I am on the dike that protects Lewiston, Idaho from the Clearwater River. Aki would like the sunshine and cool, early morning temperature. She would be intrigued by the marmot that just ran across the bike path. If my little dog were here the marmot have slipped under a rock for protection. Instead the long-tailed rodent is only 7 meters away, enjoying the prairie light.

I’m enjoying the light too. Yesterday heavy rain washed the sky clean. No pollution softens the crisp sunshine or deadens the intense blue sky. It’s as if the marmot and I have been transported back to the time when Lewis and Clark were rescued by the Nez Pierce people: before the car, and grain trucks, and pulp mills.

It’s early morning. Rain spots the windows of a railcar hauling forty writers toward the glacier trailhead. Some of the writers are published. Two are well established. All of us are talking loud enough to be heard over the creaks and grumbles of the White Pass Yukon train car. If each writer were making this trip solo, we would be quiet observers. We’d pay attention to the amplified, chipper voice that calls our attention to the U.S. Custom’s station on the Alaska border and then a great view of Skagway Harbor.

After the trail groans to a stop at Mile 14 we leave our warm, noisy car and watch the other train passengers—who all slept last night on a cruise ship—watch us. We pull on rain gear and start the mile and a half hike to the glacier cabin. The sounds made by a glacier-fed river dominates the walk. We pass a spruce tree scarred by the claws of stretching black bears. I can’t resist placing four fingers into one set of claw marks. Nearby beads of rain water weigh down the leaves of lupines.

After the cabin two friends and I move on toward the glacier on a trail over moraine. Not enough time has passed since the retreating glacier exposed it for a proper forest to form here. In a half-mile the stubby alder and popular woods end. We see, for the first time, the glacier and U-shaped valley of rocky rubble dropped in place by melting ice. Walls of moraine rise a half-mile on both sides of us. In sad realization, I understood just how deep the remnant glacier was just a few hundred years ago.

I should be heading back to Skagway. Another day of writing school will start soon and I haven’t had breakfast. I’d be back on the trail if not for the duck.

He and I have a little pocket cove to ourselves now that the eagle and tern have left. The duck keeps repeating a puzzling routine: roll headfirst into the water, pop up a minute later, check behind for predators by doing a 180 degree turn, return to his course.

The eagle is back and the duck just slipped away, trying to keep a rocky point between he and the eagle. Time too for me to go. Soon the helicopters and the other engines of industrial tourism will be firing up.

Aki is home, probably tucked in and cozy. I am standing on a glaciated point with rocks scraped smooth centuries ago by a retreating river of ice.

The glacier left behind deep fjords and peaks that stick up from their mountains like busted teeth. All the products of time and glacial ice.

Aki and I made it to the Fish Creek Delta early enough to catch the clarifying effect of early light. But this morning broke hazy. The air it offers is obscured by forest fire smoke or pollution carried here by the jet stream. It feels like end times rather than a fresh summer morning. 

            Robin, sparrow, and the other songbirds work hard to lift the mood. It could be worse. We could have to suffer the complaints of the nesting crows. Near the pond an eagle roosts in the top of a spruce, it’s head turned away from the sun. 

            The little dog and I press on, my spirited lifted by the strong display of wildflowers on the spit that separates the creek from Fritz Cove. Purple lupine stalks dominate but must still compete with older swatches of magenta shooting stars and yellow buttercups. A single chocolate lily opens In the middle of the established flowers. 

            A single kayaker slides into Fish Creek just as we reach the creek’s mouth. Normally, I would grumble to Aki that the man’s presence has driven away shorebirds and ducks. He couldn’t have this morning. We haven’t seen any waterfowl. Besides, the present of another human is proof that the apocalypse didn’t arrive while we were rounding Fish Creek Pond.