Today we drove out the road through serious rain.  It’s honest stuff falling hard and straight to earth — a Ketchikan rain. The storm water it produces would drain harmlessly into Ketchikan’s Tongass Narrows but here it overwhelms Juneau’s northern forest. The downpour causes heavy erosion in our tidal creeks and rivers to turn clear waters the color of tea whitened with milk. Now Gasteneau Channel looks like the open drain of an English giant’s tea shop.

The storm must be keeping people in town for we only share this forest trail with birds and the animals drawn here by the tail end of the chum salmon run. Feet from the car Aki steps on a large pile of fresh bear dung, the color and texture of corn mash. I search but find no bones or fresh, just cow parsnip seeds which must taste better to this bear then spawned out salmon. A few crossings of the flooded trail washes Aki’s paw clean. The large leaf devil’s club lining the trail bounce up and down in response to the pounding rain. Aki acts like its a day in high summer, submerging her head in a rodent’s hole then dashing down the trail to sniff out animal sign. I walk without haste behind her like a man comfortable in his rain gear.

Just this side of a muskeg meadow, fast-moving water, this time the color of coffee, floods the trail and soaks my boots and Aki’s fur. Over the meadow fifty or so crows fly in a silent cloud. I look for an eagle or raven among them for crows will unite to drive off bigger birds. Only crows fill the sky, not fighting as I first thought but dancing on gentle airs. It’s complicated choreography but I can make out a few of the steps. Two or three birds climb in a gentle arc. One peals off while the remaining two drop into a shallow dive. The last one to enter the dive catches and then passes the other and then climbs again. On the edge of the meadow Aki finds salmon viscera and the scat of a wolf well fed on salmon. We cross the road and head for the river trail. Two ravens greet us at the trail head, apparently frustrated that we can’t understand their simple directions. They follow us up the trail, stopping every fifty feet to instruct us again. Finally they stop at the door of a new park cabin and stand like dogs waiting to be let in out of the rain. Their house?

On the river a soaked eagle perches on the roots of an upturned drift log. He looks at me as if I brought the rain, spreads his wings then drops them as if too dispirited to fly.

This calm gray day spawns reflections in lake and soul. While Aki wanders after squirrel sign I study this reflection of a glacier erratic. There is wonder in how it arrive here on the edge of a beaver pond. The retreating Mendenhall Glacier abandoned it 100 years ago. Since it has witnessed progress by men and beavers against a backdrop of Thunder Mountain.

It watched men and beaver fight for water rights in the pond. The rock measured progress in the battle by how much of its surface stood above the water.  For years the beavers built their dam high enough to flood out the walking path. Then, men would remove a the top few feet of the dam to open up the trail. The beavers, being tenacious night workers would soon rebuild. They had the advantage until men installed a submarine conduit that allowed water to pass under the dam. Now excepts on storm days the erratic stands exposed.

We find other signs of man’s progress deeper in the woods. Near another pond Aki pees on the caracus of a 60’s era Volkswagen, reduced by weather and scavengers to bare frame and struts. A modern dinosauer trapped in mud as if dropped here like a rock by the retreating glacier.

Tonight Aki and I are prisoners on early release, walking through the woods to the beach. The wet grey blanket covering town all week brought a peaceful confinement. We tried breaking out last night with a muddy walk through the rain but needed this sun soaked evening to lift us out of our funk.

Blue berry brush lines the trail. Yesterday it glistened in a uniform coat left by the storm. Tonight rainwater coalesces in opal shaped jewels that glow in the low evening light. Without expecting it, I stumble on a bejewelled red huckleberry bush and wonder how long it has been since I tasted its tart fruit.  Only one berry still hangs beneath its lattice of small yellow-green leaves. I should leave the plump red miracle for the passing bear but pluck then eat it in one moment like an escapee on the run.

What are these water bugs doing in this muskeg pond and why haven’t I ever noticed them before. There must be too much grandeur in this high mountain meadow; too many stars to draw away attention. Aki still ignores them.

Watching now, I wonder how they disturb the pond surface by scurrying off without destroying the water tension that keeps them afloat. They don’t move far, just a few feet toward pond center as if they know their limits?

I’ve thought of many things as this trail lead me from meadow to meadow to forest and this pond: the battle between grass and muskeg made possible by man’s disturbing presence; how the thick loads of maturing spruce cones have assumed the color of dead needles; whether this abundance is produced by heathy trees or dying ones throwing their last strength into one last toss of the evolutionary dice; how beautiful the blue berries look when flooded in morning light. It’s easier to deal with the water bugs, the apparent masters of their three square meters of universe.

Later in the day I fish for salmon in Favorite Passage. We troll for two hours and catch one cod fish but no salmon. Then a pod of Dall Porpoise surround our boat, each black and white muscular bullet half flying out of the water. They don’t break the surface, merely rise and don a inch thick coat of water before submerging to continue the hunt. While they surround us a silver takes the Captian’s herring and we land a fine male silver salmon. The porpoise lasts long enough for us to boat another silver before returning to the dock.

Gasteneau Channel is almost flooded by tide on our way home. Only a long slip strip of one island remains, covered with several thousand perfectly white gulls shinning in late afternoon sun. In seconds the birds forms a quick moving cloud as their sanctuary disappears.

A forest of flowers crowds around the last house on Basin Road. It’s the one you pass just before the wooden trestle bridge. I welcome this offering of random color today with the clouds hanging so low into Gold Creek Valley that I could climb into them on the Perseverance Trail.

I’m alone today for Aki hikes with another dog out by the glacier. It’s a chance to discover whether she keeps the animals away on our walks. Yellow monkey flowers line this trail to the clouds. They take shelter from the rain beneath leaves, attached to their mother plant by a thin fiber. I’d expect a strong breeze could knock them to the ground but they thrive in this wind tunnel of a mountain valley.

Leaving the main trail I move into a thick forest where we often see sign of deer and bear. A squirrel passes silently in front of me then I am alone with the sound of Gold Creek the only thing breaking the silence.  No chittering, eagle complaints, or song bird melodies sound above the stream— a moist but silent dessert of sound. Maybe  all the birds are out by the glacier, hanging with Aki.

In Juneau Autumn wrestles with Summer for each August day. Summer is winning this morning, replacing yesterday’s rain and wind with sun. The gentle weather opens up convergence points. First we find a tumble of giant spruce snapped off or toppled by fall time storms. Nothing goes to waste here. Seedlings of future forests grow crowded together on the fallen trunks.

We move to an island of green light surrounded by thick forest. From deep in the woods this meadow promises a way home for the lost or at least a place to see distance.  From it edge this wet land offers little but a field of lighter greens caped by blue sky.

Further on we reach the beach where the ebbing tide offers a chance to stand almost surrounded by the sea and listen with closed eyes to the sounds of hunter, prey, and opportunists. On this place hearing produces more understanding than seeing. Spawn ripe salmon leap and slam into each other. Eagles and Ravens fight for position as one large black bird that flies over our heads, an improbably orange object in his beak. When he flies all I hear are wing beats.

Back in the forest we stop on last time by a small stream cascading over down wood. I listen. Aki drinks of the muskeg brown water while sun light turns a simple green water plant into beauty.