exhaled spray. But nothing breaks blue’s monopoly on Favorite Passage. Time for another coffee.