It Will Be OK

There is a radio station along the shore of the Gastineau Channel that I pass on Egan Drive every day as I drive into work.

For the past couple of weeks I have noticed huge numbers of seagulls and eagles in the mud flats each morning. 

It has been fun to watch as I speed by every morning - trying to count the "cottonballs" - the white heads of the eagles - as I pass.

Late yesterday morning I was driving back from the Valley after a meeting.  The meeting finished earlier than expected and I had another meeting scheduled in town. 

With some time to kill in between seemingly endless meetings, I decided on the spur of the moment to stop at the radio station, try to make my way down to the mud flats and take some pictures of the action.

At the back of the radio station parking lot is a tree line, and I parked the car there, intending to find a way down to the chaos of birds down by the water.

There was a pathway through the trees, and I easily found my way down, and proceeded to have a wonderful and unexpected adventure.

I have never witnessed a salmon run before yesterday.

There were many hundreds of huge and ugly salmon thrashing in the water, and struggling to make their way upstream. 

And there were many hundreds of seagulls and other types of birds swirling and swooping and crying in the air, and more hundreds of very animated birds in the mud and in the river.

I was excited, mesmorized, enthralled by everything that was happening, and I tried unsuccessfully to capture everything I was seeing in front of me in pictures.......

Douglas Island in the background - and a riverbank that was easy to navigate on foot as I walked, enjoyed, and snapped pictures.........

The radio station antennea.......

There were dead salmon all over the riverbank.......

Last night LC and I met down at Statter Harbor in Auke Bay after work, and ate dinner (as we often do) at the Hot Bite. 

This little shack offers typical burger/fries/fish and chips types of meals.  The food is plentiful and very good, is offered at a good price by Juneau standards, and unfortunately will close for the season at the end of September....

So we will make the most of this place for the duration, where we can eat at tables outside when it is nice, and eat inside when the weather is cold and rainy, which has been often recently....

When we were done eating we took some time to walk, talk, wind down from the day, and enjoy the harbor.

I love this harbor.  It is beautiful and picturesque. 

The water is often calm, the boats are wonderful and exciting to see, and mountains surround this cove.

I have to be outside after work.  I spend most of my day, most of my days, still doing two jobs and still trying to make sense of chaos.  I do it.  But being outside at the end of each day keeps me grounded.

And so does LC.

I have been here in Juneau a little over six months, and my Mountain Boy has been here about six weeks.

I think he feels ungrounded much of the time right now, trying to find his own way in this very new place.

It takes time.  It is all so new.  It will be OK.  It will be OK.  It will be OK.

The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out.

~Annie Dillard