It’s day two of sun. Tomorrow they forecast rain so Aki are crossing through the troll woods with plans to skirt around the flooded beaver lands while they are still in high summer.

A sad and desperate call dominates the woods when we pass beyond reach of the road noise. The simple song could be sung by a loon but it lacks the erie complexity of their music. Again and again the bird calls out as if keening his dead — a jarring contrast to warming sun on my face and the happy work songs of their other birds.

There is no one to ask about the sorrowful bird song. We are alone on this windless morning. Something crashes out of the water just as we reach the shore of one of the moraine lakes. It’s the noisy beaver we watched cruise back and forth across the lake a few weeks ago. There is a small causeway, maybe half a meter across, that we must cross to get to the main trail. It separates the lake from a small outlet stream. The beaver stops on the causeway long enough for me to realize he is small and maybe only a year old. Then he slips into the water to begin his swim back and forth across the narrow foot of the lake. Like the last time on each lap he slaps his tail and dives just before reaching the lake shore. 

After watching the beaver for a bit Aki and return to the causeway to figure out the deal. The beaver has been busy hauling mud from the lake to a small dam he has started on the outlet stream. The dam is not needed to maintain the lake level. Maybe the beaver doesn’t know that. Maybe he needs the damn to mark this as his territory.  That would explain all the overt swimming and tail slapping behavior, which could be designed to keep away other beavers looking for territory. Whatever the reason, the beaver’s dam building is a dangerous activity for this section of the trail gets heavy use by dog walkers, some accompanied by beasts big enough to do in the beaver.

Not wishing to cause the beaver more stress we move down trail to where an old beaver dam offers access to high ground surrounding Norton Lake. It’s our only option as beavers have flooded out the main trail. Here we find newly hatched dragon flies glittering in the sun. I love the electric blue ones that some call darning needles. Mine might be the last generation to know what inspired the nickname. Out of the lake ducks drift without much effort. I find an oddly passive huddle of ducks in some nearby reeds. 

At first I think the stationary ducks are someone’s decoys that ended up tangled together in the reeds. Then I noticed that they were covered with tuffs of white down, which along with the piercing gaze of one of the ducks suggests they are alive but molting. Later I checked some reference books and realized that they must be escaped decoys.

After circumnavigating the lake on the beaver’s logging trails we return to the Troll  Woods for the trip home. The wind is up now, erasing all the beautiful reflections I enjoyed on the Troll Wood lakes. We pass a little pocket lake — the one where I can only find one drake duck. We saw him this morning and I wondered if he sang the keening song we heard at the beginning of the hike.  On this return trip we find he has no cause to cry. A hen with 7 or 8 chicks swims on his lake. 

I didn’t expect beauty on this dull grey day. We walk through an older section of moraine forest. The glacier retreated from it 100 years ago. Since then a series of plant pioneers filled the open gravely space. First came the alders and willows, God’s Band-Aids. Slower growing majesties like the Sitka Spruce eventually forced them out after enough shed willow and alder leaves had built up a soil like medium for growth. Man threw nature a monkey wrench by mining the area for gravel. They left behind shallow lakes that attracted beavers and scared land for more willows and alders to grow. Now we have a wonderful mix of lakes, hardwood plains, and moss covered spruce forests.

Back to unexpected beauty. It shows mostly in reflections — some in the lakes and others in the parts of trails flooded by beavers. My favorite reflections may be those in tense rain spheres holding on the tops of spreading ferns.

The area borders a bedroom neighborhood and Aki soon has many opportunities to make new dog friends. A brace of basset hounds and a husky mix answer her barking call and charge down the trail to us. Aki ducks behind me but is soon chasing about with the bigger dogs. If they get too rough she is back between my legs. One of the basset hounds plants his front paws on my chest and smiles like a used car salesman.

Hoping for a little more solitude I lead us away from the main trail and onto a barely used one that follows the undulates of a rise of gravel that snakes through the forest between two beaver ponds. It’s quiet enough for me to think of the morning bike ride in the rain. Even though I took a road that runs along Gasteneau Channel for miles, the ride was for exercise, not beauty. Then I saw the Orcas (Killer Whales).

Five or six whales formed a pod moving up channel toward town. They must be hunting the king salmon now returning to the hatchery. By rubbing my glasses free of rain I just make them out. A mature male, with a massive dorsal fin was the easiest to follow as he rolled to the surface, exhaled and then immediately dipped below the water. Soon I saw the others, their dorsal fins moving up out the water and then down like so many saw blade teeth. Earlier in the ride someone told me about the whales. I figured that I had ridden right by them on the way out of town and wouldn’t see them on my return trip. Did it matter? The amazement should come from the whales’ presence in my home waters. It should be enough to know that they are there but it is not. I found that out when I saw them. That’s when you get the connection, the affirmation that they are swimming in local waters and breathing the same air as you.

It’s raining again on the glacier moraine and the troll woods it surounds. Aki and I are here to check out the baby king salmon recently released into three little lakes.  Raised along side king salmon about to be dropped into ocean waters where they might grow to fish that deserve their name, the 500 fish dumped into these landlocked lakes will live as farm animals until eaten by someone or something.

Near the beaver village we spot the tell tale rings of rising fish on the lake that borders it. We also see the swirl of large animal, mammal not bird, break the surface in the middle of the rising salmon. I’m thinking river otter because, as  the government who planted the salmon in this lake will tell you, beavers don’t eat fish. Fresh green yellow foliage now hides the main beaver house and provides a rich counterpoint for the line of dark green spruce trees that fill the space between lake and the cloud obscured ridge of Thunder Mountain. 

From here we follow a trail into the troll woods. We pass a pocket lake where a single Common Merganser, its white body standing out against the dark lake waters glides by.  Seeing a lone duck on water this time of year makes you wonder if it is fiercely independent or the victim of tragedy. Did he drive other birds from the lake or come to a place no one else wanted to sulk? Did I mention it is still raining? Along the lake shore recently released spruce pollen forms elongated yellow islands on the water’s surface. 

While moving deeper into the woods Aki and I are startled by a small explosive sound like that made by a sizable rock striking deep water. A bear practicing diving? More likely a strong child throwing something in the lake for the resulting splash. Minutes later we reach a lake where a beaver swims back and forth across the surface. Just before reaching the shore it slaps the water with its tail and dives. In seconds it is on the surface heading back to the opposite shore. Beyond small king salmon stir. Some launch themselves a foot or two into the air.    

Aki, displaying the posture she reserves for meeting other dogs (tail and rear up/legs straight/ feet slightly forward) is half submerged at the lake’s edge. The beaver takes no notice of either of us and soon Aki is back at my side.

What is going on? If this were a seal I’d know the score. It would be driving the salmon to it’s hungry buddies at the other end of the lake. That would explain why some of the salmon are jumping high out of the water. But, as those that study these things in college will tell you, beavers eat wood bark, not fish.  If this is true then the beaver is just being territorial and wants to drive these new neighbors out of town. Eat tail slap could be telling the salmon to find their own lake.

I could see why the beaver would want this lake to himself. It offers a beautiful view of the glacier and surrounding mountains. When he stops disturbing the water’s surface with antics, he can appreciate the serene reflections of mountains and glacier captured on the lake’s surface.

The beaver is still tail slapping the lake’s surface when we head back to the car. At home I use our internet search engine to look for an explanation for the beaver’s behavior. As expected there are many government websites providing assurances that beavers are vegetarians.  Each is written in “pat on the head that’s a good boy” prose.  One You Tube posting might make the authors of the other web articles re-examine their research on beavers. It shows one near Lake Clark Alaska happily munching on a fish.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES0YQyqv4O0