My choice of direction at the start of today’s hike confuses Aki. She knows this trail well and probably has favorite pee sites identified. When I turn right rather than left on it she gives me her, “are you crazy” look and watches me disappear around the first corner. In seconds she’s by my side, having made the necessary adjustments to her expectations.Together we follow Eagle River on its last mile to the sea.

The trail takes us through a forest dominated by moss encrusted cottonwood trees with furrowed trunk that run over a 30 meters to the canopy. Their yellowing tear drop shaped leaves decorate this gravel trail, the berry brush and wide devil’s club leaves that make up the bulk of the understory garden.  Everything in this forest that can is heading toward the false death of autumn— a death that releases a red and yellow beauty.

We are minutes away from an informal trail to a wide gravel bar exposed now at low tide. Aki breaks ahead, bearing to the left of a water filled ditch while I stay to the right of it. A large immature eagle with a couple of missing wing feathers flies toward me from the gravel bar followed by four large dogs that head for Aki. Showing no aggression they surround her, sniffing with curiosity.  She breaks for the ditch separating us and, for the first time in her 6 years of life, swims across a water course.

After the big dogs trot away Aki and I walk to the gravel bar and check out a long finger of water leading in from the river. Salmon rest in this slough before continuing up river to their spawning grounds. They bring the birds and sometimes the bears.

Figuring not to find any predators along the slough after it had been visited by all those big dogs, I lead Aki toward it across a field of yellowing grass. The smell of salmon death hangs heavy. We take care not to step on rotting carcasses scattered everywhere by the incoming tides. Far down the meadow an unfamiliar eagle like call sounds as a large brown and white bird rises into the air on a course that takes it right over our heads.  It’s a Northern Harrier flying close enough for me to see its owl like face.

This is my first sighting of a harrier and memories of its close pass over head keeps me occupied until we reach the road and cross over it to where the hiking trail will continue in a few hundred meters. We enter the forest, rather than stay on the road with a plan to wander around in it until we find the trail back to the car. Here, just meters from the road we find a rich pocket of old growth forest formed by large spruce trees. Many kinds of mushrooms, some bright red dot the ground spaces between trees, high bush cranberry brush and red huckleberry bushes. A path formed by wild animals leads us back to the man made path to home.

The smell of death dominates this forest walk. That’s how it is along this river at the end of the salmon spawn. Just there, through that patch of river side spruce trees lie the rotting bodies of dog salmon as well as the gulls, ravens and eagles that feast on them.  Aki goes on alert when we hear a splash following by a new chorus of gull complaints—- all signs of a bear working the river shallows for late arriving salmon. We stay to the forest today not wanting a repeat of last year where Aki chased a fishing black bear up a tree and then into the forest.

This morning the grey rain of late August gave way to sun, which now backlights tree moss and understory foliage. While green dominates the forest my eye is drawn to the rare patches of reds and yellows produced by dying leaves. Leaving the usual trail we turn to an area of the forest where the Nagoonberry grows. A legend in the berry picker’s world, the segments of this dark red fruit are said to exceed all other berries in flavor.  I’ve tried in past summers to taste one but someone always manages to hoover them all up before I can find a ripe one. Today I pick two and find them too tart and without must after taste. Even this Highbush Cranberry, yet to be brought to peak flavor by a heavy frost, tastes better.

While the forest opens up to reveal a mountain of true beauty I puzzle on the worth of the common blueberry and the rare Nagoon.  The Nagoonberry, like gold and diamonds, is made valuable by its relative scarcity and the willing belief of the consumer.  The blueberry just tastes good.

Somewhere the sun shines down on the unworthy — those so spoiled by a warm rich summer that they take blue skies and light for granted.  That place may be just over the border in Canada. Even trough my rain spotted glasses I can see a patch of pure blue North above the Juneau ice field.

Aki and have returned to this familiar trail through the old growth to tidelands. It’s harvest time in the woods where ripe fruit of red huckleberry and blueberry brush dangle toward the trail. Even the devil’s club sport inverted cones of bright red berries. Some of the thorny plants are turning autumn yellow. 

We reach the beach just as a raven chases a mature bald eagle from its roost. Job done the self satisfied raven settles in on a near by spruce limb and fills the air with croaks, trills, and disharmonic song.  While Aki searches an old campsite for leftovers, I look up Favorite Passage where tomorrow the MV LeConte will take a friend and I to Hoonah for the start of a week long kayak trip to Tenakee Springs.

I have hopes for the trip — that the rain will abate, we see untouched groves of the beautiful Yellow Cedar trees, the wind won’t work against the tides, and the brown bears will pass in the peace. I also hope that the tides and wind will carry away the stress of work and getting ready for such a trip.   

Aki and I climbed to this mountain meadow for a taste of natural grandeur but have to settle for glimpses of small beauty. Last night another Gulf of Alaska front jammed clouds against our mountains to obscure the peaks and dampened Chicken Ridge with rain.  I still find plenty of ground hugging beauty and Aki raced a snowshoe hare.

After getting over disappointment at the lost of sunshine, I’m free to appreciate the complex pattern formed by rain dropped on windblown grass and the magenta flowers — tiny bog rosemary, mysterious (to me) shoots of pink and white petals shaped into hands of prayer, and two late blooming shooting stars. Single stalks of Hooded Lady Tresses tower above the muskeg too far from the trail for me to smell their orchid scent.

On some disturbed ground near the trail I mistake a scattering of small mushrooms for diminutive daisies.  A snow shoe hare breaks from cover and tears down the trail. While I’m appreciating the hare’s efficient lope Aki takes after it, shedding her rain wrap in the process. Aki is fast but so is the hare, who has quite a head start.  The contestants disappear over a low hill, then Aki returns a little winded.  Good thing it wasn’t the Creggan White Hare.

If she were a child, I would lecture Aki, explaining that the hare has a hard enough time surviving on this mountain meadow without being chased by a poodle in fleece.  She might respond that she is only yielding to her DNA as a dog bred by the French for the hunt.

On the ride down mountain we spot a deer near the road fringe. With Aki staring at it, the deer boldly approaches the car, fixing me with a hard look. This is too much for Aki, who gives it a growl then watches the deer move slowly into the woods.

Aki and I arrive at this riverine meadow at a moment of transient beauty. Last night’s rain has coalesced into small sacks of water that still cling to the purple lupine flowers and their stalks. Weak sunlight manages to break through a grey canopy of low clouds to turn the drops into jewels.

Across the river four eagles have spaced themselves out on a driftwood log. As if performing as a drill team, they rise from the log one after another until only one remains. At first I attribute this as a display of eagle wisdom for a river and several hundred meters separate us from the birds. Only the one who stayed wore the white and brown feathers of a mature bird. The three that flew sport the mottled cloak of immature eagles. Then I noticed the mature bird’s posture and realized that he is drying his feathers.

We find more eagles and many ravens hanging by the river watching the corpses of  dead chum salmon lying on the trail. The fish rode the high tide into the meadow and could not find their way back to the river channel on the ebb. Some bird plucked out each fish’s eye. Otherwise they were intact. This surprises given all the scavengers about.

Something splashes in a tiny water course that drains the meadow. Aki breaks toward the noise and finds a half a dozen chum salmon striving forward. Unless they turn back to the river they will be stranded by the outgoing tide. The watercourse, which dead ends in a hundred meters goes dry at low tide. Aki approaches the fish cautiously as if to see if they want to play. When they splash ahead she jumps back and returns to my side.

The sun breaks through when we leave the meadow for an trail through old growth spruce where I feed on rain washed blue berries growing along the trail. Enjoying the bitter sweetness of berries eaten in a soon to disappear shaft of sunlight, I listen to a large school of salmon splashing along a nearby river gravel bar. A bear could easily pluck them from the shallows but we see no scat, tracks, or partially consumed fish bodies.  Many dead salmon lie on the gravel bar. None shows a mark of being touched by bear or bird. Near them I find a patch of drying mud that shows the tracks of squirming salmon that passed over the bar last night and a single print of a bear’s paw made when it turned on its heal to lunge for a fish.