Is it spring yet?

This morning I was reminded once again that Wisconsin is whitetail country. The fields and hillsides in our little valley are creased and lined with deer trails in the new fallen powder. Bounding in straight lines right up the sides of the bluffs. Rushing together and breaking apart like crazy tributaries of some big, braided river like in Alaska. Drawing loops and figure eights down on the flats, but not too far from the edge of the woods. Out there for everyone to see are the highways, cross roads and meandering rustic avenues of the deer family. Not just in one place, but all up and down the length of the valley (except right next to the few houses). This is not just a herd, but a family, a tribe, a nation coming together and breaking apart in their search for food under the snow.

Of course, the deer are here all the time. In the summer when the leaves make the wooded hillsides a visually impenetrable mass of green. In the dead of winter when the old snow is too gray and hard to hold the tracks. We just don’t see the evidence as flagrantly as today. This is our evidence of their existence, like the howling is the evidence of the coyotes. It was -14 this morning and I imagine even the deer are getting tired of that!