On my way into Centennial Woods I kept my eyes glued to the ground in hope of seeing animal tracks. The first sign just a few steps into the trail was some yellow snow. I was excited about this for a second, but quickly realized it was probably just someone’s dog; I move on. The further I walk in the more anxious I get. There are a ton of depressions and spots in the snow that look like they could possibly be animal tracks at first glance, but it’s too many of them all around, and there is no discernable path that an animal took, so I assume these marks are just spots where the snow caved in from some plants (as I also saw many plants in the center of these depressions) or I was just too close to the trail and it was most likely dog paw prints/human footsteps (most often). As I neared my chosen spot I considered the fact that humans are animals, and so I guess footprints are technically a type of animal track.
Not finding what I want. I take off my hood to see if I can hear anything. Besides the quiet scrapes of other people on the trail, I hear the sounds of various bird calls (I’m not good at identifying, but I feel like at least one of the calls came either from a crow or a raven), but in between, it’s absolutely silent. Coming from the Sonoran Desert, I haven’t experienced a winter like this in a long time. I knew that snow was a sound insulator, but the absolute quiet was something startling. The softly falling flurries of snow, the trees outlined with white, and the silence were trance-like. I had been waiting to experience seasons for 10 years, and just standing alone in a snowy wood felt like a combination of relief, peace, joy, and hope.
When I decide to turn back, I glance around once more to search for some footprints other than a person’s or a dog’s. I may have seen some, I may not have, I’m not very good at this animal tracking thing, but hopefully, I’ll be better after this week’s lab.
