Yesterday a Hawaiian cyclone named Oho slammed into Ketchikan, 300 miles south of Chicken Ridge. It brought that Alaska border town strong winds and heavy rain. Over seven inches fell in 24 hours. Now the cyclone moves up the Alaska Panhandle. NOAA predicts high winds and a soaking for Juneau. Aki and want to be home in time to watch the show so we move up the time for this walk through the North Douglass old growth.

Steady rain brought by the cyclone’s forward elements hammers the little dog as she does a handstand while relieving herself. A poodle thing, this raising of her rear to the storm. Lacking the little dog’s nonchalance, I walk wrapped in a chrysalis of high tech rain gear. This keeps me dry but also isolated from the world we pass through. It leads me inward to puzzle over things like why some human users of the forest must leave some proof of their passage. The most benign form makeshift sculptures out of the rocks or driftwood. Those trained to conquer nature cut down trees to build drying racks, seats, and other campsite furniture. If we want this natural beauty to last, we should try to follow the old wilderness etiquette rule: Take nothing but photographs, leave nothing but footprints. There are just too many of us and too few wild places otherwise.

The time of autumn sun is over. Rain comes this afternoon. Aki and I are squeezing in a quick walk through the Treadwell mining town ruins. Aki will see no dogs on the walk and we will only spot four people. We are the only ones to see a random shaft of sunlight strike a mallard hen as she wanders among old wharf pilings. The shaft moves north across Gastineau Channel to make Slide Creek sparkle for a few seconds before clouds cut off the spotlight.

We might be the first to notice the grey and white columns of red alders form a tangled prison for still-yellow Sitka mountain ash leaves. If we walked here yesterday, I would have been draw to the flashy show of colors of cottonwoods and ashes against the always-dark green spruce. But in today’s softer light, the Alder’s strong form and subtle palette can compete with yellowing leaves for attention.

Another sunny day, a day for the ducks to fly above the guns on the wetlands. Aki and I take advantage of the resulting lack of hunters to use the Nine Mile Creek access point to edge onto a plain of flaxen colored beach glass. Still-green patches show through the standing dead stalks. Everything is covered with frost that is already yielding to the rising sun. I want to linger under the cloud-free sky and watch ground fog dissipate to reveal the islands dotting Gastineau Channel. Even now I can just make out a patch of orange-leafed cottonwoods that challenge the green monopoly held on the island by spruce most of the year.

Distracted, I lose track of Aki. When I finally spot the little dog, she is moving toward the tree line. Something has spooked her. I don’t hear eagles so suspect she smells cordite that lingers on the wetland from the last hunter’s visit

Today, Aki and I delay our walk until afternoon until a lower angle of sunlight can give the commonplace a rich texture. The little dog might prefer an overcast day when the sun doesn’t shine into her eyes. She doesn’t care that the sun gives her a halo as she waits for me near a display of yellowing thimbleberry leaves. We take a casual trail that runs down the north side of Gold Creek canyon. Halfway up the canyon wall, the sun washes out the forest of half-bare cottonwoods and evergreen spruce. Everything below is in dark shade. The sharp line of demarcation reminds that we recently passed the autumnal equinox when the sun was halfway on its winter journey south. On every sunny day we enjoy between now and the solstice, this shade line will climb the south slope of Mt. Juneau and reduce more and forest to gray. So begins the season of contraction and relaxation.

When you live 12 miles from a river of ice, too many waterfalls to name groove your mountains, and whales hunt your downtown waterways for food, your risk the loss of awe. But today, Juneau’s children remind me that our home ground is full of wonder. On a walk across glacial moraine to Nugget Falls, Aki and I pass many tiny kids who squeal and jabber as they walk down a trail lined with vivid yellows toward a waterfall powerful enough to produce it own rainbow. It took Noah’s flood to produce the first recorded rainbow. The little dog and I get one as a reward for walking to the falls on a sunny autumn day.

This mountain meadow is between storms. An unexpected sunlight, hitting at a low angle, bejewels every plant that retains moisture from the night’s rain. Aki runs into a 14 month old labradoodle that literally runs rings around her. She stands by my side looking as severe as a disapproving matron.

 I take over a hundred photographs, thinking that I am capturing some of the beauty. Back on Chicken Ridge I will be disappointed with my product. But now, each click of the shutter makes me feel like an artistic genius.

Aki is in a bad mood. It is not clear why. She barks at every vehicle and person she sees on the way up the Gold Creek valley. It can’t be a reaction to the weather. We should be enjoying this dry spell between storms. Yesterday’s storm stripped the leaves from the first cottonwoods to yellow and engorged the creek with fast moving white water. Tomorrow there will be more bad weather. Why can’t the little dog wait until then to share her negativity?

Aki and both freeze and turn in the direction of the noise—a sharp crack that could have only been made by a deer hoof snapping a branch in this soaking wet forest. While waiting for the deer to show herself, I wonder what my little dog is thinking about. She doesn’t show fear or aggression. Most likely sheis just curious. In this way she is more like the seals we jut saw than her master who keeps his finger on his camera’s shutter release.

We surprised one of the seals when it was only 25 feet offshore. It made a noisy crash dive rather than its usual stealthy slip under the surface. In seconds it and another seal surfaced a hundred yards out. While Aki searched through seaweed left by the last high tide, I watched the seals move closer and closer. Sometimes they raised their heads far out of the water. Then, for some reason, they disappeared.

Our deer must have disappeared as well. We give up and move into a section of the forest recently drowned by water backed up by a beaver dam. The base of a brace of two thick spruce trees is covered with sloughed off bark segments. They lay on the ground moss like monochromatic puzzle pieces. Looking up, I see death all the way to the canopy. The beaver’s impulse to build and maintain has damaged this chunk of old growth in the way that man’s impulse to pave and pollute is damaging everyone’s environment.

I wish I could talk with Aki about this morning’s light. Somehow, the rays of an invisible sun penetrate a cloud layer thick enough to hide the mountains. When the rays hit Crystal Lake and the yellow-leafed cottonwoods that surround it to give the scene a Mediterranean feel. The little dog and I are wet from rain, not from being overly warm like we might on a summer day near Venice.

Is Aki finally feeling her age? She will turn nine in November, which puts her on a shady side of middle age. But she is always excited to reach the trailhead and runs two miles to each one I walk. Maybe it’s the weather this morning that has her sending me, “Are you sure you don’t want to go home now” looks. It is cold, wet, and windy on this mountain meadow. My hands are going num. Raindrops cover the filer each time f I point the camera into the wind. If not for the subtle fall color I’d bailed an hour ago. The little dog and I hang in for another half hour and return to the car where she huddles near the door. She leaps inside when I open it, seems to enjoy it when I towel her off. Is this a glimpse into our future? When will it arrive?