All is Calm

I don't really have a picture to go with this post. Walking the dog tonight I was struck with how quiet it is out here, just before the season starts. Our cod/crab boats are on the fishing grounds and will be back in a day or two with our first cod deliveries of the year. More crew is flying in every day but the plant is quiet and still, the only sound is the distant noise from the power plant and the water lapping on the beach.

I watch Chico nose around and I can tell a fox has gone through sometime today from the tracks and Chico's interest. Sometimes at night I see a fox (or two) on the other side of the river, nosing along the high water line for the odd bit of food. The river empties into the Bering Sea just 100 yards downstream so the level flucuates with the tide, exposing a new banquet for the fox to investigate twice a day.

When we walk out the door Chico often heads across the road to the river bank and pees on the telephone pole there. If the night is still there is always a bald eagle on top of the pole, peering down at the disturbance, and I glance up at his stern stare as Chico attends to business. Directly across the river is another eagle on another pole like a corresponding bookend or guardian at the gate. I wonder what silent language the two eagles - perhaps a mated pair - have worked out to communicate across the 50 foot gap . . . . .