When Aki alerts to danger, I take her seriously. She has spotted several bears that I would never have seen without her help. But, today she growls at a small stream coursing along the trail. It the water, moving along a wooden boardwalk trail section does have a bass resonance. It is dark except where it turns translucence after breaking over a damn of sticks and sparkles. After growling, the little poodle-mix drops her trail and sulks to a spot behind me. A hundred feet further up the trail, she retakes point.

On a gray day, one without weather drama, Aki and I climb a gravel road leading to Gastineau Meadows. Aki sniffs along in work-dog fashion. If she saw the two used syringes laying orange and white in trailside grass, she gave no indication. Hopefully, the children who played loudly on the nearby school grounds haven’t found similar  needles. I’ll trash them along with bags of Aki’s scat after we finish the hike.

I won’t notice any birds or animals on the meadow, except for the water skimmer bugs that skitter across the meadow ponds with the tips of their legs jammed just under the water’s surface. The surrounding mountains—Juneau, Sheep, Jumbo, Gastineau—will look tired, like aging actors in late morning light. A light fog will rise off the channel and threaten to give the mountains cover and then dissipate before fulfilling its promise.

Even though they are well past prime, I pluck a handful of cloudberries from the meadow’s surface. Their insipid flavor can only remind me of berries gathered from the tundra of Western Alaska or Swedish Hjortron berries. We are walking this rainy day on a mountain meadow near Juneau, far away from Sweden or the Alaskan tundra. Aki, a rain forest dog, doesn’t share my memories. She doesn’t care about berries or their ability to turn wilderness into food. She wants to hang with other dogs.