This whiplash weather we’ve been experiencing has made for some treacherous walking conditions up in our woods. A recent snow and thaw cycle produced layers of ice and powder – soft enough in places that a heavy animal (me) crunched through. In other areas, where there had been more melt and refreezing, the ice was thicker and there was no way to get a grip. Walking became skating. And, turns out, it’s hard to skate uphill.
Yet skate I did. Not gracefully. Often by means of hugging trees. When all else failed, by sitting down and skootching on my backside. Eventually, I made it to a trail where my husband’s tracks had hardened into footholds.
In every footprint, a deer had left its cloven mark. I imagine that it moved slowly, and for a deer, clumsily – altering its stride to match my husband's bipedal one.
Winter is always hard for deer, whose basic survival strategy for the season is to suffer. Every step that they take is one step further away from summer’s grasses and fall’s acorn feasts. No wonder that they become calorie misers. They move little, and most years, bed down together up on the hill, sheltered by hemlocks and bound in by snow.
But on this day, a deer was travelling, and conserving energy by exploiting human tracks. We’re not far from the holidays; the scene reminded me of a verse from the carol “Good King Wenceslas,” in which a faint-hearted page gains courage by walking in his king’s footprints:
In his master’s steps he trod
Where the snow lay dented
Heat was in the very sod
Which the saint had printed
There’s no heat on our hill, nor have I found saints. But on a harsh day, there’s room for a little interspecies fellowship. I turned back down the hill, keen not to add to the animal’s troubles.
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