The light seems richer in places like this, where an old growth forest touches a beach. Even on a flat, gray day, shafts of sea light muscle through the tangled canopy to light up wet leaves. Some of the light reaches red-colored elderberries, making them almost painfully bright.

            When the forest trail ends, we drop down onto the beach. An eagle flies overhead, swings towards Aki, and then swings away when I closed the distance between myself and the little dog. It’s the first wild thing we have seen on the walk. Even the gulls are elsewhere.

            Leaving the empty beach, we take a trail through thimble berry bushes to the Old Glacier Highway. After passing the old totem pole we drop back into the woods, sneak by a youth group eating pizza, and head for the car.

I find myself taking pictures of small beauties to have something to illustrate this post. Then the herons appear. Two land on the beach. One steps into the shallow water of the bay, freezing like a statute while tiny swells pass beneath its stomach.