I am here under duress. Even though she already had her walk this morning, Aki gave me an extended stink eye until I slipped her leash into my pocket and grabbed a camera.

Minutes into this walk on the Outer Point Trail, a group of tourists eye me with caution, like country folk might look at men in gang colors after stumbling into an intercity neighborhood. Aki, an animated stuff animal, can’t have scared the tourists. Maybe I should have shaved this morning.

It’s quiet in the forest after we pass the timid tourists so we can hear the hammer-like pounding of a woodpecker. Later we will be scolded by a Stellar jay and a red squirrel will swear at my little dog while I look over a scattering of its spruce seeds on the trail. We will hear more woodpeckers and stop to watch a red-breasted sapsucker and later a three-toed woodpecker. I will wonder if their presence in such high numbers is the result of the mild winter we had last year, which allowed tree pests to survive in high numbers.

This walk is about the helicopter, not the dragonfly even though the machine can’t match the insect’s flying skills. As Aki crouches as if held in place by blade noise, I try to watch the dragonfly, hoping to see it hover and then land on a single clump of arctic cotton. That would bring together two of my favorite things—the fly’s iridescent wings and cotton washed clean by recent rain. But the dragonfly disappears over the muskeg as the helicopter lifts off with a compact-car-sized satchel of gravel.

I never see the dragonfly again but the helicopter is a near constant presence, ferrying gravel to a section of the Treadwell Ditch trail near Mt. Jumbo. Even though I might ski over the delivered gravel next winter, I left myself wonder how the helicopter would fair if it became trapped by this carnivorous sundew plant after being shrunk to the size of a mosquito.

Aki and I are on a mission. Now that the best sea-level berry patches are past prime, we are in the mountains looking for bushes with ripe, blue fruit. The dog, who has been known to sample blueberries from one of our hands, doesn’t pick her own. She conducts a search, one that only she can understand; only she can evaluate.

My search is also shrouded in secrecy. There are only so many berries on the slopes and we pass whole families of berry pickers heading up the mountain when we descend. I am sworn not to help them.

Some of the berries grow along the shores of tiny lakes that dot the muskeg. Each are full of skating water bugs that seem to levitate on the water’s surface. In their tiny world, they are as impressive as the bubble-feeding whales I watched yesterday in the North Pass.