Snow shoveling delayed our morning walk. Two hours after picking up the shovel, Aki and I could head out to North Douglas for a walk on the False Outer Point Trail. That didn’t, couldn’t, happen. Just before we reached the trailhead, the blade of a snow plough raised a half-meter high snow berm between the highway and the parking lot. 

            With no safe place to park, I turned around and headed toward the Nine Mile Creek Wetlands Trail. Aki, who had squirmed with excitement while we approached, did not like this change of plans. 

Deep snow covered the Nine Mile trailhead parking area. But it was safe to park on the low traffic road that provides access to it. Aki had to porpoise through the parking lot snow to join me at the trailhead. Only a thin layer of white covered the trail. The snow that would have made travel a slog had pushed down the trailside alders into low tunnel. Tiny Aki dashed down the trail while I, sometimes bent almost double, stumbled after her. 

            The little dog froze when we reached the open wetlands. She stared as I post-holed out to Gastineau Channel. The sky over the wetlands was confused. The south view was socked in by snow clouds. Sunshine flooded the northern view. But the sunny area shrank as I watched, consumed by another advancing storm.   

The snow, which kept other dog walkers from Sandy Beach, is having no apparent affect on the mallards. They chuckle and float just offshore. The quarter (or Euro) sized snowflakes confuse my camera but not my eye. Seeing the ducks clearly, I say, “What a piece of work is man, little dog.”  Aki doesn’t hear me. She is down the beach, peeing on a clump of grass. 

            What a piece of work is this day, I mutter to myself. The still flooding tide pushes high up the snow-covered beach. It stripped away snow from the old wharf pilings, leaving a coating of white on the piling parts it can’t reach. Pancakes of snow bump into the shore and each other as tiny swells roll into the beach. 

            We round a point and spot more ducks swimming under alder branches that are bent over with snow. The little dog and I will have to shimmy our way under, over, and around a tangle of alders to reach the trail into Treadwell Woods. The ducks pay us little attention even though we come within a few meters of them during our passage. We are close enough to a drake to see a teardrop of water slip from its beak and plop into the water. 

Aki has a perfectly fine sand for walking but she insists on using the snow-covered portion of the Auk Bay Beach. I’m cruising on the bit washed clean by the last flood tide. The Auk people once launched their ocean-going canoes from this crescent-shaped beach. 

            No rain falls on the little dog or I. That may change soon. Translucent storm clouds hang low over nearby Douglas and Admiralty Islands like a curse. If the temperature doesn’t drop back to winter-normal, we will lose our snow. Maybe that is why the poodle-mix prefers to make her tracks in the remaining white stuff.

            Off Point Louisa, something, maybe an eagle, stirs a raft of Barrow goldeneye ducks to flight. They land near the outlet of a small stream and begin splashing about in the surf line. The tiny waves seem made for surfing ducks. They rise and fall with each set as stern-looking gulls watch from the beach.