Not knowing how long this sunny spell will last, I load Aki into the car and head out to places that look best in bright weather. First stop—Peterson Creek Salt Chuck. Aki whines and then shoots out of the car after I park next to the chuck. A small raft of mallard ducks sleeps on the other side of the salt-water lake. Near them two great blue heron hunt the shallows. Through a forest opening formed by the cascade that drains into the sea, I can see a slice of the Chilkat Range.

I think about taking a trail that circles around the opposite side of the salt chuck until the ducks wake up and burst into the air. The herons are already gone. At the edge of the woods behind their fishing hole, three people lower their cameras.

Later the little dog and I stand near the mouth of Eagle River and watch lines of waves crash into foam against the river’s protective sand bars. Some of the waves ride up the river. Later we will see a seal in the river, far from the mouth and I will wonder how it navigated the riling channel.

Aki and I hear wave strikes when we are still in the old growth forest. In a minute we will learn that the sounds are made by small waves that have been driven ashore by the north wind. Aki won’t bother or even acknowledge the presence of the thirty mallard ducks or sixty gulls that stand on the beach just beyond the splash zone.

I think that the birds have been penned on the exposed beach by wind and waves until one of the gulls snatches a small fish from wave foam and gobbles it up. Rather than refugees, the gulls and ducks are exploiters: efficient feeder that let the wind and waves deliver breakfast.

After paralleling the feed zone, the trail takes us through woods to another beach where a scattering gulls stand about looking like you might when waiting for a bus. One patrols the splash zone, turning from time to time to face the waves. It doesn’t flinch when a leading wave crashes toward it or step back when surrounded by rising foam.

Yesterday, twelve trumpeter swans plunked down on the waters of Twin Lakes. This morning most of them sleep with their long necks arcing out and back so their heads rest on their backs. A few feed, with their bottoms pointing skyward, on pondweeds. I lock Aki in the car and quietly move toward the big birds. A pair feeding just ten feet off shore ignore me and the mallards that paddle around them.

Later, with Aki on a moraine trail, I think about the barnyard like aspect of my swan sighting. True, they just flew over 1500 miles from their breeding areas in north and western Alaska. They are probably too exhausted or hungry to respond to people on a nearby dog-walking trail.

I remember the mute swans that crowded the Thames River on my visit to Eton. From a rented bicycle I watched birds as graceful and beautiful as today’s trumpter swans fight each other for access to ice cream cones on offer from tourists with tickets to Windsor Castle in their pockets.

Thirty years ago, I watched a small family of swans break into flight when my skiff eased out of a small stream and onto a grass-lined lake in Western Alaska. Late afternoon sun brightened their feathers as they struggled to lift off the lake. In seconds, they were just dots in the blue sky. Even though today’s swan viewing and the one I enjoyed on the Thames allowed sufficient time to appreciate the grace and beauty of the lovely birds, only the brief visitation with tundra swans on that Western Alaskan lake seemed like a gift.

Like the ravens that are hunting for carrion on Sandy Beach, I am attracted by rotting things in the Treadwell woods, the corrosion eaten cast iron survivors of the Mexican Mine and deteriorating yellow and brown devil’s club leaves.

Photo bombed by Leaf

Last weekend’s snow caught out the berry bushes along Outer Point Trail. This morning some, weighed down with snow, partially block our way to the beach. Seeing crisp, green leaves entombed in frozen snow and the oranges and yellows of turning foliage emerging through cold, white clumps, I wonder if nature is struggling to adapt to our changing climate.

Aki stops to sniff at a fresh set of deer tracks when sunlight suddenly brightens the muskeg meadow we pass through. It also reaches out into Lynn Canal, exciting a rainbow into existence. The bow arcs over Shaman Island and ends in a wall of gray clouds. Back home I will question ever seeing the rainbow as it appears as a faint smear of colors in the photos I took of the island.

We find the other end of the rainbow when I stop on the way home to wrack seaweed at the North Douglas Island boat ramp. It slices across the face of Mendenhall Glacier and into Fritz Cove. I remember God’s promise to Noah never again to inundate the world with water. The recent accords on climate change may help God keep his promise. But even through the rainbow, I can see evidence of the glacier’s melting retreat.