Snow Puzzles

Most certainly snow puzzles us. In its various manifestations, dependent upon ambient temperature, as well as the various levels of atmospheric conditions, including wind and level of moisture, to produce heavy snow or light snow, wet snow or dry, and all the multifarious types too numerous for the ordinary person to recognize let alone identify correctly. It's not that kind of snow puzzle I mean, however.

Rather, it's the tracks we see so often while rambling through our winter-white ravine. We can guess at many; anyone can recognize the track a cat makes, with one foot before another in a straight line, and occasionally a neighbourhood cat will venture down into the ravine. A squirrel track is distinctive, and so is that of a rabbit. Raccoons and porcupines, that's something else again. Birds who drag their tail feathers can be identifiable, and so can the delicate tracery left by mice.

When we were in the ravine this morning for our walk, a bit of a riddle was solved when we scrutinized a track under one of the footbridges that was not that of a bird, yet there was the drag. Aha! the track went on a little way, and then disappeared - where a hole in the snow appeared, over the creek. The drag, that of a muskrat's tail. Mystery solved. A beaver track is similar, the tail broader, the footsteps more widespread. More than enough dog tracks abound; large splayed ones and more tenderly neat specimens.

It's at this time of year, when the deciduous trees are bare of their leaves and their trunks fully on display that we can best appreciate their differences; the elms, maples, apple, oaks, birch, beech, ash, hemlock, willows, hawthornes and ironwood . Some, like the various birches and apple trees, with their exfoliating trunks are their own attraction; others with bark striations and snow background-enhanced colours enliven the scene.

The conifers - pines, firs, spruce and cedar own their own specific colours as well, made all the more intense by the snow bearing down laden branches.

And some trees like the beech and the ironwood, which enjoy holding on to their paper-thin, copper-coloured leaves create an additional blast of colour in an otherwise grey-and-white world that has overtaken the shades of brown and green normal in other seasons in the ravine. The seasonal routine, the chameleon-like response to changing temperatures bring us the options of changing landscapes to chase the monotony of sameness.

The bird population too has changed; in this season we notice crows lofting high over the treetops, cawing mightily, resounding on the stillness of the snow below. Cedar waxwings appear in a flock abundance to flutter in a mass of ruffled wings through a copse of maples. Never is there boredom in this place of nature. Being here has a renewing effect on our place in her scheme.

Concerns drop away like an unneeded mantle, we find comfort and peace.