While Aki does her business near the trailhead notice board, I read the copy of Gerald Hopkins’ poem, “Spring and Fall, to a Young Child” that someone tacked to the board along side a bulletin about invasive species and a ziplock bag of found items. Why, I asked my little dog, would the poet tell a child already sad over the end of fall color that autumn defoliation is a reminder of our mortality. Weren’t there any child protection officers around in 1880 when Hopkins wrote the poem?

Nothing in the old growth forest distracted me from these thoughts, not even the red sorel plants that brightened the forest. I found a flock of kindred spirits on the beach—gulls waiting for the tide to recede. They hunkered together at the waterline while one of their brothers stood guard duty on an offshore rock. I could almost hear them muttering, “Hopkins, what a jerk.”

Shinny, tall and black, and object draws my eye as it appears and disappears among the waves in Gastineau Channel. The object attracts my attention like I’d be attracted to a killer whale’s dorsal fin. But is it only a fragment of a spruce tree being driven toward Juneau by the same wind that blows Aki’s earflaps away from her face. The wind seems to stun the little dog. She stands stiff and still for a few seconds, barks, and starts dashing out circles in the soft beach sand. I get down on one knee and try to photograph her moves. She speeds up, makes it a game to avoid being photographed. I only manage to catch her in far edge of one frame. Is she had been a little quicker, I’d would have never realized how deep her front right paw sank into the sand just before she snapped off the turn.

Aki and I only see monochromatic birds on this walk down Fish Creek. One fat raven watches us from the pond–side willows. We watch a dull-gray water dipper bop up and down on the beach. From the number of screeches and complaints, I suspect the surrounding spruce trees are full of bald eagles but I only spot one and that, an immature bird, is soon gone.

There are still a few of leaves in fall color but more and more of them drop in every wind gust. We are entering the time where structure and shape will provide all the beauty. Maybe that is why on our walk down creek, I was attracted to a dead-brown alder leaf that hung precariously on a bare twig. It had dropped from its natal tree and twirled on a wind puff to the twig. A small sack of rain clung to the leaf stem, which pointed to the ground. Now on our return, I suspect that a rising wind has blown it away. The same wind raises ripples on the pond and pushes the forest toward winter.

When I first heard Bob Dylan sing, “He not busy being born is busy dying,” I ignored him. For many of my generation, the words gave license to live dangerously. It reminded others, waiting for deployment to Viet Nam, that they too might soon be bleeding and dying. That was 50 years ago. Today I still pretend that Aki and I will live forever.

What would the shore pines that line this trail make of Dylan’s words? They all seem to be in the process of dying, Some are completely bare. Others display a mix of dead brown and live green needles. If sentient, they might have cursed the fate that allowed their seed to germinate here at the northern edge of their range. They can’t compete with the spruce and hemlock on good ground so they colonized wet mountain meadow like this one. As a result they grow slowly. It takes them 50 years to expand their trunk a few inches.

I recently read about a contest for writers able to express themselves with only six words. Now I am challenged to describe today’s wet walk on the moraine. Here goes: Dog man glacier ducks all wet.

Some force too subtle to feel carries cloud fragments up the Gold Creek valley. I can see then from Chicken Ridge, which makes me want to hurry to the creek valley to watch their passage. Aki has other ideas. She examines and rejects a myriad of spots to pee and resists any encouragement to move. By the time we arrive, the air above the valley is empty. Then another train of the ghosts appears. Should I be surprised? Soon people in the Americas will celebrate a Day of the Dead. Europeans will visit their cemeteries to remember their loved and departed. I think of our family’s beloved gone as the cloud fragments dissolve against the slope of Mt. Juneau.

Aki loves this part of the moraine, not for the lingering fall color that underlining the glacier or the chance to spot a fishing eagle. She loves all the dogs that we usually encounter here. Right now she plays with a terrier that could almost pass for a miniature schnauzer. My little poodle mix bows, tail wagging, and dashes a few circles around the stunned terrier. The terrier figures it out and runs a few circles around the little poodle mix. The whole time the terrier’s owners call for him to follow them down the trail.

This morning unexpected sun shines on the Dredge Lakes and no wind blows off the glacier.. The moraine lakes form perfect mirrors that reflect mountains, glaciers and what is left of the fall color. Lakeside cottonwoods look gaunt—more branches than leaves, more brown than orange. Two bufflehead ducks etch the Moose Lake mirror with their wakes. Near the opposite shore, a female red duck almost blends into a reflection of willows. The buffleheads might stick around until freezeup but the red duck, like the lingering cottonwood leaves, will soon be gone.

As Aki and I work our way around False Outer Point, I have the vague feeling that I should be celebrating something. The weather gives no cause for a party with its rain that soaks Aki and eagles alike. I’ve seen and heard whales from the point but there is little hope of that today. The advance guard of humpbacks are already chasing each other around Maui. Just off shore a gang of gulls gives a play by play our progress. Their screams and calls could pass for music in this gray silence. Now I remember. This is the anniversary of “Walking with Aki.” Sometime this week I should take the little dog up the Fish Creek trail, which I described in my first blog entry. Thankfully, these Southeast Alaska trails are rich enough to stimulate five years of blog posts. Even on a day like this one, when memories provide more to think about than this rocky beach in flat light, the little dog and I find cause to doddle.

Aki should be as frustrated as me. The only dog she can smell is locked up in a fisherman’s truck. Otherwise, it’s all spawned out salmon the eagles and gulls that feed on them. She wisely ignores all. It’s the eagles that frustrate me. We have seen at least five this morning since walking onto the Sheep Creek delta. One flew right over my head as I focused at a dead silver salmon that had been wrapped in seaweed left by the retreating tide. The bird, a mottled brown immature bald eagle glided over us to snatch a chunk of salmon from the foot of a gull. Now it tears away at the carcass just a hundred feet away. I know that in these low light conditions the old camera I brought won’t capture any detail. I click a few frames anyway, walk to the channels edge and startled a harbor seal that had surfaced 20 feet away. A raft of Barrow Golden Eye ducks explode into flight as my old camera tries to focus on their escape. Two mature bald eagles, perched on a channel marker 200 feet away turn their heads as if to spare me more shame.

On this Saturday after the storm, Aki and I walk the flume trail, a neighborhood route that climbs up one side of Gold Greek and down the other. The little dog stays on lead during the ascent, which involves city streets like Gold Street, and once over the old wooden trestle bridge, a gravel road. Like Marmots taking advantage of the fair weather, dog owners are out and provide Aki with much entertainment.

I am drawn to the tall cottonwood trees on the south slope of Mt. Juneau. Some hard chargers have already dropped their leaves. The brown and yellow colors of died back ground cover show through a confusion of their trunks and branches. Cottonwoods near the creek still sport green leaves. Others illuminate dark spruce groves like yellow candles. I should be bored with these trees since I have walked past them for 20 cycles of the seasons. But each day they show me a different flash of beauty. Even during an autumn storm they provide a place for rain to collect and glisten.