Aki and I walk the ghost trails of Treadwell. The once vibrant mining community was abandoned after a 1917 collapse flooded the tunnels it sent out into Gasteneau Channel. Today it’s ruled by deciduous trees: alders and cottonwoods. In summer they and the understory plants almost cover up the ruins.  At summer’s end the cover slips away, revealing twisted rails and pipes that appear to grow out or through tree trunks.  Weird machine parts, made beautiful by eroding rust appear leaning against spruce trunks.

Hard brown seeds of Cow Parsnip manage a tiny glow of beauty in the soft rain. The inverted pyramid assemblages contrast the droopy brown leaves of the mother plant. They  have already sent a season’s worth of nutrients to the roots.  So begins the end game of summer.

Treadwell, with it’s “all good things must come to an end” message, is a good place to adjust to summer’s end. It is coming. Already the fireweed are heading out with seeds they soon will release in a storm of white.  Those berries not harvested by animal or man drop in ripeness, silver salmon color up in their natal streams, and bears build blankets of fat to take them through winter. In weeks Treadwell and other collections of leaf trees will be a celebration of shapes and we will look through them to the channel, our bringer of autumn storms.  

Until the blueberries, this walk was all about sounds–the typical coast forest early morning symphony: complaints, mostly gulls but sometimes an eagle drying its wings; the distant jack hammer sound of a red breasted sapsucker; a slightly off key bird song (not the bell clear tones of Robin); buzzing of the cruising bumblebee; gentle shushing of small wave action on a gravel beach; wet slaps of rain charged plant leaves hitting my cotton pant legs. All this builds to the crescendo finale delivered by a flight of old radial engine float planes on the morning run to Pack Creek—loaded with cruise ship tourists hopeful to see Alaska Brown Bears.

With my ears still ringing with airplane noise I follow Aki to where she growls at a fallen hemlock across the trail. “This is new,” I say in part to let Aki know there is no danger. We’ve had no storms since our last use of this trail so I wonder what delivered the coup de gras to this rotten tree; perhaps it was the pressure applied by a scratching bear or simply a yielding of the few fibers still holding the hemlock upright. I start to tell Aki the riddle about a tree falling in an empty forest but remember she has heard it before.

Late in the hike we reach the a patch of load bearing blueberry bushes, fruit just ripe. For weeks I’ve stalked the early setting Salmon Berry, find only empty or picked clean bushes. Here I am at the opening day of blue berry season. Is this karma rewarded or just luck? It matters little for the berries yield crisp sweetness that define an Alaska summer as much as the salmon, eagle, whale, and industrial tourism.