We walk on this old friend of a trail finding reassurance. It’s in the backlit moss on every tree. It’s in this clump of low bush blueberry brush still heavy with last night’s rain and glistening in morning light. I search for berries as Aki sips water off the leaves.

Later we pass a forest recently burned and find promise in new growth forming on a nearly destroyed alder.  Here there’s beauty in cottonwood leaves dried to tinder in the fire and then soaked by last weeks storms. This morning each curled leaf is an apricot colored sculpture.

Oddly, I find the most reassurance  in a bear track overlapping my boot print. We had been working our way along a series of  ponds formed by beaver dams. The last pond flooded out the trail so we had to turn back. Minutes later I find a ripe Nagoon berry dropped like an offering on the trail.  In mud just beyond a fresh bear print covers one of mine.

Did the bear leave the berry as a treat or did it drop from his slavering jaws while he retreated from the berry path? Either way it tastes sweet.

The neutral patter of rain on blueberry brush provides the back ground for the richer plops made on spreading Devil’s Club leaves and baritone solos on thick curving Skunk Cabbage. Rain on the tall beach grass makes no sound but loads the tall plants with moisture that they share with passing hikers, soaking their jeans.

I am able to hear this music because man once forced this trail through the  grass and woods, reinforcing his claim by laying down a board walk that even now rots and yields space to aggressive understory plants. In one or two seasons, nature could take it back, like it has the old river trail we tried to follow yesterday. Man scars and nature heals, given time and enough rain.

On this rare hot day we dive into the rain forest for relief and find the old river trail blocked by Devil’s Club.  Beyond this thorny yellow green wall a bird sounds a continuous alarm which I can’t resist. Hoping that my jeans and heavy logger shirt will provide enough protection I move down the path, brushing past a gauntlet of Devil’s Club brush, each a  spreading collection of large seregated leaves outlined with thorns. Some sting my hand like mosquito bites. Aki takes the low path passing beneath the pain.

The bird chirps on after we reach the river but I can’t see it. I do see a suddenly wide path through the lush growth of summer — the animal’s secret garden. Tall soft ferns line this path. We follow it back to another devil’s club tangle and then to the main trail. Shafts of sunlight now fall like javelin points through the forest canopy. Many illuminate spreading devil’s club plants turning translucent the normally opaque yellow green leaves. My shirt smells of the leaves we brushed through, a smell of high summer.

The First People of Southeast Alaska use devil’s club tea to ease the pain of chronic illness, stripping bark off its thorny skin and then soaking it in water on a sunny day like a Southerner would brew ice tea. I have a tin of Devil’s Club salve that helps wounds to heal. The plant gives and takes away pain.

Aki’s usual forest water holes have dried up so we head for the meadow where the gentle river bank will allow her a chance to drink. She noses into the water, front legs submerged but pulls back startled by seal lions as they slam their flippers on the river’s surface to drive newly arrived chum salmon toward their hungry hunting partners. As if figuring it out, Aki ignores their antics and drinks deeply from the glacier water.

Later we return to the forest, this time to harvest tasty Nagoon berries that grow on low plants. Each is a tiny universe of deep red globes offering the untamed taste of an Alaskan summer.

This morning’s solo bike ride to the Glacier predisposed me to guilt because I left Aki behind. After the usual exuberant welcome home, she hits me with one long sad look. To make up with her I pick a dog walker trail for our afternoon stroll.

At the trailhead Aki bounces out of the car to read signs left by dogs already on the trail. We encounter a half dozen on the gravel road leading up to the start of the meadow trail. She dashes from dog to dog, face frozen in an emotionless mask, only showing joy with welcoming posture and flapping ears. We are both hot by the time we reach the meadow.

Here we find Douglas Pine under stress, their needles already dry dead brown. The Mountain Hemlock look better except for one showing all the colors of a New England fall.  The high mountains still rise above the meadow, now decorated with cloud shadows. Above its all blue sky and white angel clouds.

We climb out of the meadow to enjoy the moist shade of the old growth forest and ten walk briefly along the old Treadwell ditch. I think of the morning bike ride with its  fog rising smoke like from the valley streets and of the sockeye salmon with their bright red heads and green bodies fighting for space on the spawning beds. Closing my eyes I see them and the field of blooming fireweed that provided a magenta frame for the glacier and its towers. “Why,” I ask Aki, “Am I always dreaming of one rich place while walking through the beauty of another?

The eagles are invading Fish Creek as the first pulse of Dog Salmon move up from the salt water. Eagle roost trees mark spawning beds and holes where the salmon rest during their upriver journey.  You can pick out the trees even when they are empty for white eagle scat decorates the understory plant and down and feathers gather in the upturned leaves of neighboring devil’s club leaves.

Perched over the stream on a  thin alder branch, an immature eagle eyes us and some salmon moving into the current.  Aki wades into the water for a closer look at the dogs, who don’t react to her presence. Do they sense the eagle?

I call Aki back and wait, camera ready for the eagle to move. It does, launching out over the river toward the salmon, talons extended. There’s no splash or dramatic struggle between 10 pounds of salmon and the mighty bird.  It is just the fish, stream, and Aki looking at me with that, “Shouldn’t we be moving on” look.

The eagles must be waiting for the bears that will follow the salmon upstream. Those guys will do the heavy lifting of fishing salmon from the stream. If the run is strong the bears eat only the brains and rich eggs, leaving everything else for the eagles and ravens to squabble over.

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.