Once or twice a year I bring a fishing pole along when Aki and I visit the Troll Woods. It’s best done in the fall, when trout and char follow silver salmon  up one of the moraine streams. But given the pour returns of the other types of salmon to their spawning waters, I don’t think we can count on the silvers showing up next month. 

            The little dog and I take different approaches fishing. It’s serious business for Aki. She stands by my side as I cast, watching the lure or fly hit the water. For me the fishing pole becomes something to distract the practical part of my brain so my imagination can escape. After a few fruitful casts, Aki gives a little moan, which cancels my imagination’s leave of absence.

            We move from place to place, stopping at breaks in the shoreside woods to fling out line. Once this morning, I felt a light tug. Another effort hooked a 10-inch cutthroat trout, beautiful in it crimson and gold blush.  It would make a tasty lunch but it is 4 inches short of a keeper. Aki does not act pleased when I let it slip off the hook.

            We stop at the hatchery on the way home to check out the scrap-hunting eagles that can be found there every low tide, sulking about the low salmon returns. Today, an immature eagle with a clump of down still stuck to the top of its beak puffs out its feathers and gives them a hard shake. The air fills with down.

I think of Tlingit dancers, who fill headdresses made with sea lion whiskers with eagle down. Body stiff with dignity, elbows extending their button-blanket cloaks to mimic eagle wings, they dance towards the audience and bow until the air is full of down. 

Weather has taken most of the promise out of this late summer day. Aki and I are wandering through the Treadwell Woods, where thick growth hides most of the mining ruins. Wild nettles are going to flower along the trail, letting the passersby know that it too late to harvest them for greens. A handful of touch-me-not flowers rock on their delicate stems each time they are hit by rain drops. 

            If there are birds in the woods, we cannot see or hear them. Out on Sandy Beach an eagle sulks on its usual perch on the restored ventilator shaft. A scattering of gulls flit about undeterred by the storm. The rain doesn’t bother Aki either. She charges around the beach, hunting smells and snacks dropped by other dog owners. 

            After crossing a long stretch of empty beach, we reach the small, but deep bay formed by a mine tunnel collapse. Two belted kingfishers battled over the aquamarine water. The scrappy little dudes can always be counted on for excitement. 

The light seems richer in places like this, where an old growth forest touches a beach. Even on a flat, gray day, shafts of sea light muscle through the tangled canopy to light up wet leaves. Some of the light reaches red-colored elderberries, making them almost painfully bright.

            When the forest trail ends, we drop down onto the beach. An eagle flies overhead, swings towards Aki, and then swings away when I closed the distance between myself and the little dog. It’s the first wild thing we have seen on the walk. Even the gulls are elsewhere.

            Leaving the empty beach, we take a trail through thimble berry bushes to the Old Glacier Highway. After passing the old totem pole we drop back into the woods, sneak by a youth group eating pizza, and head for the car.

I find myself taking pictures of small beauties to have something to illustrate this post. Then the herons appear. Two land on the beach. One steps into the shallow water of the bay, freezing like a statute while tiny swells pass beneath its stomach.