The rain catches us halfway through a mountain meadow walk. Unless accompanied by a wind, Aki never reacts to rain. Today shower doesn’t stop her survey of this familiar trail. I understand. It comforts as it falls amid snowflakes. True, the heavy drops shatter mountain reflections in the meadow ponds. Yes, the rain soaks my gloves until they chill the hands they cover. But, it also washes things away: irritating plant seeds, dust, and some of the sadness I carried since learning about the death of a friend’s child. Don’t hunch protectively in such a cleansing shower. Stand and let it wash freshness over your face like you would tears.

It’s day for being on the water, not in the woods. Aki and I should be in the canoe, spoiling the salt chuck’s perfect reflection of mountain, fog and sky. Only one feeding fish, a trout or maybe char, distorts the mirror. Behind, Lynn Canal is just as flat and calm beyond where water spilling down the salt chuck falls loses the energy to disturb.

I’m sad, but reassured by the sound made by water spilling over the falls. This cusp of sea and lake, today simply black and white, is the needed place to pray for a family who just lost a child. Here I can trust in a welcoming heaven, hold a child’s wake.

Yesterday winter seemed close. But here, in this ocean-side forest the ground plants act like it is spring. The sorrels retain their green and some sport red berries. The ferns are still in summer colors. Most surprising are the skunk cabbage plants that send up new, spear-like shoots through recently died back growth. Which are wiser, the mountain muskeg plants already hunkered down for winter, or these forest guys?

The First Snow. To reach it, we climb a steep gravel road that ends at the top of one of Douglas Island’s mountains. My hands cool almost to point of pain and I worry that it might be too cold to my middle-aged dog. But further up the mountain Aki reminds me about how much she loves the winter and the snow. We leave the road where cold weather had already frozen the muskeg enough to allow for easy walking. Aki sniffs and pees here and there, barks once, throws up her tail, and snaps off a series of large circles on the snowy surface. That snow dance done, she dashes up to me, bows with her tail pointing skyward, and barks once again.

On this Halloween, a traditional day for surprises, Aki and I enjoy two pleasant ones on our walk up Fish Creek. The first is the smell of just sawn spruce and the man who sawed it. He and his new pile of hewn trail boards stand in a pool of bright light. The fast moving sun will soon shift away his spotlight and turn it on some filaments of spider web and strands of old man’s beard, still wet with last night’s rain, that nearby decorate blue berry twigs. Wind blew down the spruce tree last winter and the man’s hobby is to use his saw to improve trails. So, the logger didn’t down a live tree. His efforts produced a treat, not a trick.

Further up the trail Aki alerts to a gang of five ouzels that fly low over the creek like WWII torpedo planes. They drop themselves, not torpedoes into the creek water but the effect is as deadly for their prey. Afterwards they collect themselves on midstream rocks to do their little bouncing dance. One calmly walks into the water. Another treat.

On this walk through the rain soaked moraine, I wonder what it would be like to be limited to Aki’s color range. A dog, she can only see shades of yellow, blue and gray. While the remaining few willow leaves are a mooted yellow, I can’t find anything that shows blue. So the little poodle mix is limited to the black to white gray tones offered by a 1950’s era television. In sympathy, I turned all the photos I took into black and whites. Well, all but one. I just couldn’t destroy the subtle browns of this line of dying alder leaves.

Aki was snug and asleep when I started assembling the gear for our morning walk. Fog lay like a feather boa on top of Gastineau Channel but no clouds blocked the dark-blue ski. It was 8:30, the crack of dawn in Juneau this time of year. Asking the little dog to leave so early in the day was probably unfair. I’d had had my coffee and breakfast and a bit of a read while she dreamed of snatching bits of cheese from the breakfast her other human would eat after returning home from the swimming pool.

The poodle mix rallied and joined me on a walk to a mountain meadow. Halfway up the access road, Aki stopped and starred at me—her way of requesting a turn back. Wanting to see the sunlight break over a frosty meadow, I pushed on. When the gap between up exceeded comfort, she padded slowing after me. On the lower meadow I found a standing dead pine that bent toward the rising sun. Two lower limbs mimicked arms offering subjugation. I said, “OK little dog, you win,” and turned back. She led all the way to the car.

How odd that the lowly bracken can look so beautiful this late into fall. The ferns have died back from green to a normally dull brown. They still hold their summer shape but soon their leaves will dissolve until just their stalks arc above the forest floor. In the old growth forest, this morning’s low angle sun brings out their hidden oranges and yellows. On exposed meadows, where the bracken had been forced down by frost, they look like over baked chocolate cakes dusted with powder sugar.

Aki has little patience for me when we reach Skater’s Cabin. She wants out of the car and onto the ground where so many of Juneau’s dogs are exercised. I am in almost as much hurry to see the glacier reflected in Mendenhall Lake.

Between autumn storms we have a calm, sunny break. We also have the place to ourselves. Way off in the closed campground we can hear kids blowing off steam as they ride bikes on asphalted now free of cars.

Aki and I keep to the lakeshore and find the remnant of iceberg that has grounded just off the beach. From one angle it looks like an angel that spread its winds to skim just above the water. This is old ice, maybe ancient stuff that will melt into nothing if winter doesn’t arrive soon. Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust. From water you came, to water you will go.