I shouldn’t be frustrated. Last night’s rain showers ended at first light and I can see the ridges on both sides of the Gold Creek Valley. Aki has traded sniffs with some dog friends and hasn’t growled at anyone except for an innocent looking longhaired dachshund that eyed her in fear. The sun is the trouble. To be more accurate, it’s the broken clouds that parse out the sun’s enriching rays. They roll back enough to release a shaft of light onto a patch of alders, all covered with dead leaves but not the solitary cottonwood tree that, in full sun, would be a yellow candle against its mountainside of green spruce. When sunlight does reach the cottonwood, I am busy bagging Aki’s scat. Poop in bag, I raise the camera and find the sun gone. I move up the trail. Sun shafts, like lightening, can’t strike the same tree. Whipping around, I see the cottonwood’s again jewel yellow leaves dull as the sun moves back to the alders.

It doesn’t get any better until we reached the overlook where we meet a stay-at -home dad shoehorning in some alone time before his child gets out of school. He gives me a little lecture on cloud formation (helpful) as out of the corner of my eye I spot the a shaft of sun turning a cloud of brown-yellow willow leaves gold. I ignore the show and listen. We part without enriching either’s day and I head back to Chicken Ridge. Multiple shafts of light escape the clouds and light up the view I had at the overlook. If I had done the right thing and sat with the man, had conversation, we both could have enjoyed sun light up the deep gorge and its still green covered walls, might have become friends. The teacher managing the clouds gives me two consolation prizes—a slash of light across the creek valley and an illuminated waterfall.

I was looking for fall color in fog, not bears, when I let Aki show me the way into the Gold Creek Valley. The cottonwoods provided a little drama, but not enough to encourage a climb further up the valley so we cross the creek and headed west on the Flume Trail. I followed the little dog down a steep trail to Gold Creek and stopped just below a muddy section to wondered whether the bear, whose paw slipped and left five parallel grooves on the dun colored mud felt pleasure or fear. If it was the young black bear we saw on 7^th street last Tuesday night, she must have enjoyed the trill. Still wet from crossing Gold Creek, she moved with surprising grace, the kind some rhythmic overweight people reveal when they dance. The bear bounced step by step down the street, stopped at each trash can to make sure they didn’t contain something tasty, then disappeared into a neighbor’s open garage. Such sweetness; such dangerous behavior. Already addicted to garbage and comfortable around people, the little bruin is not long for this world.

Back to the familiar with Aki—the trails on North Douglas Island. Unlike the lush summer conditions I experienced on my Vancouver Island bike tour, Juneau is tasting fall. You can see it in the berries, ripe, soft, almost sweet.You can feel it in the cool moist air still carrying a trace of last night’s rain storm. Already understory plants yellow and leaves fall. Soon the gray, wet, despair producing monsoons will come and stay until we pray for snow. Aki, although not a big fan of heavy rain, is more accepting than I of fall time in the rain forest. October I dream of desert dry; November I search the web for cheap flights south. But today, I pick a cup of full of perfectly red, round huckleberries that will enrich my lunch. Aki contents herself by chasing squirrels.