Today an autumnal tide flows over the Eagle River meadow. In minutes it will peak at 19.7 feet. Even now it robs the gulls of all their usual resting places. During this evening’s ebb, it will wash the meadow clean of decaying salmon carcasses and any other flotsam carried here by storm flooded streams.  Not content to appreciate the broken storm light reflecting off the flooded meadow, I try to conjure it up in high summer when lupines, paintbrush and shooting stars flowers formed colorful colonies on its green field.

We started this hike during the tail end of a fall storm. Aki had to stop repeatedly to shake off water.  While I waited for the end of each shimmy, I  looked at stubborn hold outs of summer displaying their few remaining leaves high even as they fade from yellow to brown. Below, their practical neighbors have already tucked themselves away under crispy brown covers. One blueberry bush sports a yellow leaf and 20 new blossoms. I would join the forest gossips in condemning this waste of life force but the pure white flowers, each an elongated Japanese lantern, sway with beauty in the rain.

Riverbank alders, wise survivors all, are bared for winter. Even here one tree holds a dead brown leave over the water. Cupped to catch the rain, the lone leaf releases a series of drops into the river below where each mixes with green glacier water and that colored red by running over iron oxide.

The rain stops as we reach river meadow but the tide soaks Aki. She is running up and down a thin strip of river bank sand, stopping only to track the progress of a seal in the river. It and a couple of clumsy sea lions ride the flooding tide before us. Aki startles one of the sea lions by jumping over driftwood and it crashes under the water like a diver that never does well in competition. The dog appears to swell with excitement, if not pride, and dashes along head of me on the trail, now flooded by the tide and swims over it to a patch of dry meadow. It must be pride that animates her for she turns back and splashes back to me on the same inundated path.   Having witnessed the folly of prideful flowers, berry bushes, and now Aki, I choose a humble path back to the woods.

I rarely see Aki so stirred up. She runs, upright tail prestissimo, up and down the river bank. At the end of each lap she sniffs and then stares out into the river current. She must scent the shy seal I saw when first cresting this grassy bluff.  Aki didn’t hear or see it. A wall of dead grass blocked her view of the river when I saw the seal and it slipped below the surface without a sound.

We wait for ten minutes, me with the camera ready, the now spent Aki panting by my side, for the seal to resurface. All we see is a raft of Bufflehead ducks and a strange circle form on the river surface as by a seal’s nose raised just enough to breathe. Downriver a self absorbed gang of gulls trot about on an emerging sand bar, admiring themselves in the mirror like surface of the bar.

We see no other signs of feeding. An eagle flew over as we left the car this morning. It landed in a riverside perch and sang out complaints to the rain. Any eagle with imagination or at least some inside information would be heading north to the Chillkat River to feed on the late run chum run. The Eagle River party is over.

Autumn advances rapidly now.  What fall color remains fades quickly on the approach of winter darkness. It’s not all bad.  Devil’s Club leaves no longer block the old river trail so we take it to the secret garden Aki and I stumbled into on Midsummer.  Its once green ferns have died back to tough brown husks. We find one red huckleberry, still moist and fresh. Some yellowing leaves still cling to the same bush but on one small shoot flower buds swell. One has burst into full bloom—a tiny Japanese lantern hanging in the rain.  Is each huckleberry bush a confederation of independent twigs?

We return to the main trail and find it covered with fallen cottonwood leaves. Crisp even in this downpour, they still crackle under foot.  I shuffle just to hear them fly with each boot step then stop in see them sail away from Aki’s paws.  May I never outgrown the need to splash in puddles or crash through fallen leaves.

Russia transfered the Alaska Territory to the USA 144 years ago today. Happy to be part of America, many of us take the day off from work. At first it looked to be a day best spent in the museum. A nasty rain storm had hammered Chicken Ridge all night and didn’t slow down until mid-morning. That’s when Aki and I drove out to North Douglas for a low tide beach walk.

The rain holds off as we pass through a tunnel of alder trees and on to the beach.  Weak shafts of sunlight brighten irregular patches of the water near Smugglers Cove but  disappear as the wind builds. Storm darkness moving up Lynn Canal quashes any hope for blue sky. Through a shower of wind blown alder leaves we watch the tendrils of a serious rain squall dangle over the sea.

Driven by a south wind the storm heads north toward Haines. Only its edges will touch us—-wind mostly and a back eddy of brief rain.  Surf builds on the shore as we round the main point. Its too small to disturb the large colony of gulls and crows hunkered down on the point. Nothing will move them to flight, not even my clumsily approach on rain slick  rocks. The sea is empty beyond the gulls. No boats, planes, sea birds or cruising eagles.  We hear rumors that sea lions are fishing off shore but never see them.

We usually see ravens and eagles here jockeying for perches in the spruce lining the beach. Today a lone eagle could have his pick of places.

An alder in full leaf lies across the beach path and I wonder if it fell during last night’s storm. Standing at what was once the tree top I take a bird’s eye of the tree.  Cones for spring and miniature leaves fill the highest branches that are wrapped in unlucky lichen and moss.

While some trees and bushes still show fall color I am drawn to fallen leaves stuck to the wet beach rocks and cliff sides. One strong red crab apple leaf appears to hide from winter between two flat surfaced stones. I am also drawn to a field of basketball sized rocks that have been rounded by the sea. They remind me of the story the architect I.M. Pei told how his father planted large rocks in the sea to harvest them 15 years later after the currents had made them something to admire.

I can see the beach as a sculpture garden—a place to display the sea’s work. Its currents have decorated the beach at the high tide line with long golden brown rolls of sea weed and purple middens of empty mussel shells. The sea’s storm surges have pull sharp edges rocks from the cliffs to mix with surf rolled pebbles in interesting patterns.  Only the boulders left by retreating glaciers stand against the currents. Even these are incorporated in the sea’s. Aki uses her nose, not eyes, to appreciate the ocean’s work. She adds to it with a lift of her leg.