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Historians of Juneau's early mining era find much of interest in the valley of Gold Creek, through which the trail passes. There are glory holes, old mine adits and roads, the ruins of a mine camp, and bits of machinery buried in the brush. The early miners totally lacked any respect for the natural environment, demolishing forest, dredging the creek, and leaving gaping pits and rubbish behind. So the Gold Creek valley is quite different today from what it was, say, 150 years ago.

Nevertheless, it once again offers rich habitat for wildlife. The thick stands of salmonberry, willow and alder provide fine nesting habitat for several species of warbler and fox sparrows. At least five pairs of American dippers nest long the creek, feeding their chicks on aquatic insects. Almost every year I see harlequin ducks here; male and female together in spring, and later the female, often with her brood of ducklings rafting along behind. This year we saw a young porcupine, far out at the end of a branch high in a cottonwood tree, sound asleep with its head resting on a forked twig. On a good day, one might see mountain goats up on Mount Juneau. On the way up the trail one day, my field crew heard some very high-frequency squeaking and shrieking under low-hanging vegetation. Peering under the leaves, we watched a duo of tiny masked shrews, wrestling and tumbling around in some sort of shrewish combat.

Just this summer I noticed a small saga taking place on the flowering heads of cow parsnip (a.k.a. Indian rhubarb). The small white flowers attract a variety of little beetles and flies that crawl around over the flat flowering head, sipping minute amounts of nectar and presumably pollinating the flowers. Among the flies and beetles was a slender wasp, chewing up a fly it had caught. The wasp then visited several flowers, acting like it was drinking nectar (and perhaps it really was). Suddenly it leaped at a nearby fly, which flitted safely away. Again the wasp visited flowers, gradually approaching another fly, and again I saw a leaping attack and a fly scuttling to safety. Clearly, this wasp pretends to be just another nectar-eater but uses this behavior to make sneak attacks on its prey!

Later I saw two similar but distinct kinds of wasps on the flowering heads: One was eating a fly, headfirst, and the thorax of the other was covered with pollen. So it is possible that at least some of these wasps are pollinators, as well as predators of other pollinators. The story could be very complex!

Lots of other flowers are on show along the trail in summer: red columbine, purple northern geranium, blue harebells, yellow stream violets, white Sitka valerian and foam flower and Sitka burnet, pinkish-purple rose root and river beauty, to name a few. A conspicuous plant in some parts of the trail is false hellebore, a tall, rank plant with broad, pleated leaves and flowers in branched, terminal clusters. This plant is exceedingly poisonous; ingesting even small amounts can reportedly produce facial paralysis, vomiting, diarrhea, blurred vision, and unconsciousness, even death. Native peoples up and down the coast used it as medicine, both taken internally and applied externally, as a possible cure for numerous ailments. Although I have no information on how effective such treatments might be, or what side effects might occur, it is worth remembering that people often use poisonous plants as sources of medicine (e.g., digitalis, originally from the garden plant known as foxglove).

• Mary Willson is a retired ecology professor and a Trail Mix board member.