The blue skies and only slightly below freezing temperatures of the first few days of the new year lured walkers outside, onto the roadsides and trails. The roads were narrowed due to the curbs of snow, but traffic was light because of the holidays and the surfaces were plowed. The trails, however, were icy and hard-packed due to the thawing and freezing, sleeting, and freezing rain of the final days of 2019. A fellow trail walker said even his dog was slipping and sliding on the snow’s surface. But walkers with micro spikes or trail crampons (and maybe hiking sticks) could tromp through the woods safely and confidently.
The weather that produced these slippery walking conditions also preserved a mini history of human and animal activity in distinct, sharp-edged, and easy-to-read footprints. As I walked along, tracks began to tell stories of the past few days. Some were of large boots and of smaller ones, suggesting an adult and child walking together. Footprints that went off the trail and returned farther along may have been those of a curious person pursuing a view or following animal tracks. A cross-country skier had expertly navigated a steep hill, leaving clean, evenly spaced diagonal lines in the snow.
One apparently obedient dog hewed to the trail on Holy Hill. Its distinctive four-toed paw prints with pointed claws reminded me of a stemless leaf in another season. Or was it a coyote? The tracks of a dog and a coyote are similar. According to the Stokes “Guide to Animal Tracking and Behavior,” one way to distinguish them is by identifying the patterns of their steps. Coyotes’ back paws step exactly into the prints of the front paws (called perfect-stepping) in a way that dogs’ do not, but the snow was so disturbed on the trail that it was difficult to discern a pattern. Dogs love to bound all over, back and forth, circling trees, expending energy that a wild animal cannot afford, and therefore the coyote’s trail is straight and direct. So maybe an obedient dog did not create the tracks after all, but a single-minded coyote on a mission.
The deer left evidence of being out and about, as always, following the human trails at times and making their own trails at other times. A naturalist learns to recognize the pointed, two-toed tracks of deer as one of the first in a repertoire of animal signs. I noticed that deer trails are not random because they followed the same paths that I had seen during earlier snowfalls, all heading toward a grove of hemlocks. The trails weren’t solidly packed down and the sizes of the tracks varied as the human ones did, suggesting a small group seeking a bedding or feeding area.
Vole? Mole?
At Horse Meadows Knoll, some animal had dug tidy little holes in the snow until it reached dirt. A gray squirrel retrieving acorns from its cache? But this animal was not heavy enough to leave identifiable tracks in the ice-crusted snow so a mystery remains as to who was at work. A vole, or was it a mole, had made tunnels through the snow that were visible when the top half had started to melt, before the weather changed yet again.
Bobcats left paw prints of four rounded toes without claws at Holy Hill and at Horse Meadows Knoll. The rocky ledges at both places are typical of the places bobcats like to den. Finding two perfect specimens of individual bobcat tracks seemed like amazingly good luck until the Stokes’ Guide pointed out that bobcats are widespread in the Northeast, but because they are nocturnal, fairly small, and elusive, they are inconspicuous.
Ice and icicles had dropped from the tree branches and sometimes broke through the snow’s crust, creating designs where they fell. Observing the thickness, opacity, and patterns of ice on patches of water and streams, anyone with a stick eventually finds the urge to poke the ice irresistible. Is it the sound of the shattering ice, or the sight of the glassy shards, or just curiosity about the strength of the ice that prompts this childish behavior?
I observed triangular bits of wood or pine cones at the bases of trees, visible on the white snow, trying to tell its story. But it was time to turn back. These signs may be gone when I return, but there will be something new to read in fresh snow, dirt or mud.
