My last post described the minor adventure Aki and her human family had walking toward the glacier. When not checking out deposited dog scents or playing tag with a Jack Russell terrier, she guarded and tried to guide her people. She stayed on station even as rain soaked her fur. Today, I want to explain why I found the wet and gray landscape beautiful enough to enjoy the walk even if the dog stayed home, warm and dry.

            City, farm or dessert people should be blown away, like an old rain forester, by yesterday’s pure-white clouds as they slow danced across the face of a mountainside of Sitka spruce? They would have enjoyed looking at our snake of blue glacier ice slip between mountains to touch the lake? I know they would miss the appearance of full sun against winter-blue sky. I do. But they’d appreciate the more subtle beauties? 

            I am saddened by how the string of warm, wet days have reopened the glacier’s lake by melting away covering ice. It also melted almost all the snow that just last week decorated the glacial forest. But now all eyes will be drawn to the parts of the lake now reflecting mountain peaks and the glacier’s blue-green river of ice.