Aki is in disgrace at least in my eyes. She probably sees herself as a hero for saving me from the imagine danger that awaits on the flume trail. It’s 16 F. degrees but we are both dressed for the cold. I can wait here at the start of the trail all day. So, apparently, can she.

We both I hear the hum of water flying through the flume—a squared wooden tube that feeds a downtown hydro plant with water from Gold Creek. The little dog could feel the vibration of moving water if she were standing on the flume boards. With a look that could melt a tax auditor’s heart, she tries to convince me to abandon my reckless plan. Frustrated, I pick up the ten-pound poodle mix and carry her 50 meters down the trail.

She skulks behind me until I lead her off the flume and down a rough trail that leads to Gold Creek. She flashes past to take up point, looking back often to make sure I haven’t fallen or worse, wandered off on some dangerous adventure. Runoff from an early January rainstorm gouged out a foot deep staircase that facilitates the descent. Above us, foot thick ice sickles hang from the flume. Ahead is a fine and stable bridge across Gold Creek. I am alone when I reach it. Aki stands 25 meters behind me on the trail. She looks back, apparently to convince me that we should climb back to the Flume Trail rather than cross the bridge. Guess who backtracks so he can carry a little dog across the bridge.

(Note that the gorse is still green even when partially coated with a layer of January ice.)

I am ignoring Aki’s agenda for this morning’s walk. She stands and stares at me from a strip of grass that borders the Sheep Creek beach. It is obvious to her that we should follow the worn dog-walking path down channel toward Juneau.

Wanting to take advantage of the ebb, I keep walking away from her over exposed tidelands. Since no eagles skulk in the beachside spruce trees, I can safely stretch the invisible rubber band that connects me to the little dog until it pulls her onto the tidelands.

Fifty meters out I turn around. Aki, who has halved the distance between us, freezes. I keep walking, wishing the wind wasn’t driving down the wind chill. The next time I turn around, Aki is right behind me. Then, she sneaks ahead to conduct a nasal survey of the exposed ground.

A small raft of mergansers splash in Gastineau Channel. But the local murder of crows dominates the tidelands. At first they flit around. When neither Aki nor I chase them, they return to their search for food and fun.

Aki and I start up the service road that leads to Gastineau meadows as the fog that had recently engulfed the Douglas Island ridge retreats back to Gastineau Channel. Two people and their dog pass us on their way back to the trailhead. The man, smelling a little of old liquor and sweat, warns me about an icy trail ahead. He and the woman look like they just woke from sleeping rough. Their leashed dog almost pulls the woman off her feet. After they slide on down the hill a chocolate Labrador retriever climbs out of the fog to join us. Later we will meet the lab’s owner, ending his search for the missing lab.

We are still too deep into winter to expect sunshine on the meadow. But, now that the fog is gone, sunrays do reach the forested hills that border it. Sheep Mountain and Mts. Juneau and Roberts are painfully bright from the sunlight hammering their fresh coats of snow. The sun has reduced the fog to a glowing white snake over Gastineau Channel.

I hurry up the icy trail to get a photograph of Mt. Juneau underlined by a strip of fog. Aki and the chocolate lab lead the way. Together they catalogue scents left by animals that passed through during the night. The lab gives off a reassuring sense of confidence that my little poodle mix can never master. Aki can project a bossy demeanor, but she always assumes a submissive posture when meeting strange dogs.

At the highest vista spot on the trail, we stop to watch the fog swallowing up the view. I expect this move will be fatal for the fog, making it easier for the sun to burn it away. But the sun has already slipped behind the Douglas Mountain ridge.

As we descend the trail, the fog obscures more and more of the mountains. By the time we meet the owner of the chocolate lab near the service road, only the top of Sheep Mountain glows above the fog, looking like the stern of an ice-struck liner about to slip into the sea.

It’s 8 degrees F. Aki dashes toward the warm car that we left just a minute ago. She has explored on colder days. I wonder if she is aging out of real winter like some one from the Iron Range who moves to Florida after retirement. Ready to wait for warmer weather, I am about to give up on today’s walk when Aki sniffs a patch of frosted grass, pees, and gallops back to me. False alarm.

Reunited, we join one of Aki’s other human friends to walk down the Eagle River on a trail softened by frost feathers. They slush, rather than crack or snap when stepped on. While some light still reaches the mountains and a slice of meadow we walk in dusk conditions even thought it is only 1:30 P.M. Some water still flows in the river but much of it is covered with ice. Five-inch-thick pans of it, all sharp-sided puzzle pieces, are marooned on sand bars until the next flood tide.

I am glad I am wearing an old beaver hat made for me by a Yupik woman from the Kuskokwim River. The weather’s too cold for wool caps. Today’s harsh winter beauty, the kind produced by mixing cold, light, snow and ice, is rarely formed by the rain forest. These ingredients are as common as ravens during the Kuskokwim winter. But gray skies are more common than blue along the Eagle where the temperature rarely drops this low.

Aki has no problem appreciating today’s rare gift. She patrols along without concern and seems put out when I lift her over sea ice that has yet to set. She must not know that her feet could freeze if they became wet in the slush. I take many pictures, keeping my camera inside my parka between snaps. But this precaution doesn’t prevent the shutter button from stinging my finger each time I push down on it.