Well, it is 4 degrees outside, with a wind chill of -16 and I was thinking it was a little crazy to be walking all the way down to the Salmon Hole today, and apparently, the foxes were thinking along those very same lines. There were no fresh tracks to be found among the trees today, every print in the snow was muffed up by wind and newer snowfall. Not a bird was heard, but I did find a fluffy little blue-grey feather, nestled in the snow. Not that one feather makes much of a difference, but I bet that bird is feeling the chill today.
Crossing the bridge I noticed a set of tracks leading below, and upon closer examination, it seems the frozen creekbed has become a bit of an arterial street for the neighborhood foxes and bridge-dwelling trolls.
What I found that excited me most, was that where I had found tracks in December, I now found not an arterial street but a freeway. There were multiple sets of tracks running in the exact same spot as I’d seen only one set last month.
I found a set of tracks where the fox, who usually walks in a straight, focused line, diverged towards a stump before getting back on its original path. I didn’t find any scent markings in the snow around it, but I wonder if the stump has more stories to tell to that fox than it did for me.
The biggest change I noticed in this now familiar landscape was that a significant amount of the hole was frozen over, as well as parts of the river further down. The areas that curve outwards, where eddies and sometimes still water reside in this river were the sections with ice formed. The leaves were gone last time I was here, but the winter felt deeper. There was no movement in the woods except for me and the sound of cars passing by up the hill.
As I was walking back over the bridge to get to the coffee shop where I’m writing this, I noticed tracks running across the completely frozen lake-ish area that pools above the falls. It was too dark to get a good picture, but the tracks went directly across and were connected by brush strokes in the snow, like whoever ran across was running and dragging their paws between steps. Cool.
