I should know what to call that mountain, little dog. When I check a map later, I’ll learn that its name is Thunder. But this morning, it is just another tooth in the saw blade of mountains that dam the Juneau Icefield. Aki doesn’t care about mountains or their names. She worries about eagles. We keep to the beach’s brush line even though it’s as quiet as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

Last night the trail’s tidal door closed. Now it opens on the ebb. But seawater still covers most of the beach and the sand bars that form the mouth of the Mendenhall River. I lead Aki around several headlands, each time expecting to see eagles, otters, ravens, or song birds. When none appear, Aki trots across a widening sand bar to a driftwood root wad where eagles like to roost at low tide. After nosing small surf striking near the wad, she turns back to the brush line. An eagle launches from a spruce deep in the forest and flies over us. Minutes later two other eagles play chase over the river. The one behind extends its talons like they do when diving on prey or seeking to mate. A gull dives on them, breaking up their fun.

The common merganser is not so common in the rain forest that Aki and I patrol. We see many of the red headed variety. Today, one our way to ski, we spot a raft of both types of the merganser cousins on a stretch of open water of the otherwise still frozen Peterson Creek. We also watched a larger raft of mergansers react nervously to a hunting eagle over Amalga Harbor. Both are signs that the spring bird migration has begun.

The ski trails along Eagle River are deteriorating but by making the occasional work around we managed to reach the river. Encouraged by the two merganser sightings, I hope to spot more migrating birds here. In past springs, we watched tundra swans, geese, and a myriad of ducks rest on the river before resuming their northward flight. But not today.

Snow still blocks the road to the Fish Creek trailhead. Aki cruises on top of its crust while I break through. But there is a path of sorts busted through by past visitors. Unfortunately, they all had longer gaits than me so I have to stretch out to match their boot prints. Ahead, in the trees lining Fish Creek pond a murder of crows besiege a lone eagle. I can hear their racket over the sound of my boots crunching through frozen snow.

We must be the first human-dog teams to visit this morning because the crows let us get close before stirring. I expect to find the carcass they fight over but no deer bones litter the wetland grass. Rafts of mallards have tucked themselves against the far stream bank, as if they needed shelter on this windless day.

Two smells of spring hit me when I reach a section of beach washed of snow by the tides: mud and rotting seaweed. Feet away, the land is locked in the sterile hold of winter. But here the necessary work of decomposition already paves the way for summer growth and autumn harvest.

Bald eagles are solo hunters. They don’t cooperate. They don’t like competition. Today, three eagles trying for herring off of Point Louisa spend as much time warning each other off as in diving for fish. I am not one to argue with Darwin, but I can’t figure out the genetic advantage of being so crabby.

Harbor seals catch more salmon by working in a pack then they would on their own. Just when pink salmon enter Kowee Creek, two seals splash and crash dive, causing the fish to school up and swim straight toward two other seals. These sweet-eyed predators switch roles with the drivers after they have fed.

Aki and I are walking on the snow-slick path with one of my oldest friends. Over the sound of a rising wind we talk about the clearance, during World War II, of Aleut villages. The Native Alaskan residents were relocated to backwaters of Southeast Alaska where they were left to shiver and starve. Somehow 90% of them survived the camps. Many of the survivors never returned to their homeland. Doctor Darwin, what is genetic advantage of treating people like that?