On Stopping to Look Around  

                                                                  It was a beautiful late winter/early spring morning. Overnight the temperature had dropped down to around -10 and the snow that had begun to melt the previous day had hardened to the point where I did not have to use the snowshoes that I had decided to carry with me until I was certain of the consistency of the crust. Once liberated, I set off up the hill, feeling for the first time in some months the simple pleasure of a walking stride that was not weighed down by snowshoes or skis.   

           As I said above, it was a beautiful morning. The sun had just crept over the ridge to the east and the north-westerly breeze that had blown so hard the previous couple of days had finally dropped to a whisper. A flock of goldfinches, still in their winter olive, pale yellow, black and white, sang softly to one another as the flitted through the willows. A jay called in the distance and two crows answered. In the distance a pair of ravens barrel-rolled down the horizon and several gulls called to one another as they flew up river on some quest of their own.   

           Mico was busy puzzling out the latest of the fox and rabbit tracks as I stopped to deposit my snowshoes near a large pine, handy to the railway tracks in case I needed them later on. It was still cold, so I adjusted my toque down a little lower over my ears and zippered up my jacket, against the chill until such time as my own activity would warm me and I would be able to open up again. The sun sparkled off the snow with that  quality of light particular to this time of year, a quality created by the angle of the light itself and the large, refrozen crystals of snow/ice that provided the surface over which I was walking. Here and there I could still make out old rabbit paths, although the crust was hard enough that the rabbits themselves were no longer indenting the surface, even though I knew that they were rather frenetically chasing about under the moonlight of the previous few nights, this being courtship and mating time for them.   

           I crossed a moose trail and then. a little further along, a second. I had found some sign of a moose quite a bit further to the west of where I was this morning several days previously, but only the one. Now, I suspected, I had found where perhaps two more had been hanging around for the winter. I stopped to look around - and to listen for whatever might be stirring. For five, ten minutes I stood there. Mico joined me and, as he usually does when I get into one of these moods, flopped down on the snow to lick away some small crystals of snow from his pads and to await further developments. Fifteen minutes and then I began to feel a little chill. Hunching my shoulders, I reached for my ski pole and started to turn in the direction that I intended to follow. Then I caught movement in the underbrush, perhaps thirty metres away. A fox had been sitting silently watching us, for how long, who knows? It was downwind of us and knew perfectly well where we were; on the other hand, I did not realize that it was in the area until I saw it move, and Mico was still in the dark.   

           That changed a few seconds later, when we crossed its trail and the dog caught its scent. Off on a merry chase - I am sure that foxes enjoy these encounters as much as dogs do - until I called Mico off a few minutes later. We turned then and headed back for home - another simple, ordinary, beautiful little outing in the woods now part of that store of experience that continues to enrich my days in the woods around this place that we call home.