After soaking in the intensity of Oahu with its rainbow colored flowers made almost garish by strong sunlight, I hardly notice the moraine’s fall coat. For my first walk with Aki after returning to Juneau, I chose this trail, which crosses glacial moraine before looping through the troll woods. Happy to be on an adventure, Aki bursts down the trail, breaking to investigate an interesting smell here, an unexpected motion there. I’m as calm as this gray, windless day. As far as my little dog is concerned, I’m spending far too much time watching mountains and trees reflecting on dark pond waters.

We enter the beaver war battlefields, finding normally flooded places on the moraine dry enough for walking. Vigilantes have deconstructed several more beaver dams, opening up a path to a duck hunter blind.  The recently dead body of a juvenile varied thrust lays on the trail. Aki freezes into a defensive position, wrapping tail between her rear legs just before we hear the oddly beautiful sound made by a 12 gauge shotgun fired over lake waters.  The bird’s body seems intact, not torn by shotgun pellets. Bending down, I search unsuccessfully for clues of its death.  I want to take it home and puzzle longer over its beauty–the way its spade shaped feathers, gray-white with orange accents, form a breast plate over its swollen chest.

We hear rather than see most of our rain forest birds. The blurred whistle of varied thrust is one my favorite bird songs. Using this rare opportunity to study the singer,  I try to feel sadness at its death.  It would be easier if I could find sorrow or at least a recognition of terror in its open eye. There is only peace, as if the young bird accepted that its time had come.

Back in the rain forest after two weeks of sun in Anchorage, I’m wandering the Troll Woods with Aki.  A gray world of softness, the woods offer the best place to relax after cramming a semester’s worth of learning into 12 days.  Yellow-green moss climbs the trees and covers the ground five inches deep. Beavers hauling freshly cut tree branches to their wood stash have worn a trail in the moss, which we follow to where a break in thick alders offers a filtered view of a pond.

I never noticed the pond before and wonder if it is another beaver public works project. Ever interested in finding the new in well known places I lead a reluctant Aki around an alder tangle then down a recent path formed through three foot tall grass. It ends in a circle of crushed grass near the pond’s edge—a bear’s bed. “Why not,” I tell Aki. If I were a bear recently sated by Sockeye Salmon snatched from Steep Creek while tourists snapped their cameras, had endured helicopter noise and bus fumes, I’d come here to contemplate this pocket pond. I’d watch water bugs skate its surface, dig the perfect reflection of the deep green buckbean stalks choking one bay, laugh at the how a solitary glacier erratic looks like a partially submerged skull sporting mossy hair. When darkness shuts down the industrial tourism machine I’d curl up on the still soft grass stalks and dream of more salmon. I’d wake in the morning before the mosquitos and snatch a few Nagoon Berries before heading to work.

Not wanting to be here when the bear returns, we take a reverse course on the beaver’s logging road.  Near another pond, the one where last Spring she dashed across too soft ice to investigate beaver tail slaps, Aki stares at the water then dashes over to a newly formed beaver den of branches and mud. With the tense posture of an interested poodle and tail a metronome she stands on top of the den until reluctantly answering my summons to, “Get away from there you stupid dog.”    When will she learn that the big toothy rodents do not want to be her friends?

It’s enough on this windless, gray summer morning, to be alone on the moraine with Aki.  She almost died on our last visit, giving into curiosity and the urge to across thin ice after a noisy beaver. Today we will avoid that part of the Troll Woods but not forgo adventure.

Along open sections of trail, especially around the burned out bit of forest, the wild lupine unfold their blue and white flowers that reflect in mounds of rain water still clinging to upturned leaves.  This is the only show of color, except the green of new growth that is everywhere; the only drama if you don’t count cloud reflections on flat calm lake water. Every now and then a just planted juvenile king salmon brakes the lake surface, apparently happy to be free of the fish tank of his birth.

We could stay here in this calm gray and green place, maybe check out the beaver village for signs of this season’s building projects but I’m drawn to the lake beyond a rubicon of beaver flooded trail. I manage to make it across the inundated trail to a well maintained beaver dam. With Aki in tow I work along the top of the dam, stopping to enjoy the little forest of mares tail growing along the glacier side of the dam. We can see the glacier from here by looking over the beaver’s pond and through poles of dead trees. Buckbean (British Tobacco) grow straight and tall above the pond surface that reflects their angular leaf pairs and towers of downward facing white flowers.

The dam is really a dike between two ponds. We find a gap halfway across that doesn’t look deep enough to make up turn around.  I take two steps in shallow water and then sink the third into a deep channel, flooding a boot with pond water and soaking my pants.  Again I’m a victim of the beavers. Aki swims across the channel without urging.  Clouds of mosquitos descend on me but do not bite. Reaching the other side of the gap we walk across the dike to an infrequently visited section of the Troll Woods. The bugs leave, as if driven away but the bird song that seems to come from everywhere. It’s almost loud enough to block the sound of a beaver tail slap coming from the pond. Aki hears it and charges to pond’s edge but comes back quickly, satisfied with the role of tourist. Just up the trail we find a fresh pile of bear scat that may have been left by the bear that crossed the road as we approached the trail head. Time to leave.

Across a lake almost covered by a floating island of white, a young beaver slaps open water with its tail. Aki breaks from my feet to dash across ice too soft to support any effort of mine at rescue, seduced to disobedience by the percussive rodent. I call repeatedly for her return, knowing the ice or beaver could end her life.

The ice takes the first shot—giving way to drop the little poodle mix into a cocktail of ice and water. She dog paddles toward my voice and pulls herself out of the water at ice edge. Now she looks back to the beaver or is it the shore, both much nearer to her than I. Should I keep silent and hope she swims to safety on the far shore or keep calling, trusting that the ice is firm enough between she and I to offer the better path? I call out for her to return, knowing the beaver is nearer to Aki than I. She seems to weigh her choices, turning her head to me and then back to the opposite shore and falls into the water again.

I call encouragement and then, “come back here you stupid little dog.” “Are those last words she will hear?” No. Aki again pulls herself onto firm ice and then sprints back to the moss at my feet.

The little dog immediate begins exploring the Troll Woods trail for interesting smells—the near death experience forgotten. I chew on it for a long time, wondering at the resilience of poodles.