Clarity of light and a sense of ground relaxing; those are the things I appreciate this morning on the Fish Creek delta. The ground is still solid thanks the last night’s freeze but there is no wind and the temperature is climbing above 40 degrees F. Some ice covers parts of the pond but the rest of winter’s work lays scattered in sharp-sided chunks of crystal on the golden meadow’s grass.

 Aki runs this way and that, ears flapping, chasing ghosts. I hear a splash and think of the otter that tried to coax her onto the pond ice during our last visit. Opaque fog rises from the meadows like cold smoke. The little dog gives up on a promising scent to follow me out to the creek mouth where the snow-white Mendenhall Towers seem to be showing off in the morning sun. This is what full sun exposure can do to a rain forest dweller—it can turn us anthropomorphic. It makes me want to think of God as a human mother figure because this morning of Hers has given me comfort, beauty, and peace.

“Happy New Year,” said the storm that brought cold, steady rain to Chicken Ridge. It said it with a sneer. Aki, who usually lobbies for an earlier departure for her walk, showed no interest in sampling the rain. But, in the afternoon she found herself riding in the car on a drive to North Douglas Island.

Earlier, the storm covered the trail system with several ices of wet snow but nothing falls from the sky when we head into the forest. The constant drip of melting snow makes it hard to enjoy the bright beauty of white on green beauty. But on the beach and on open muskeg meadows, we can stand like patrons in front of a Botticelli and be amazed by the shapes of snow covered trees cutting up a sky of blues, yellows, and grays.

After a holiday season spent under gray skies, trying to dig beauty out of low contrast grays, this cloudless, sunny day is an appreciated gift. Even better, the rain that damped Chicken Ridge on Christmas fell as snow on the lands drained by Eagle River. Aki explodes out of the car after we drop out of the river of cars heading out Juneau’s only real road. I am not sure where, on the remaining fourteen miles of it, they are going to park. Maybe they are driven by people brought here to work for a legislator from one of those car-centered cultures like Los Angeles or Anchorage. Maybe they just need to drive somewhere, if only to feel their right foot on the gas pedal, their hands on a steering wheel.

A stiff crust covers the snow so we can explore off the usual paths. Aki sniffs at recent trails left by a porcupine, a fox, and a coyote. No human or dog has come this way since the last snow. Shafts of sunlight spotlight the beardlike lichen that almost covers the meadow’s mountain hemlocks but mostly we walk in the shade. At the head of a tiny iced over stream, sunlight turns a free standing spruce into a candle. Aki and I approach it like two wise men. The little poodle mix is on the coyote’s trail but loses it where her wild cousin crossed the stream ice. Up close, I understand that even with its halo, our oracle is only a dying tree. Suddenly I realize that I have been breaking through the crust and abrasive snow has worked its way into my new waterproof boots. I’m 100 meters from the packed trail and face a hard job getting off the softening meadow. I turn toward the tree when I reach the trail and am pleased to see that it still shines like the Spirit of Christmas.

The sky fills with gulls when we break out of the woods. They glide as a squadron with the tips of their hinged wings pointed downward. Two harlequin ducks burst from the beach, stretching their necks forward. Nothing remains on the water. “What’s the deal, little dog?”

Down beach I spot a flash of white cross a slower moving patch of turquoise. In a few minutes a young woman with two energetic dogs comes into view. The woman ignores the beach, the birds, and her own dogs while she speaks into a cell phone. She steps over a small stream, apparently not hearing the song of water moving fast over beach pebbles. I am a little angry after she passes me while focused only on her phone. But the stream song soothes me close to where I was when watching the gulls.

Bending over I see my judgmental face in the shinny surface of a Lion’s Mane jellyfish that has collapsed on the beach. She was happy. She must have been talking with someone she loved about something she loved. Why should I resent her for enjoying a magical connection with another human being because her voice flushed the beach of birds and shattered a few minutes of my solitude?