Making Tracks

We've been snowshoeing fiends since the snowstorm on Tuesday & Wednesday, which I suppose means only that we've been snowshoeing a lot the last two days but it's such a treat. Not that I'm complaining about the winter we've had so far; it's been great for walking, great for this writer who needs to move after a day sitting in her chair, hunched over a keyboard (bad habit, that hunching).
But there is something very different about tromping through the snowy woods on snowshoes. It's a better workout (my brain and heart are grateful for the pumped-up circulation) and it just feels like winter, feels good to move through the cold air, through the hushed air of a snow-covered plantation.
"There are no bugs," my mother is fond of reminding me when I convince her to join me on a walk.
We're not the only ones making tracks in the woods, though.
Winter reminds you that you are not alone out there. It's easy to forget the fox and rabbits. mice and deer, coyotes and porcupines that live in these woods; those eyes that watch us from hiding spots we'll never find. Once the snow falls, we realize just how many creatures are living in our woods.The rabbits are plentiful this year.

 There will be one more romp along our trails this afternoon, as the sun sets, one last trek through these woods before another 20 or 30 centimeters overnight obliterates our tracks, keeps me inside tomorrow hunched over the keyboard, thinking of the creatures in the woods huddled somewhere with their backs against the wind and the snow.