A Snowy Carpet

It was warmer today and ice slid off the roof in sheets that thudded so loudly to the ground it startled the dog and cats. Paul was using our neighbor's roof rake to try and loosen the ice dam that has started to form at one corner of the roof. When I moved to Vermont, I thought, "Roof rake? We have a metal roof and won't need one." Ha. Little did I know about all the variations of snow and ice in these here climes.

Nokie and I took a new walk today on a narrow, flat road that runs parallel to the West River. It was so nice to be on a road that was close to a different, larger river than the one we normally walk by. The West River is larger and deeper and so less iced up than Baker Brook. There were mini-ice floes that were loosened up and spinning downstream. The white scalp of the mountainside is close-by there, just on the other side of the river, and as we were walking west there was a lovely pink-lavender light over the crest of their ridges.

I walked to the end of the road and then onto a well-worn, snowy trail into the woods and then down onto a lovely bank right next to the the river. I could have kept walking and walking it was so lovely, quiet, and inviting. The snowy bank was like a white carpet spread out just for us. But the sky was getting darker and so I looped back through the woods were I saw three small drops of blood around a pine tree. I knew some animal had gotten nabbed by another creature right there--a vole or a mouse by hawk or owl or weasel? Paul and I had seen a much gorier site once before.

One morning a couple years ago, after a thick, fluffy snow had fallen the night before, we saw a very bloody trail, the red bright against the fresh snow, as it swept across from one side of Baker Brook Road over to the other, up to the river's bank and then, looking across the river, we could see it continued on the other side. We tried to identify the animal tracks in the snow and the width of the animal being dragged. We imagined a coyote, or even mountain lion (they have been spotted some miles from here) had gotten, perhaps, a young deer. I saw such a deer, a young, vulnerable doe, standing in our driveway last week. Even the sight of our car didn't startle her. She just stood there, serenely innocent as yet to hunters and guns and maybe coyotes. But then Nokie barked from the backseat of the car and she was off, delicately bounding up the hill in between the spruce trees to our backyard and the woods beyond.