I am trying to ignore the voice that rises up the mountain from the mouth of a woman heading this way with at least one friend. It never stops or slows. Aki looks forward at a small family ahead of us on the trail. They stop, having just crested the saddle so their toddler can ride a diminutive bicycle around them.  The mountain turns in a Fellini set but without nuns or umbrellas. We have left it too late.

Normally early risers, Aki and I would have been climbing up this mountain slope at daybreak but for errands and an appointment in late morning that could not be missed. We pass the family, nice folks with quiet voices, and continue to a mountain ridge said to offer a view of Admiralty Island. The voice and her friend pass the family and continue apace with Aki and I. Showing no sign of weakening it fills the air with stories of things that happened far from here and that mean nothing to me. The voice will follow us to the top.

Seeking the smallest solitude I lead Aki off the dry gravel road and onto a wet downward curving muskeg meadow. In minutes we hear only a tiny wind. I’d meant to come up here on the sunny weekend day in late September that we spent in the Fish Creek woods. This meadow would have been a persian carpet of colors that day.  Today only low bush blueberry brush and free standing  deer cabbage leafs offer some red drama to go with a few grass clumps still showing gold and yellow beauty. Most everything else has faded to early winter brown. 

We walk where the wind strikes hard at the mountain shoulder before bending downslope to the sea. Few plants can grow more than a foot off the ground. Only wind sculptured mountain hemlocks and the stripped carcasses of gnarled spruce reach high enough to bother the wind.

Have I mentioned that the ground and all its plants carry a heavy load of dew drops that soak Aki and my shoes. At first I accepted it as the price of escaping the voice then saw the dew drops sparkle with sunlight turning the brown corpses of skunk cabbage into works of art.

We find a patch of low growing blueberry bushes that still hold fruit. While I take a picture of the berry forest Aki the brat invades it, knocking over ripe berries as she goes then gobbles up the ones that caught her eye. I manage to find the two or three berries that escaped her pillaging and pop them in my mouth. They taste faded as the colors that surround them. We left it too late. 

We are having one of those joy after sorrow moments that come in the Fall.  The hard rain and wind of last week ended at daybreak and for a precious few hours there is sun shining from a blue sky. We should be climbing into alpine meadows, now blankets of yellows and reds but I haven’t visited Fish Creek all summer. In season the place is thick with bears harvesting spawning salmon.  That’s over now that rain driven creek waters have flushed all dead or dying salmon to the sea.

We find the trucks of duck hunters in the trailhead parking lot. Their shotgun blasts sound across the wetlands. Aki is so excited to visit with this old friend she ignores the shots. Soon she is soaked by running through grass still heavy from last night’s rain. Low morning sun shines through water drops clinging to spruce needles, grass seeds, and tendrils of white tree lichen (Medusula’s Beard).

Heading down to the pond we pass colonies of colorful mushrooms that appear to swell by the minute. Steam rises from the lake side meadows and this field of six foot high fireweed stalks now showing the rich reds and yellows of the fall die back.  I look for the family of river otters that hunted here last winter but find only a diminutive raft of ducks. The pond gives a taste of beauty as we head into the deep woods with its promise of more.

Shafts of sun work their way to the mossy floor of this old growth spruce forest. Some acts as spot lights for dying devil’s club leaves,  yellow and drooping as their strength drains into the mother plant’s roots.  Another light bolt shines through a spindly spruce, undercut roots allowing it to fall toward the rain swollen creek. Sun also reveals fresh tracks of a male deer recently moving to shelter along this muddy trail.

The trip tries Aki’s patience. She wants to rush ahead but must stop often for me to make vain attempts to record this miracle of water and light. It fools the camera and its user so I turn it off and stand in a shaft of sun turning the simple forest moss into a yellow-green wonder that strains my eyes with saturated light.  After over indulging, I close my eyes, listen to the stream, feel the sun warm my face, and imagine winter with its icy silence and the simplicity delivered by six inches of snow.

I start this meadow walk wondering why I am not afraid. Aki’s caution making machinery is working. She keeps just behind me as we move along trails made by bears. We pass many sections of grass depressed flat by their now large bodies.  We take inventory of one’s recent meal on display in a large pile of black bear scat. 

A bear could be digging roots behind this high wall of ferns or sleeping in that grass covered swale yet all I feel is peace. It’s nuts.

Steep angle shafts of sunlight saturate everything with rich color that confuses my digital camera but pleases the eye. We scare a raft of ducks to flight from a meadow side slough. Their frantic flight takes them seaward while a disturbed great blue heron rises slowly then flies a few hundred paces up the slough. So much power for little noticeable effort. Herons can’t be hurried.

Beyond the meadow a small hill stands between us and Favorite Channel. We take the gentle trail offered past a Marmot den, now quiet. Last Summer we watched a big male whistle out a warning and then keep watch until the kits dived into an opening at the base of a tree. Marmots (gray Alaskan guinea pigs) could audition for a part in Wind in the Willows.   The big males exude bravery as they expose themselves to eagles until their young reach safety.  Water Rat could do worse for a friend. 

After the marmot den the trail leads to a series of pocket beaches ringed with high bush cranberry brush and something similar to the domesticated burning bush plant. Some of the cranberry bushes manage a decent display of red but all the rest show rouge fading to brown. We aren’t in for a repeat of last fall’s spectacular display of color.

Pushing past a bush that last year screamed out “red” to the sun, Aki and drop onto a plain of flat topped boulders to watch the sea. No sun shafts can make it through the thickening marine layer. Last year we watched two seals move into the tiny bay below us but none appear today. On past visits I spotted the tight white cones of whale spume rise out of the sea and then dissipate into a weak dying cloud. Not today.

This has been a day for the unseen — the bear that slept through our visit, the denned up marmots, the absent whales and seals, the reds that would be browns.