This afternoon, as the rain stopped, Aki and I meandered around the University’s Auk Lake campus. It is quiet. All the action takes place in the library. We carry out the usual division of labor. Aki pees, and sniffs messages left by other dogs or greets the odd student on a study break. I take pictures, mostly of the eyes carved in totem poles.

 When the marine layer breaks open to reveal the blue sky that I had lost hope of seeing again, we head down to the lake and find thin sheens of petroleum mimicking the northern lights. This faux aurora borealis doesn’t dance like the sky bound one until Aki walks onto a floating dock and sets off surface ripples with every step. I snap away at the lake reflections of black spruce, blue sky, and magenta and green oil sheen. Each reflection would be beautiful in cloud whites, blues and blacks but is made more stunning by the shimmering pollutants. I’ve been here before: admiring California sunsets enhanced by smog, Canadian sunrises with deep reds popping against black forest fire smoke. Each time I wonder how corruption can produce fallouts of such beauty.

In heavy rain, Aki and hide out on a trail through the old growth that leads to a beach diminished by high tide. A thick, low cloud layer almost eliminates the view of Lynn Canal. It is a good day to study small wonders, like tree lichen, so I watch stands of old man’s beard swing like lazy ghosts from bare blue berry brush. I happen on columns of frilly angel wings that climb the trunk of a dying hemlock tree and named then “angels of death.” (It is not an uplifting day). Then I realize that last week I had found one of the winged lichen, moist and flattened in a clump of seaweed. I took it for some tide pool creature but with the help of a passing hiker worked out that it was once attached to a tree. What is it about making connections, even unintended, that can brighten a gray day of rain?

I am not sure why I brought Aki to this mountain meadow. Bare of snow, scoured by storm, the meadow offers little reason for us to lean into the wind. While Aki works her way back to the car, I spot a clue as to what drew me here in one of the little ponds that dots the muskeg. An inch of water covers the pond’s opaque-white ice covering. Dead, tan-colored lily pads have spaced themselves evenly over the surface. Between the pads, I can make out the reflection of avalanche chutes on the ridge bordering the meadow. The ice reflection displays a beauty I can’t find on the ridge.

Before driving here, I read that Plato thought our senses limited our ability to accurately perceive actual objects (he called them universals). Above the pond, the “universal” looks as fuzzy as one of Plato’s metaphoric shadows. The reflection is almost as crisp as the ridge would look on sunny day. My camera can’t capture it as well as my eyes. I know Plato would point out that while I might prefer the reflected image of the ridge, I do not gain a better understanding of the ideal ridge by studying it. (How does he know?) But, the two, conflicting images of the same ridge support his theory. Plato views might be logical, but why should we embrace a philosophy that doesn’t allow for magic like that reflected in the pond. I agree with Aristotle. Nothing is served by Plato’s effort to distinguish between the world of ideas and the world of things.