At first the trail edges a residential neighbor that must house kids for someone  fashioned a swing from an old boat line and net buoy.  Aki, reading the signs left by other dogs, ignores this icon of Southeast Alaska childhood, now beautified by strong rays of morning sun. We climbed on for an hour through a sun soaked forest.

Now I’m stopped, head down, waiting for this red dragon fly to move.  We have played this game for some time now, since Aki and I started climbing the long plank steps that offer dry passage through this meadow. I lead Aki up a few steps, the dragon fly lands just ahead of me and we stop. I stir. The dragon fly moves to the next plank. We stop. What, I wonder am I missing. Is there a deer near the meadow edge enhanced by the morning sun? Does a bear dig roots just ahead? Would these scenes be more wondrous than the dragon fly’s glistening wings?

Aki finally loses patience and charges ahead to end the game. Passing beyond the meadow we re-enter the forest for more climbing until the trail deteriorates into a small muddy stream bed.  Here we turn around and descend to the meadow, seeing for the first time what I missed while dragon fly gazing. The moist meadow, almost devoid of flower blossoms, curves into the forest below. This opens a vista of Lynn Canal with its spruce covered islands under a mix sky of blue and grey. Weather beaten spruce and hemlock are scattered in the foreground. Aki marks the spot with urine and we descend to the woods below.

This morning Seamus, the forecast icon on our electronic thermometer, wears a tee shirt and sun glasses while clouds obscure the top half of Douglas Island. Seamus is a fool or liar. After wrapping Aki in rain gear she and I head out to Outer Point.

A week dominated by clouds and some rain must have demoralized the people of Juneau for only birds and marmots share the trail with us. Summer has started its slide to fall. Skunk cabbage leaves stand two feet high in the forest bogs and still tart blue berries have darkened to their harvest color. Flavor comes later but I still try a few berries in hopes of finding a juicy precocious one.

The sun makes a surprise visit as we near the beach. “Don’t get smug Seamus,” I mutter, “It’s only a sucker hole.” Still the shafts reach like spot lights to the understory, turning ordinary tree moss to museum quality patina. A marmot’s warning whistle startles us while still in the woods, answered by another on the beach. Aki talks offense and dashes back and forth between the whistlers, barking without effect. The Marmots whistle on.

On the beach a strip  of sun light runs along the surf line. I head for a small patch of sunny beach just now exposed by the ebbing tide.  Aki and I stand there for some time, warmed by the sun while small surf sings us a gentle song.

The day started with a two hour bike ride in the rain and ended up with a hop over bear scat while crossing a sunny meadow. In between there were rodents.

Aki didn’t make the bike ride. She hunkered down with a friend while I made the run out the North Douglas highway to False Outer Point. You would think that two hours on a bicycle would induce a zen state but the constant need to monitor traffic and road conditions keeps the rider out of the deep well of consciousness.

Emptiness did prevail — light traffic and one fishing boat on the ocean.  Only a marmot freezing in panic when I stopped at the Outer Point parking lot animated the ride.

This afternoon Aki did hike with her family and a friend out to Boy Scout Beach for a hot dog cookout. She fell in love with the friend, his strong throwing arm and the willingness to use it to throw her frisbee over and over again. Two seals in the water took an interest in the game, swimming close to watch.

Later we passed two porcupines, the first in a large meadow behind the beach that floods at high tide.  Two eagles watched him from a drift wood perch while surrounded by a court of lesser birds.

The second porcupine was eating on the forest floor and climbed a spruce tree as Aki watched with disapproval. Her brief growl might have prevented a bear run in for a hundred feet up the trail we found a pattern of very fresh scat dropped by a running bear.

Today’s parade showcases the good and strange of Juneau. From the Dipsticks lighting off the exhaust of their rebuilt classic cars to the belly dancers’ float, the entire fabric of our town seems to pass by us at Main and Egan. Candy flies from each float, bringing out the avarice in attending children. When the roller derby gals skate by in formation, a member of the Raven Lunatics advises a small girl in a “mining rocks” hard hat, “candy rots your teeth.”

After an hour or so of dogs, warriors (pro and against war),  bagpipe bands, vintage long haul trucks, and the Sons of Norway dancers we see the street cleaners arrive, marking parade’s end.  Retrieving Aki from Chicken Ridge we head out to the Glacier for a much needed quiet walk on the moraine. In this time of rich lushness its the sooty oranges and yellows of a patch of burned forest that grabs attention. The beauty of destruction is undeniable with its colors of fall in hell backed by summer’s deep green. 

After the burn, we pass now dry streams and a reduced lake that confirm that the local beavers are losing the battle with man for the moraine. Each night beavers strengthened their dam, trying to back up lake water until it makes this trail impassible. They prevailed in the past. This summer man literally undermined the beavers by installing a long conduit under their dam. The dry trail gives proof that man prevailed, so far.

Unexpected abundance arrives with the sun on the North Pass.  A silver hits the Captain’s herring minutes after he sinks it with the downrigger to 45 feet. Another takes mine. The bite is on. We could get our winter’s share of silver salmon if the more aggressive pink salmon did not swarm our hooks.

We boat two silvers — 20 pounds of fish — before the bait herring run out. A small miracle this time of year. Silvers come in the September wet not the height of summer.

But for a visitor from California we would not have left Tee Harbor on this holiday sunday. For him we hoped for whales and less rain. There was a whale at the harbor mouth but none in the pass. There was sun and little rain. There were no other boats partaking of the harvest but one. Strong luck.

Aki left Chicken Ridge early with the noisy one and her friend to cross the Shaman Island land bridge while it is exposed by an extreme low tide. I followed out the door soon after to ride my 28 year old touring bike on a 30 mile loop out the road.

On the way I stop at the glacier visitor center to find it thick with cruise ship tourists. Some collect under the covered viewing area where I grab a bench seat to watch the glacier and lake in flat light.  The cruisers pose, backs to the glacier, while family members take their picture. Over the lake an eagle flies erratically toward us. I think about pointing this out to the visitors but they seem content with the big river of ice.

The bird is a mature bald eagle with white head and tail. As it nears I discover the cause of its nervous flight —one tiny tern that swoops and pecks at his giant cousin. The tern breaks pursuit when the eagle passes out of the tern colony’s air space. After seeing something like this you want to at least smile at others who shared it with you. In this sea of visitors no one did. That’s one of three of today’s wonders. The other two involve the tern.

While eagles live here year round the terns must commute 10,000 miles to raise their babies among the ice bergs of Mendenhall Lake. In the fall they and will return the same distance to the tip of South America. So the presence of that feisty tern is a marvel. His  willingness to chase away a large bird armed with vicious beak and claw is a another.

Aki looks worried as we move off shore. We are canoeing on Mendenhall Lake. Rain stops as we approached the glacier. The sun, breaking through a sucker hole about a hand’s width above the Mt. McGinnis shoulder, sends shafts of light on Mendenhall Lake and its new ice bergs. We have never seen so much ice on the lake. Using a canoe we weave thorough the bergs to get near enough to the glacier to see the new scars left by calving ice bergs. Each is a electric blue bruise with the darkest shades showing where deep cracks enter the glacier’s face.

The sound of arctic terns is constant. Some of the ice bergs we pass have a single  tern scout on them but most of the flock fly air cover over the wide sand islands where they nest.  One tern hovers a few feet over us making clicking sounds rather than their usual scary screech.

With no wind, our mottled gray sky mirrors on the lake water except where covered with floating ice. Without first seeing him, we surprise an adult merganser, forcing he and his family off their berg home. Watching them paddle away leaves a guilty pleasure.

Later, we float without paddling up a stream blocked by a beaver dam. Again we disturb someone — this time a black bear on the other side of the pond who ambles calmly up a grass green slope until screened by spruce trees.

They sit on a log staring at the river. He wears a bright yellow pullover that gives lie to the look of great sadness on his face.  Her more subdued outfit better matches their mood. On this overcast day why do they  concentrate on the river muddied with Herbert Glacier silt when they could admire the snow covered Chilkat Mountains across Favorite Channel?  Perhaps they have accepted existentialism as their faith and expect the river and the outgoing tide to carry away their sadness.

Aki starts to break toward them but stops when I turn and move deeper into the tidal meadow. We take this trail often and find it different each time. Today in the meadow, blue and the rarer white lupine flowers have reached their peak. Some are already forming seeds. Fire weed shoots are starting to muscle out a space for their magenta blossoms. In the woods, low growing sorrel cover open spaces with their simple white flowers, aided by orchid spikes and the blossoms of famine berries.

From the meadow, with the tide out we see great expanses of exposed sand bars and fine clouds of glacier silt curling like fog over the river bank to settle on meadow grass.  I turn back to the couple on their seat of sadness just as a tendril of silty fog blows over them.

Each try for king salmon starts with a purchase of frozen herring, label blue. A bad choice could render meaningless hours of trolling for fish. Staring into the bait freezer I start to dig through the blues looking for the best bait. Without a king salmon to advise me it is really a matter of guess work so I drop all pretense of knowledge and grab two packs, pick out some solid tied hooks and check out.

After loading and unmooring the boat we motor out into Favorite Passage, thankful that the predicted wind storm went some where else. I think of Aki and the look she gave me as I left, rod and lunch in hand, without her. She, with a dog’s famously short memory, will welcome me home this afternoon. Besides, she wouldn’t like the whacking sound the boat makes hitting wave tops and wakes or the crash of gear when we cross the particularly nasty wake of a deep hulled man hauler.

The day is gray with a complex intersection of clouds reflected in a salt water sea  colored with glacier silt. We welcome these days even with their promise of rain. Years of life in a rain forest have shown us how to find beauty in overcast. Perhaps this makes us like the English, able to admire Turner for his ability to find true beauty in the gray variation of each cloud and the way each wins a place for reflection in the sea.

After putting out our lines we listen  to a love song sung in French by a beautiful woman on the radio.  Aki might like this but she is not here. Neither are the fish. We fish hard for hours without luck, trolling the edge of shoals of herring made nervous by charging chum salmon that occasionally leap into air while pursuing their prey.

In the afternoon we listen to the Dodger game, saddened when their bull pen blows another one.  The tide pushes a field of weed and debris across our path, which tangles in our gear.  Abandoning these traditional king salmon grounds we motor over to Portland Island and troll alone along its west side. Here we watch a flock of terns form changeable clouds over a rocky spit, flying over a furtive mink, stalking heron, and oyster catchers, jet black with screaming orange beaks. The Captain hooks a large dog salmon which we carefully release without lifting it from the water. It is a powerful and large male already showing his spawning stripes who seems to demand an apology for the inconvenience visited upon him.  “Go,” I tell him silently, “and tell the king salmon that we treated you well.”