Seamus, our digital station icon and the National Weather Service made the same forecast this morning. They told Aki and I to expect heavy rain and wind when we reached False Outer Point. We find gray skies, but no wind or rain. I’m overdressed in my storm coat, vest and sweatshirt but am able to strip down to my tee shirt when the sun comes out.

Two, battling belted king fishers fly past when we round the point. But my eye is drawn to currant, maple and wild crab apple leaves that have already show their fall colors. Some have dropped onto the still wet rocks. One rests uneasily in a tide pool, sides curled up as in a vain attempt to stay dry. Everything is ahead of schedule this year. The salmon runs hit early, the leaves are already turning. We have two gallons of blue berries in the freezer and August is barely half gone.

Aki hesitates at the edge of a swollen stream that cuts a path to Lynn Canal through the beach gravel. For a moment I think she is reacting, like me, to the defacement. Someone, not without drawing skills, has painted white designs on a line of beach boulders. They can’t be religious symbols for what faith would advocate vandalism? They can’t be meant as art. What artist would ruin natural beauty? That leaves ego of the kind that can only be swelled by destruction.

Aki searches among the Treadwell ruins, her gray curls absorbing the morning drizzle. When we break out onto the beach, she dashes to the base of a faded piling, attracted by a raven singing a song of few notes. The raven shows no fear or even acknowledgement of the little dog’s presence. Aki looks at me, like she needs direction for her next action. I vote with my feet, walk down beach where an eyeless carcass of a dog salmon lays rotting on the sand. It is a male with its jaw wide open, as if to bite the tail of a rival on the spawning beds.

Even though it ocean bright colors— silver, red, green—have faded and its skin has the texture of a wet newspaper, it is a beautiful thing. I take a few pictures and wonder if the raven isn’t waiting for us to leave so he can have the dog salmon for lunch

Yesterday Aki and I harvested blueberries. Well, Aki’s other human and I picked berries when we weren’t throwing her Frisbee. All the little dog did was chased it or dig it out from beneath clumps of berry brush. (She was kind of a pest about it.).

         Yesterday we had sunshine and comfortably warm temperatures. Today, it is cool and rainy. Ali still chases her Frisbee while we check out an old cement dam near one of the mountain meadows. This requires climbing into and out of a small ravine that requires the help of ropes. Aki manages on her own even with her precious Frisbee in her mouth.

         The dam, a little gem, was poured at a time when Juneau was full of craftsmen, a time before plywood and pressure treated wood, a time of pride. The Treadwell ruins are full of the old craftsmen’s work: cast rails and wheels, gears and water baffles. The little dam spans a diminutive creek with a graceful arc. The builders provided a crossing path on top bordered on each side by a waist-high wall. This path could lead to a Frank Lloyd Wright house or across an English moat.

If Aki knew the word’s meaning, she might have considered my targeting of this mountain meadow counterintuitive. For the first time in days, sunshine reached Chicken Ridge where we sleep and store Aki’s kibble. From the house, I could see sun hammering a meadow we often visit. Instead I drove us here, where clouds still grayed the light.

Like any dog, Aki likes to laze in the sun, but since clouds don’t dampen scent she happily patrols the trail, snout to the ground, tail raised. She ignores the water bugs that use surface tension to skate over little ponds, making bursting runs between lily pads and stalks of British tobacco. Because another dog did it before her, she pees on the splayed out skunk cabbage plants, doesn’t think twice about the rich yellows and browns that have replace the richer greens of spring as the plant’s roots suck back summer nutrients. The dog pays no attention to the cloud fragments pulled by an invisible form off the meadow and up the sides of forested hills as if they were children reluctant to leave a playground.

         You see little dog, the rising clouds are the clue. They promise fractures of blue in the gray sky and maybe shafts of light to startle the water bugs and enrich the growing patches of fall color that surround pond and watercourses.

Aki and I are back on the glacial moraine. So is the rain. The experts promise us five inches of precipitation before Friday. The heavy rain works it usual magic, flushing the trails clean of other people. Raindrops beat out a steady, but not too pushy tattoo on my rain gear and make the trailside willow leaves dance. They force my attention down, where most of today’s beauty and drama can be found. I want to stop and study the fallen cottonwood leaves, each a flame shaped abstract of yellows, greens and browns. But Aki lacks the patience. She pushes on down the trail to Crystal Lake where the Labradors swim after owner tossed toys. I hang back to photograph some leaves and a huge mushroom that muscles its way out of the ground moss.

         The little dog’s annoyance increases when I break trail to check out the little forest burn. After two or three years of desolation, a carpet of green lupine, some supporting stalks of deep blue flowers, now covers the blackened ground. Nothing can be done for the young spruce and cottonwood trees that were left dead but standing by the fire. Someday, new trees will grow in ashes enriched by fallen lupine and willows leaves. They just need patience, sunshine, and a reliable supply of rain.

Poor Aki. This is the second adventure taken without the little dog. Yesterday she stayed home while my daughter and I paddled the double kayak around Sphun Island. The morning fog burned off by the time we launched from Fritz Cove Road and paddled up a channel reduced by the ebbing tide. Aki would have whined when we rounded a point and met a long line of swells that rocked the boat like a mother rocks her cradle.

Bright sun simplified the colors of sea and land and sky. A child could have captured them with crayons. You’d need a few more crayons to reproduce the view this morning from the side of Mt. Roberts. We can see part of the route we kayaked yesterday, reduced by distances to a tiny part of our view shed. My daughter, Aki’s other human and I pick low bush blue berries, stopping to watch a mountain goat move along the side of Bear Valley or the ravens’ acrobatic show high above Gastineau Channel. We also watched cruise ship tourists struggling up the steep trail in their ship wear. They seem shocked to be surrounded by berries—the kind they eat in their cereal at home. Some sample them, like they might a piece of smoked salmon at Taku Smokeries. One guy in Boston Red Sox regalia tells his wife, “Well they are blueberries, not Massachusetts berries mind you, but they are berries.” At least he tried them.

This could be a story about what Aki does not do. She does not bother the people roasting marshmallows over a fire they built down beach from us. She doesn’t swim after a pink salmon that jumps just off shore. The little dog doesn’t even rub her back against one of the rotting dog salmon caucuses that dot this shore of Smuggler’s Cove.

While I impale a fancy version of a tofu pup on a metal rod, she whines next to her orange Frisbee. She nudges my leg with her nose until I pick up her toy and fling it for her to chase. Her other humans and I manage to cook and eat a healthy hot dog meal while she takes turns asking each of us to throw the Frisbee.

After dinner we talk, and throw Aki’s toy, and watch lambs wool clouds descend on the Chilkat Range. Holes form in the clouds that reveal blue sky, summer sun, and sometimes release shafts of light that light the sea and sky with a focused beam.

I had to swerve my bike around a dog salmon carcass today. It lay on the Glacier Highway bike path, not far from Walmart, where a bear had dropped it. The bear took a bite out of its head and belly before leaving it for me to run over. An opportunistic feeder, the black bear did not stop to wonder at the fish’s presence in a stream that meanders through a trailer park. He didn’t know about the great circle route the salmon had to swim before offering himself as a quick snack.

Two years ago, tens of thousands dog salmon smolt wandered down Gastineau Channel, though the Alexander Archipelago to the Pacific Ocean. Serving first as prey and then the predators, those most fit or lucky grew into eight or ten pound fish. When their biological alarm clocks made it impossible to remain at sea, they returned to Southeast Alaska. Driven by the need to procreate, the deceased fish I jigged around today avoided nets, killer whales, sea lions, seals, and hooks to reach his home waters at the trailer park, only to end up as bear food and finally, a road impediment.

This evening, after the bike ride, my family and I watched hundreds of gulls on the Sheep Creek delta, all bright white in low angled light, wait for thousands of dog salmon to die. No bear arrived to interrupt the fish’s efforts to mate. The gulls were content to let them finish before starting their picnic.

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While Aki walks with the rest of her family to Nugget Falls, happy for a chance to hang with one of her favorite canine buddies, a friend and I kayak Mendenhall Lake. The sun breaks out, showing itself to Juneau for the first time in at least a week. It burns cloud remnants away from the Mendenhall towers until it can shine directly on the glacier. We beach the boat and search for low bush blueberries. There are plenty of berry plants but few have fruit. Maybe their berries were eaten by the black bear that left its tracks on the beach a short time ago.

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Aki, this is a mellow dude. That’s the thought I throw he little dog while photographing a great blue heron as it works the estuary shallows thirty meters away. We are no threat since a deep stream buffers the bird. The heron bends over, looking like a handsome man enjoying his reflection in the water and then strikes down with its spear shaped beak. In seconds it is all over: thrust, retrieve, shake of the head, swallow. The bird resumes gazing for his next morsel. How many salmon smolt makes a meal for the stiff postured guy?