In Juneau Autumn wrestles with Summer for each August day. Summer is winning this morning, replacing yesterday’s rain and wind with sun. The gentle weather opens up convergence points. First we find a tumble of giant spruce snapped off or toppled by fall time storms. Nothing goes to waste here. Seedlings of future forests grow crowded together on the fallen trunks.

We move to an island of green light surrounded by thick forest. From deep in the woods this meadow promises a way home for the lost or at least a place to see distance.  From it edge this wet land offers little but a field of lighter greens caped by blue sky.

Further on we reach the beach where the ebbing tide offers a chance to stand almost surrounded by the sea and listen with closed eyes to the sounds of hunter, prey, and opportunists. On this place hearing produces more understanding than seeing. Spawn ripe salmon leap and slam into each other. Eagles and Ravens fight for position as one large black bird that flies over our heads, an improbably orange object in his beak. When he flies all I hear are wing beats.

Back in the forest we stop on last time by a small stream cascading over down wood. I listen. Aki drinks of the muskeg brown water while sun light turns a simple green water plant into beauty.

We walk on this old friend of a trail finding reassurance. It’s in the backlit moss on every tree. It’s in this clump of low bush blueberry brush still heavy with last night’s rain and glistening in morning light. I search for berries as Aki sips water off the leaves.

Later we pass a forest recently burned and find promise in new growth forming on a nearly destroyed alder.  Here there’s beauty in cottonwood leaves dried to tinder in the fire and then soaked by last weeks storms. This morning each curled leaf is an apricot colored sculpture.

Oddly, I find the most reassurance  in a bear track overlapping my boot print. We had been working our way along a series of  ponds formed by beaver dams. The last pond flooded out the trail so we had to turn back. Minutes later I find a ripe Nagoon berry dropped like an offering on the trail.  In mud just beyond a fresh bear print covers one of mine.

Did the bear leave the berry as a treat or did it drop from his slavering jaws while he retreated from the berry path? Either way it tastes sweet.

The neutral patter of rain on blueberry brush provides the back ground for the richer plops made on spreading Devil’s Club leaves and baritone solos on thick curving Skunk Cabbage. Rain on the tall beach grass makes no sound but loads the tall plants with moisture that they share with passing hikers, soaking their jeans.

I am able to hear this music because man once forced this trail through the  grass and woods, reinforcing his claim by laying down a board walk that even now rots and yields space to aggressive understory plants. In one or two seasons, nature could take it back, like it has the old river trail we tried to follow yesterday. Man scars and nature heals, given time and enough rain.

On this rare hot day we dive into the rain forest for relief and find the old river trail blocked by Devil’s Club.  Beyond this thorny yellow green wall a bird sounds a continuous alarm which I can’t resist. Hoping that my jeans and heavy logger shirt will provide enough protection I move down the path, brushing past a gauntlet of Devil’s Club brush, each a  spreading collection of large seregated leaves outlined with thorns. Some sting my hand like mosquito bites. Aki takes the low path passing beneath the pain.

The bird chirps on after we reach the river but I can’t see it. I do see a suddenly wide path through the lush growth of summer — the animal’s secret garden. Tall soft ferns line this path. We follow it back to another devil’s club tangle and then to the main trail. Shafts of sunlight now fall like javelin points through the forest canopy. Many illuminate spreading devil’s club plants turning translucent the normally opaque yellow green leaves. My shirt smells of the leaves we brushed through, a smell of high summer.

The First People of Southeast Alaska use devil’s club tea to ease the pain of chronic illness, stripping bark off its thorny skin and then soaking it in water on a sunny day like a Southerner would brew ice tea. I have a tin of Devil’s Club salve that helps wounds to heal. The plant gives and takes away pain.

Aki’s usual forest water holes have dried up so we head for the meadow where the gentle river bank will allow her a chance to drink. She noses into the water, front legs submerged but pulls back startled by seal lions as they slam their flippers on the river’s surface to drive newly arrived chum salmon toward their hungry hunting partners. As if figuring it out, Aki ignores their antics and drinks deeply from the glacier water.

Later we return to the forest, this time to harvest tasty Nagoon berries that grow on low plants. Each is a tiny universe of deep red globes offering the untamed taste of an Alaskan summer.

This morning’s solo bike ride to the Glacier predisposed me to guilt because I left Aki behind. After the usual exuberant welcome home, she hits me with one long sad look. To make up with her I pick a dog walker trail for our afternoon stroll.

At the trailhead Aki bounces out of the car to read signs left by dogs already on the trail. We encounter a half dozen on the gravel road leading up to the start of the meadow trail. She dashes from dog to dog, face frozen in an emotionless mask, only showing joy with welcoming posture and flapping ears. We are both hot by the time we reach the meadow.

Here we find Douglas Pine under stress, their needles already dry dead brown. The Mountain Hemlock look better except for one showing all the colors of a New England fall.  The high mountains still rise above the meadow, now decorated with cloud shadows. Above its all blue sky and white angel clouds.

We climb out of the meadow to enjoy the moist shade of the old growth forest and ten walk briefly along the old Treadwell ditch. I think of the morning bike ride with its  fog rising smoke like from the valley streets and of the sockeye salmon with their bright red heads and green bodies fighting for space on the spawning beds. Closing my eyes I see them and the field of blooming fireweed that provided a magenta frame for the glacier and its towers. “Why,” I ask Aki, “Am I always dreaming of one rich place while walking through the beauty of another?

The eagles are invading Fish Creek as the first pulse of Dog Salmon move up from the salt water. Eagle roost trees mark spawning beds and holes where the salmon rest during their upriver journey.  You can pick out the trees even when they are empty for white eagle scat decorates the understory plant and down and feathers gather in the upturned leaves of neighboring devil’s club leaves.

Perched over the stream on a  thin alder branch, an immature eagle eyes us and some salmon moving into the current.  Aki wades into the water for a closer look at the dogs, who don’t react to her presence. Do they sense the eagle?

I call Aki back and wait, camera ready for the eagle to move. It does, launching out over the river toward the salmon, talons extended. There’s no splash or dramatic struggle between 10 pounds of salmon and the mighty bird.  It is just the fish, stream, and Aki looking at me with that, “Shouldn’t we be moving on” look.

The eagles must be waiting for the bears that will follow the salmon upstream. Those guys will do the heavy lifting of fishing salmon from the stream. If the run is strong the bears eat only the brains and rich eggs, leaving everything else for the eagles and ravens to squabble over.

At first the trail edges a residential neighbor that must house kids for someone  fashioned a swing from an old boat line and net buoy.  Aki, reading the signs left by other dogs, ignores this icon of Southeast Alaska childhood, now beautified by strong rays of morning sun. We climbed on for an hour through a sun soaked forest.

Now I’m stopped, head down, waiting for this red dragon fly to move.  We have played this game for some time now, since Aki and I started climbing the long plank steps that offer dry passage through this meadow. I lead Aki up a few steps, the dragon fly lands just ahead of me and we stop. I stir. The dragon fly moves to the next plank. We stop. What, I wonder am I missing. Is there a deer near the meadow edge enhanced by the morning sun? Does a bear dig roots just ahead? Would these scenes be more wondrous than the dragon fly’s glistening wings?

Aki finally loses patience and charges ahead to end the game. Passing beyond the meadow we re-enter the forest for more climbing until the trail deteriorates into a small muddy stream bed.  Here we turn around and descend to the meadow, seeing for the first time what I missed while dragon fly gazing. The moist meadow, almost devoid of flower blossoms, curves into the forest below. This opens a vista of Lynn Canal with its spruce covered islands under a mix sky of blue and grey. Weather beaten spruce and hemlock are scattered in the foreground. Aki marks the spot with urine and we descend to the woods below.