The battle has begun. Winter struck last weekend, driving temperatures low enough to cover Mendenhall Lake with ice and whiten the evergreen forests with fresh snow. Fall fought back yesterday with southern wind and rain that melted the snow cover.  Aki must root for winter. She rarely shows much enthusiasm for walks in the cold rain but she enjoyed winter’s short visit. 

I wonder what fall fights for, now that the forest colors have mostly faded to brown. Shapes? We found many graceful ones on this mornings old growth walk to the beach. My favorites were formed by spruce and hemlock roots, distorted into wrapping curves when their nursery logs rotted from beneath them. The absence of snow allowed us to find a small pile of mammal bones—multifaceted knuckles and a digit damaged by a scavenger. I thought of Henry Moore’s sculptures and the sea lion carcass pushed high up the beach years ago by an autumn tide.  Were the found bones all that remained of his presence? 

No seals swam Eagle River when we walked along it this morning. No eagles huddled in the rain, complaining about our invasion of their privacy. There was a heron and one duck flying fast and low over the river, offering little more than a glimpse before disappearing into river born fog. With sand bars bared by an ebbing autumnal tide, the table was set for birds and wolves but no one took advantage. 

Our path across the tidal meadow was greasy with rain water and the decomposing flesh of this year’s salmon—an image as comforting in the rain forest as water and fertilizer being poured onto crop land is for a farmer.  I didn’t mind the greasy ground, the absence of animals or even the little islands of salmon jaws, gill covers, and backbones we found scattered at random on the meadow grass.  The latter are fitting fall decorations for land along a salmon stream. 

I could have picked a trail sheltered from the 20-knot wind climbing up Douglas Island from Stephens Passage. It broke over a saddle above the meadow where we walked, then slammed us with heavy rain drops. Aki never complained or gave me her, “pick me up I am so pathetic” look, even after her thin fleece wrap grew heavy with rain.

Why suffer the wind to cross monochrome mountain meadows? I like facing into the wind. Besides testing my foul weather gear, the rain provided most of the drama and beauty. It swelled Fish Creek and its tributaries to near flood and pounded the surface of meadow ponds 

I wasn’t surprised by the expanding circles sent out by each heavy rain drops that struck exposed pond water, but didn’t expect the perfectly clear spheres that popped to the pond surface. The wind pushed these prismatic spheres across the pond until they burst. The spheres appeared to capture all the morning’s brightness in their short lives, offering little promises of winter sunlight to come.