Today, unseen things on this mountain meadow bother Aki and I. Distracted by the wind that shakes elephant-eared skunk cabbage leaves, the little dog almost steps on a trail-side grouse. She doesn’t even react when the plump bird flutters to life and takes refuge in the crotch of a hemlock tree.

At first I welcome the wind because it blows away mosquitos and other bitting pests. Then it carries the sound of other hikers—-children who would rather be home watching TV than on the meadow; barking dogs; adults sharing the events of the past week. On the now friendly wind, Aki hears promises of the caress and maybe a chance to chase another dog. Her curmudgeonly owner hears only the disappearance of solitude.

Like a detective trying to discover clues in an ancient crime scene, I try to puzzle out what made these faint tracks on the meadow snow. They wander across the snowy field like furrows set by an inattentive farmer. Crossing them are recognizable snow machine tracks left by someone who enjoyed banking his machine on steep creek banks, shooting over the shoulder of the big beaver house, and weaving through the bordering forest. Some, maybe the rabbits and deer that watched the show, would find the snow machine driver guilty of crimes. I don’t judge, just hope that the relatively short reach of the meadow will discourage a return.

I ski in the snow machine tracks while Aki sniffs about, pees here and there, but ignores the mystery tracks. This tells me that they were machine made. The mystery is solved mid-meadow, where a trail of two parallel wide grooves confirms that the tracks were made by four wheel all terrain vehicles. Stopping, I listen for silence—blood beating a tattoo in my ears, squawks of disturbed birds, then nothing. No wolf howling, rabbit crying, rifle firing, snowmachine whining. I can almost hear the slight breeze ruffling Aki’s ears.

While skiing along Eagle River at sunset, we stop to watch seals, driftwood, and small pans of ice move downriver on the ebbing tide. As I always do when seeing a seal in river in winter, I wonder why they enter salmon-less waters on the flood tide. Unlike me, they can’t be seeking solitude for they usually travel in company. My volunteer job at the local hospital this week made me look deeper at the meaning of solitude, which assumes the shape of loneliness for patients during slow moving weekend days. As long as solitude promises me peace through isolation I will seek it in the company of my little dog; hoping it’s isolation will provide curative rest if I ever spend the weekend in a hospital bed remembering a seal gazing up at me from river waters painted by a winter sunset.