In the spring, summer, and fall, we have a beautiful bike trail that runs along Old Abe Lake, a flowage backed up behind the Jim Falls dam. (More about that one of these days.) It presents an ever-changing panorama of flora and fauna as the year progresses. In the winter, however, the going through the snow gets tougher. Our bike path becomes a snowmobile trail. The snowmobiles pack the snow down, making it possible to walk without sinking in up to our knees. One winter, we made our trek daily, but dodging speeding sleds made us think twice before returning the next season. And so came the idea of building our own trails. That took some work.

This tangle is the setting for trail-building.

But it is truly worth it. Not only to us but to the many visitors we get, mainly of the furred or feathered persuasion. Some prefer to come right to the yard.

Who needs a trail when you’ve already plowed through a fence somewhere?

Nonetheless, many enjoy the convenience of our well-trod trails instead of traversing the deeper snow. We don’t often see them, but we see evidence of their passing. Allow me to illustrate.

They may look huge, but a mouse made them.
Canine tracks. A coyote?
Or maybe this is a coyote.
Deer me. Actually, a deer track and my track.

As we all know, deer make the great outdoors their home. That means their bedrooms and bathrooms are out there, sometimes on the trail and sometimes just off it.

Not exactly a plush feather bed.
A bathroom. But blue?

It’s easy to identify turkey tracks, but they are sneaky birds.

“What, ho,” says the turkey hunter. “Just follow the arrows.” But these sneaky birds are going in exactly the opposite direction.

Some birds leave other tokens of their presence.

Why did someone leave this feather neatly centered on our pathway?

Sometimes we have sightings of unexpected visitors, like this one on a slightly above freezing February afternoon.

The early bird may catch the worm, but the early fly may catch a cold–at the very least.

And finally, one very clear set of prints. Is it a lynx? A bobcat like our friend Goldy? Or is it…?

No. It’s our three-legged cat, Blackberry.

These are only a few of the visitors to our trails in winter. Rabbits, squirrels (Verle and his buddies), raccoons, and others frequently leave their marks. We often wonder if they feel gratitude to us for packing down these much-easier-to-follow highways amidst the deeper, sinkier snow. From our standpoint, we are happy to share our domain with so many creatures who must make their way through days of scarcity and sometimes bitter cold. I can only guess that they feel our relief this week as springlike weather eases the grip of the frosty times. We hope that our trails have been happy ones for all.