I’ve taken many pictures of the bull pines and mountain hemlocks on this meadow. None have captured the life force that drives their struggle on poorly drained soil. Their ability to root in soil too marginal to support the tall spruce gains them an open place in the sun. It also slows their growth and leaves them to face harsh winter winds alone. The old ones have the twisted limbs of an arthritic. They could have stood here when Joe Juneau and Richard Harris stumbled up Gold Creek and later when gangs of Chinese laborers dug out the nearby Treadwell Ditch. They have managed to survive long enough to watch Aki pee on one of their brothers. But, given the number of dying trees on the meadow, I wonder how many more winters they have left.

Today Aki and I take a route I usually travel by car. We walk from the town of Douglas, cross the channel bridge and climb up to Chicken Ridge. This is new ground for Aki to read so we stop often so she can sniff and pee. A stream of cars rushing by at 45 mph gives our walk an urban feel. I have a camera but find little use for it in the day’s flat light. There is a fence, bare of paint, aged by lichen that has somehow managed to stay upright. A few maple leaves cling to otherwise empty trees. On the bridge, one crow preens while perched on the Gastineau Channel sign after covering ground with crow poop and empty mussels shattered after he dropped them from height.

The sun breaks out as we reach home. A shaft from it illuminates a bowl of ripe persimmons, the most beautiful thing I’ve seen all day.

Aki and I are out to wrack more seaweed. She wanders near the car while I walk over to the top of a low bluff to check a pocket beach. A cabal of ravens scatters into the air when I reach the bluff edge. Still hunkered on the beach, an immature bald eagle doubles its apparent size by forming parenthesis with expanded wings. I have time to notice how his umber body is spattered with white feathers before he flies to roost in a nearby Spruce. The birds have left behind a deer carcass.

The severed deer head, without antlers or eyes rests on the hind withers. Birds have pealed back the thick brown coat to expose the intact bone structure of the back, ribs, and neck. The fur lies like a rumpled blanket over the deer’s hindquarters. Scavengers have consumed the internal organs and picked the uncovered bones clean of most of their meat.

The bones have a durable beauty, especially the symmetrical curving ribs and long bend of the neck. I try not to acknowledge how human the rib cage looks from the side. Instead I remember watching a deer swim toward this beach followed by a sea lion. The deer made the beach just before the sea lion and stood panting, head bent low between the kayaks we were about to launch. Why did I find you now, when I just finished reading the deer-hunting essay from Nelson’s The Island Within? Seeing deer hunting as an offering, not a taking, Nelson showed nothing but respect when cleaning the deer that have given itself to him. Unless it died of natural causes, I fear that who ever shot this deer wasted most of the meat.

The eagle and ravens complain about our presence at their precious find. They will return to their picking as soon as we leave, gently pushing back the blanket of fur to expose more and more flesh, devouring the exposed until only scavengers with smaller tools will be able to continue the harvest. It is this scavenger’s communion that will salvage meaning from the deer’s death.

Walking a creek valley bounded by two mountain walls on a sunny day can be frustrating. Aki and I are in shadow, sliding along an informal trail. We cross a leafy bench big enough to accommodate one troll family or a village of hobbits. The little dog seems to be searching for evidence of both. Sunlight is doing some special things to Mount Juneau on our left, intensifying the red and yellow of dog wood leaves and spotlighting bare cottonwoods. Low angled light underlines their longest limbs in shadow as they reach to the south. I start singing, “They are leaning out for love and they will lean that way forever.” Aki stares as if she can see the Leonard Cohen ear worm enter my brain. I sing about Suzanne, with her tea and oranges all the way from China as we climb up the trail and into the sun.