Frozen Fern "growing" out of the snow. I found a bunch of these lovelies!Yesterday, I noticed my brother left his snowshoes in the back of my car. For the first time in weeks, it was above freezing outside, so I just had to get out into the woods and try those shoes out. I went to a long disused logging road across the pond from some well established beaver brook trails.
Today, I'm still divided on my opinion of them. True, they kept me above the 3+ feet of snow in some places. But in other places, I plummeted hip deep and then had the grueling struggle of picking those cumbersome metal frames out of the tight holes they made. The snow quickly turning to 3 feet of slush in the 40 degree weather, I couldn't just kick through the snow to pick myself back up. This would have been fine albeit annoying, normally, but I was making my way to a hill topped with a rather large bobcat ~ and had I noticed him sooner, I would have been worried he was scoping me out as injured prey ripe for the picking and probably would have been a lot less collected in my struggles.
These tracks are from the beginning of my trek - when the snow was still frozen from being in the shadow of the valley.While I did not manage to snap a pic of the bobcat who took off as soon as locked eyes with him, I did take some other interesting photos. My hike reached a literal apex when I crested the very steep hill that the bobcat had claimed earlier where I found not only his tracks, but deer and opossum tracks too.
Witch Hazel Flowers. The only forest blooms of winter! Reminding myself that witch hazels are in flower when there is hip deep snow on the ground makes winter seem a little less overbearing.
This is an opossum trail. The little hand prints inside the trail were muddled together making a bad picture, but the trail itself was whimsical, in my opinion. A well used thoroughfare, it snaked all over the hill, curving tightly in places where I couldn't see any obstruction to case such twists. The trail could have easily been a straight line with half the distance from point A to B. When inspecting the 6 inch wide trail, I noted fresh coyote tracks pacing after the latest opossum tracks.
And lastly, these are the bobcat tracks. Keep in mind, I'm a piano player - my fingers aren't short. These are definitely the largest bobcat tracks I've ever seen. From the back side of the hill, I measured 4 feet in between each pair of side by side prints to show he was bounding away from my direction through the snow. Thank goodness he was more afraid of me than I was of him or else, with my clumsy shoes and tiny switch blade for protection (its more for plant cuttings, but I like to pretend it affords me some protection on my solitary hikes) I would be bobcat chow by now. XD
