This is a New England winter of a kind we haven't seen for too long.
Snow for Christmas with a proper, early January thaw to clear the way for another perfect cover to nourish our sense of belonging.
I looked out my window this week and remarked on the presence of what, when it turned its back to me, proved to be a red-headed woodpecker on its morning grub hunt. Experienced birders would not have had to wait for the bird's pirouette to identify it, or for a daughter to confirm it.
But I did not have to ask her to identify the two other birds doing their own questing outside our window, because I know a crow when I hear one.
It was a morning for fetching my cross-country skis from their basement nesting and exploring the marsh and its uplands. But reality being what it is for an octogenarian, I didn't. As a reasonable substitute, during breakfast I relived other mornings of ski-borne expeditions in a silence broken only by the swish, swish, swish of my passing.
There was that morning of the fox and rabbit tracking when, there being no barriers between our house and Old Town Hill, such was still possible.
It was a Sunday, and I had awakened just after dawn to find a fresh cover of powder snow, dry and sparkling in the budding light. I fetched my gear without waking Herself and our young ones, slipped out of the house, crossed the street, clamped my feet in the skis, and was off down the neighbor's driveway and the knoll beyond.
Back then, what few neighbors there were kept open house on their land, and what fences there offered breaches for easy passage.
The marshes live in a nest of uplands that were, back then, more sparsely wooded than they have become; but there was sufficient growth to nourish wildlife and I hadn't traveled a quarter-mile before I raised a rabbit track. Not more than a dozen ski thrusts beyond, a fox on its own breakfast trek had joined the parade, and I tagged along to see where this drama might lead.
Rabbits don't run in a straight line unless desperate, and this rabbit had been desperate indeed because the fox had flushed it. What else but to join the chase to see who won?
The tracks led toward a distant knoll to a stand of cedars where I was surprised to learn the outcome.
The rabbit tracks ended, but there was no rabbit. Instead, there was the perfect imprint of a hawk's wings and a few red drops. I had not seen the hawk, and it must have been on watch in an adjacent cedar tree.
Snow for Christmas with a proper, early January thaw to clear the way for another perfect cover to nourish our sense of belonging.
I looked out my window this week and remarked on the presence of what, when it turned its back to me, proved to be a red-headed woodpecker on its morning grub hunt. Experienced birders would not have had to wait for the bird's pirouette to identify it, or for a daughter to confirm it.
But I did not have to ask her to identify the two other birds doing their own questing outside our window, because I know a crow when I hear one.
It was a morning for fetching my cross-country skis from their basement nesting and exploring the marsh and its uplands. But reality being what it is for an octogenarian, I didn't. As a reasonable substitute, during breakfast I relived other mornings of ski-borne expeditions in a silence broken only by the swish, swish, swish of my passing.
There was that morning of the fox and rabbit tracking when, there being no barriers between our house and Old Town Hill, such was still possible.
It was a Sunday, and I had awakened just after dawn to find a fresh cover of powder snow, dry and sparkling in the budding light. I fetched my gear without waking Herself and our young ones, slipped out of the house, crossed the street, clamped my feet in the skis, and was off down the neighbor's driveway and the knoll beyond.
Back then, what few neighbors there were kept open house on their land, and what fences there offered breaches for easy passage.
The marshes live in a nest of uplands that were, back then, more sparsely wooded than they have become; but there was sufficient growth to nourish wildlife and I hadn't traveled a quarter-mile before I raised a rabbit track. Not more than a dozen ski thrusts beyond, a fox on its own breakfast trek had joined the parade, and I tagged along to see where this drama might lead.
Rabbits don't run in a straight line unless desperate, and this rabbit had been desperate indeed because the fox had flushed it. What else but to join the chase to see who won?
The tracks led toward a distant knoll to a stand of cedars where I was surprised to learn the outcome.
The rabbit tracks ended, but there was no rabbit. Instead, there was the perfect imprint of a hawk's wings and a few red drops. I had not seen the hawk, and it must have been on watch in an adjacent cedar tree.
As for the fox, his tracks led off to seek better fortune. I have wondered ever since whether he'd resented the loss. Foxes, after all, are celebrated for being, well, shrewd.
I'm no stranger to the endless dramas of the wood, but this one has stayed with me ever since. I recall it on such mornings as we had this week, because survival is what nature is all about. We humans start with that, and most of us try to build on it while keeping one eye open for foxes and hawks.
Darwin said we're all connected by nature and he was right in that. But man looks for more than food and a habitable place in which to live. Still, obtaining food and safety is a matter of desperation for too many in too much of a world in which it is not always possible to tell a fox from a hawk or even a red-headed woodpecker from a crow.
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Staff columnist Bill Plante is a longtime newspaper editor now retired. He lives in Newbury.
