Out in Nature

We're happier to see nature than nature is to see us. Some species have learned to coexist in either cute or menacing ways, but most wild animals will flee at our approach.

Wild animals work full time, finding things to eat and avoiding being eaten. Winter puts great strain on the ones who don't den up and sleep it away. I keep this in mind when considering whether to go for a bushwhack in the woods behind my house. No matter how much you try to communicate telepathically or speak in soothing tones to the deer, they're already running away before you get within 50 yards of them. In a hard winter, a few sprints can make the difference between between survival and death.

Around established ski trail networks, the deer herd has generally adapted to the more continuous presence of humans. In Wolfeboro, the herd even seems to have different levels of response on the urban forest end of the system in Sewall Woods, compared to the less built up surroundings of the Abenaki trails. But on a day off I am reluctant to drive all the way to town when I have so many other things to attend to around home. And my fuel budget is as precarious as every other aspect of of my finances. I budget for commuting and a few utilitarian errands, and depend quite a bit on the savings I gain from using a bike to commute in the seasons when the roads are clear and the daylight is sufficient to give me a moderate chance of being seen and avoided by the motoring majority.

Because yesterday was a lot like springtime, I felt okay about bothering the deer on my little trudge around the mountainside. The herd spends the late winter quite close to my house. There are evergreens for protection from the weather, and beech and oak trees for food. They scuffle up the fallen nuts and acorns, and bed down in the leaf litter. But they do range around, especially in a winter like this, when thin snow cover lets them get around easily.

I spotted the first flags of a small band retreating. They looked good: furry and fairly fat for the time of year. They bounded far enough to put some trees and terrain features between us.

I angled up through the old cut just off my back property line. The sapling hell is aging now, thinning itself. Half of the saplings I push against break off and fall because they died and rotted. It's still a dense thicket. I imagine it crawling with ticks when the weather warms up. But for now I can thread it on skis to make my way unobserved to the upper slopes.

With a temperature above 50 degrees (F), I could climb at a very steep angle. The stream was running, but not too full. The sticky snow allowed me to cross on a small log with a fringe of snow stuck to the top of it. I had no plans for an ambitious assault, just an hour of activity.

When I reached the clear cut near the illegal bear bait station, the sun was bright and the sky was a pure deep blue, accentuated by my polarized sunglasses. I decided to push further along the lower edge of the cut, rather than climb along the right margin. When the ground dropped away after a hundred yards or so, I let stayed on a level and slightly rising course across the major upward swaths of the cut, through bands of saplings that they had left behind, a legacy from much earlier logging.

I kept seeing the deer herd as they kept their distance from me. They looked alert  but not panicked. Tracks of their hooves showed their passage all over the area since the last snow. Interspersed were the tracks of coyotes. There was no sign that any deer had ended up as a meal. There were lots of smaller tracks as well, mostly melted out so badly that I could only guess by other circumstances what had made them. Lots of squirrels. At the base of an old beech, a big pile of porcupine poop.

I like skiing uphill as much as downhill. It's a different kind of challenge, finding a route that matches the terrain, vegetation, and snow type. Look closely at this picture to pick out my ascent line across the far side of the gully:

In mountain travel, the fastest route is not always the shortest route.

The snow obscures the ugliness of the logging operation that gouged the ground and left nasty snags of slash and debris. For some reason, the snow we have is firm enough to fill in quite a bit, despite its lack of depth. The thin cover allows for some practical jokes and slapstick comedy as various rocks and stumps poke through or sit just below the surface. I got hooked several times. It was not a day to aim steeply downhill and let 'em run. Even so, I was able to fit in a few enjoyable maneuvers here and there as I made my way back.

Clouds were already moving in from the west as I headed down. Some sort of storm is shaping up for the next couple of days. Precipitation includes rain and snow, proportions to be determined. If this is like most winters, March will come in like winter is trying to make up for lost time. In New England we get a lot of the fifth season: None of the Above. Winter will be over, and a raw, wet grayness will prevail for a couple of months until the bugs get good and thick.