Magenta is losing it’s mountain meadow monopoly. Already, bog rosemary and the other pink hued mountain flowers go to seed. That’s why the shooting stars are a surprised find. I spotted them earlier on rich beach-side meadows where they formed large islands of magenta in a sea of grass seldom disturbed except by foraging bears. I once brought home from such meadow, an intact shooting star plant in a clump of meadow dug loose by a hungry bear.

Along this mountain trail, the shooting stars have spread themselves out so they dot rather than dominate their sections of the meadow. Long but thin stalks allow the flowers to dip and rise on the wind, always pointing down, their inverted petals form bowls that catch today’s soft rain.

Aki and I walked with pride up the steep mountain road on a hot, sunny day. The little dog should be proud of the way she kept pace with a well conditioned husky dog on his way to the mountain ridge. I was smug at being able to climb at speed without having to take deep breaths. I don’t know about Aki but my pride dissipated when we passed a half a dozen young women escorting a day class down the road. Almost all of the women pushed a child laden jogger cart. One lady, with a baby strapped to her chest, pushed twins in a cart. It aged me 5 years.

We were alone on the mountain after the day care class passed—-at least we didn’t run into any other people or dogs. There were robins and blue jays uninterested in yielding to the little dog. A marmot sang out warning to her children, not the shrill air raid siren whistle the oversized guinea pigs usually sound just before an eagle flies over the nest. This was a sweet song, a gentle warning that one might give well behaved children, more to impress the neighbors than to scare the off spring into action. I thought about approaching closer just to hear it again.

We pass muskeg ponds made opaque by fallen spruce pollen. They add a new color, a pale golden yellow, to the forest. Above one pond a cloud of pollen lifts from a stand of spruce and grows to partly obscure the trees. It pulses, as if its bellows blew the pollen from the cones. It’s beauty has a price—congestion and stinging eyes. On the way down the mountain we smell the resin of sun-heated spruce and the complex perfume of flowering skunk cabbage. The perfume smells nothing like cabbage or skunks, more like lilac but with a sharp, acidic twist.

The rain’s back. We walk with the old friend through the Treadwell ruins. Since the mine collapsed almost a century ago, nature had been trying to reclaim the once bustling townsite. When it could no longer produce wealth, the mine owners abandoned it and, I think, its workforce. Large buildings, a baseball field, swimming pool and other comfort providing things were left to the mercy of alders and willows.

Aki and I find an ore car in the deep woods, still standing on the rails once used it move it in and out of the mine. Ground plants have already claimed most of the track but the car stands ready to report for duty where miners left it after seawater flooded out the mine tunnels. Nature would reclaim our Chicken Ridge Neighborhood in a generation if we let the Taku winds blister away house paint and moss destroy our roofs. Maybe we should have built our shelters with the industrial bones left by our ancestors in Treadwell.

Today’s light rain has chased away everyone from the rainforest trail but Aki, my adult daughter and me. We find the forest green, its foliage still intact, yet to be wounded by hungry insects, deer, and bears. The broadleaf skunk cabbage plants are still spring supple. At the forest edge, Aki looks for someone to throw her frisbee so she can chase after it down the beach.She has to settle for the daughter skipping rocks over salt water. We walk out a spit of land that will disappear under an incoming tide to where good flat rocks are plentiful. The path is still two feet above water so I don’t worry about whether the tide is ebb or flood. Aki wades chest deep to better watch the rocks skip five, six, sometimes ten times before sinking. I watch too and remember how I watched her skip rocks on beaches here and in Ketchikan for more than 20 summers. Distracted, I don’t notice the tide cover our escape route until it maroons us. We have to wade through ankle deep water to reach dry land.

Two days of flat, grey light has diminished some of the joy of walking with Aki across this mountain meadow. Thoughts of a woman lost while hiking on a cross channel mountain doesn’t help. Not even the explosion of pink and magenta wildflowers (bog rosemary and dwarf rhododendron) lifts my spirits for the muskeg meadow they grow in is in drought. Ponds, where the reflections of mountains and British buckbean flowers can be broken by skittering water bugs are now dry. I can walk anywhere without soaking my boots.

Aki takes advantage of the freedom to roam from dried pond to dried pond, then rolls on her back on the meadow. The look of bliss on her furry grey face lifts my mood.

We walk down to where the trail crosses a diminished Fish Creek and turn back to the car. As the creek noise fades, I start to hear thrush song and here and there a robin making the most out of this summer day. We pass an odd pair—one purple violet and a yellow skunk cabbage flower—standing side by side, but a discrete distance apart. They could be strangers waiting for a bus or new kids killing time before school orientation begins.