A spring-like breakup continues on Mendenhall Lake. The ice on the lakeside trail that made talking dangerous just three days ago is gone. Rainwater pools on the lake ice, Cracks and open water are sure to follow unless winter returns. The most dramatic change is in the icebergs. The less-dense ones have softened until they look like sculptures of turquoise snow. One, fashioned on the denser old ice looks like the armored spine of a submerged dragon. Above all this melting, ghosts of fog move with purpose, caressing the bald rock hills recently exposed by the retreating glacier. Along the shore a little poodle mix trots with her Frisbee in her mouth.

Rain and wind, not a snow flake in sight, but we have solitude on this North Douglas beach walk. It’s high tide on a windy day so the waves reach almost to the beach grass. Gulls hunker at the edge of the grass, like they are waiting for a favorite restaurant to open. In a sense, they are. In a few hours the retreating tide will expose gull-tasty goodies battered to the surface by the surf.

Aki has never been so close to a surf line. The little dog cringes at my feet, then shoots ahead to where she can escape onto the grass. Even though I know better, I feel a tinge of fear when, near me, a two-foot high breaker rakes back beach gavel in its undertow. “Wait for me little dog.”

Aki and I walk on a snow-covered meadow barely able to support my weight. The little dog, she flies across it. But I break through the crust on every fourth step. Yesterday, a deer struggled along the meadow’s edge, its hooves plunging five inches or more on each step. I follow its tracks until Aki starts to bark at a spot in the forest ahead of us. The poodle-mix is edgy after I veer off the deer trail.

The sky is also edgy, changeable. When we arrived it was filled with clouds and fog. Now the sun has opened up a blue wound in the gray and sparkles on snow-covered alders and willows. It puts me on edge. I’d be comfortable in the calming gray, maybe a little joyful under sunny skies. But the meadow whipsaws back and forth between joy and sorrow, mimicking a wake.

You’d think that grey days, like this one, would be perfect for grieving. But I feel more joy than sorrow even through a friend and mentor died yesterday. Earlier, when confined with people who did not know her, I felt the expected sadness. But here, on a beach made musical by waves, with the Chilkat Mountains managing to glow under storm clouds, I think of the love she gracefully gave and received. I smile remembering that when she recited her poetry, Eva only spoke the truth.

What would another dog walker think of the scene? A raven, simply black against a background of white mountains, sings a croaky song from on top of a busted pier piling. I kneel on the sand before the raven, lifting my camera as if an offering. Little Aki sits by my side, watching the big black bird.