Tonight Aki and I are prisoners on early release, walking through the woods to the beach. The wet grey blanket covering town all week brought a peaceful confinement. We tried breaking out last night with a muddy walk through the rain but needed this sun soaked evening to lift us out of our funk.

Blue berry brush lines the trail. Yesterday it glistened in a uniform coat left by the storm. Tonight rainwater coalesces in opal shaped jewels that glow in the low evening light. Without expecting it, I stumble on a bejewelled red huckleberry bush and wonder how long it has been since I tasted its tart fruit.  Only one berry still hangs beneath its lattice of small yellow-green leaves. I should leave the plump red miracle for the passing bear but pluck then eat it in one moment like an escapee on the run.

What are these water bugs doing in this muskeg pond and why haven’t I ever noticed them before. There must be too much grandeur in this high mountain meadow; too many stars to draw away attention. Aki still ignores them.

Watching now, I wonder how they disturb the pond surface by scurrying off without destroying the water tension that keeps them afloat. They don’t move far, just a few feet toward pond center as if they know their limits?

I’ve thought of many things as this trail lead me from meadow to meadow to forest and this pond: the battle between grass and muskeg made possible by man’s disturbing presence; how the thick loads of maturing spruce cones have assumed the color of dead needles; whether this abundance is produced by heathy trees or dying ones throwing their last strength into one last toss of the evolutionary dice; how beautiful the blue berries look when flooded in morning light. It’s easier to deal with the water bugs, the apparent masters of their three square meters of universe.

Later in the day I fish for salmon in Favorite Passage. We troll for two hours and catch one cod fish but no salmon. Then a pod of Dall Porpoise surround our boat, each black and white muscular bullet half flying out of the water. They don’t break the surface, merely rise and don a inch thick coat of water before submerging to continue the hunt. While they surround us a silver takes the Captian’s herring and we land a fine male silver salmon. The porpoise lasts long enough for us to boat another silver before returning to the dock.

Gasteneau Channel is almost flooded by tide on our way home. Only a long slip strip of one island remains, covered with several thousand perfectly white gulls shinning in late afternoon sun. In seconds the birds forms a quick moving cloud as their sanctuary disappears.

A forest of flowers crowds around the last house on Basin Road. It’s the one you pass just before the wooden trestle bridge. I welcome this offering of random color today with the clouds hanging so low into Gold Creek Valley that I could climb into them on the Perseverance Trail.

I’m alone today for Aki hikes with another dog out by the glacier. It’s a chance to discover whether she keeps the animals away on our walks. Yellow monkey flowers line this trail to the clouds. They take shelter from the rain beneath leaves, attached to their mother plant by a thin fiber. I’d expect a strong breeze could knock them to the ground but they thrive in this wind tunnel of a mountain valley.

Leaving the main trail I move into a thick forest where we often see sign of deer and bear. A squirrel passes silently in front of me then I am alone with the sound of Gold Creek the only thing breaking the silence.  No chittering, eagle complaints, or song bird melodies sound above the stream— a moist but silent dessert of sound. Maybe  all the birds are out by the glacier, hanging with Aki.

In Juneau Autumn wrestles with Summer for each August day. Summer is winning this morning, replacing yesterday’s rain and wind with sun. The gentle weather opens up convergence points. First we find a tumble of giant spruce snapped off or toppled by fall time storms. Nothing goes to waste here. Seedlings of future forests grow crowded together on the fallen trunks.

We move to an island of green light surrounded by thick forest. From deep in the woods this meadow promises a way home for the lost or at least a place to see distance.  From it edge this wet land offers little but a field of lighter greens caped by blue sky.

Further on we reach the beach where the ebbing tide offers a chance to stand almost surrounded by the sea and listen with closed eyes to the sounds of hunter, prey, and opportunists. On this place hearing produces more understanding than seeing. Spawn ripe salmon leap and slam into each other. Eagles and Ravens fight for position as one large black bird that flies over our heads, an improbably orange object in his beak. When he flies all I hear are wing beats.

Back in the forest we stop on last time by a small stream cascading over down wood. I listen. Aki drinks of the muskeg brown water while sun light turns a simple green water plant into beauty.

We walk on this old friend of a trail finding reassurance. It’s in the backlit moss on every tree. It’s in this clump of low bush blueberry brush still heavy with last night’s rain and glistening in morning light. I search for berries as Aki sips water off the leaves.

Later we pass a forest recently burned and find promise in new growth forming on a nearly destroyed alder.  Here there’s beauty in cottonwood leaves dried to tinder in the fire and then soaked by last weeks storms. This morning each curled leaf is an apricot colored sculpture.

Oddly, I find the most reassurance  in a bear track overlapping my boot print. We had been working our way along a series of  ponds formed by beaver dams. The last pond flooded out the trail so we had to turn back. Minutes later I find a ripe Nagoon berry dropped like an offering on the trail.  In mud just beyond a fresh bear print covers one of mine.

Did the bear leave the berry as a treat or did it drop from his slavering jaws while he retreated from the berry path? Either way it tastes sweet.

The neutral patter of rain on blueberry brush provides the back ground for the richer plops made on spreading Devil’s Club leaves and baritone solos on thick curving Skunk Cabbage. Rain on the tall beach grass makes no sound but loads the tall plants with moisture that they share with passing hikers, soaking their jeans.

I am able to hear this music because man once forced this trail through the  grass and woods, reinforcing his claim by laying down a board walk that even now rots and yields space to aggressive understory plants. In one or two seasons, nature could take it back, like it has the old river trail we tried to follow yesterday. Man scars and nature heals, given time and enough rain.

On this rare hot day we dive into the rain forest for relief and find the old river trail blocked by Devil’s Club.  Beyond this thorny yellow green wall a bird sounds a continuous alarm which I can’t resist. Hoping that my jeans and heavy logger shirt will provide enough protection I move down the path, brushing past a gauntlet of Devil’s Club brush, each a  spreading collection of large seregated leaves outlined with thorns. Some sting my hand like mosquito bites. Aki takes the low path passing beneath the pain.

The bird chirps on after we reach the river but I can’t see it. I do see a suddenly wide path through the lush growth of summer — the animal’s secret garden. Tall soft ferns line this path. We follow it back to another devil’s club tangle and then to the main trail. Shafts of sunlight now fall like javelin points through the forest canopy. Many illuminate spreading devil’s club plants turning translucent the normally opaque yellow green leaves. My shirt smells of the leaves we brushed through, a smell of high summer.

The First People of Southeast Alaska use devil’s club tea to ease the pain of chronic illness, stripping bark off its thorny skin and then soaking it in water on a sunny day like a Southerner would brew ice tea. I have a tin of Devil’s Club salve that helps wounds to heal. The plant gives and takes away pain.

Aki’s usual forest water holes have dried up so we head for the meadow where the gentle river bank will allow her a chance to drink. She noses into the water, front legs submerged but pulls back startled by seal lions as they slam their flippers on the river’s surface to drive newly arrived chum salmon toward their hungry hunting partners. As if figuring it out, Aki ignores their antics and drinks deeply from the glacier water.

Later we return to the forest, this time to harvest tasty Nagoon berries that grow on low plants. Each is a tiny universe of deep red globes offering the untamed taste of an Alaskan summer.