I have been remiss... I will try and do better.

Again, it has been a long time since my last post. Seems to be a commonly repeated refrain with me here. But, sometimes, life has a way of interfering with your best laid plans. But, today dawned with a down-like snowfall softly caressing the forest around us. We are expecting about 12 inches here and I will make sure to get out early to feed the deer and turkey. There is about three feet of snow in the forest making it difficult to walk without snowshoes. The fir trees are heavy-laden with snow from the last storm. Hopefully we will not lose any within the next few hours.

Took the "Maggie" for a long walk around the our lake deep into the forest between our little lake and the Namekagon River. This area is a two by five mile rectangle of shrub, swamp, and tamarack trees. It is also frequented by one of the largest wolf packs in Northern Wisconsin. When I venture back into that country for any length of time, especially in the winter, I carry a pack with all the essentials and a .454 Casull (Super Redhawk by Ruger) pistol. (I carry the pistol for both man and beast. Not to put too fine a point on it, but having been a criminal prosecutor for 25 years, there are families up here where I live that have family members I prosecuted and had sent to prison. Some of those family members are still in prison and that does not make for friendly exchanges between their non-imprisoned brethern and me. Better safe than sorry.) However, the beauty of the surroundings far outweigh the negative possibilities.

The walk took a couple of hours and was framed by the silently falling snow. Everything stood out in stark black and white, much like a chiaroscuro art print. Tracks of bobcat (Lynx), deer, fox, otter, squirrel, and fisher crossed our path in many places along the trail Maggie and I were following. An interesting side note here: A fox track is extremely small for a canine. One way of telling the difference between a fox track, or for that matter, a wolf or coyote track, from a domestic dog is that the wolf, fox, and coyote do not do much meandering as compared to a domestic dog. In addition, the wild canine track appears to be only two tracks rather than four, as the wild canine has a more registered gait. What this means graphically is that the hind foot lands in the front foot's track (the perfectly registered (foot on top of foot) trail pattern). In the case of most domestic dogs, the pattern is not very registered. In fact, in the snow, you can tell that it is a domestic dog from the drag pattern of the hind feet.

In a couple of places I noted a recent deer kill, evidence of poachers, as the hind quarters were expertly severed from the carcass, unlike how a wild creature would feed on it. On one of the kills, we frightened away a mature Bald Eagle which had been feasting on the fozen flesh and again noticed that the hind quarters were missing in a way characteristic of poaching. I understand the need to feed one's family, but in my experience as a prosecutor, very rarely is poaching used to supplement one's family's table fare. It is more about the killing.

Maggie and I finished the walk with me fixing myself a hot chocolate with a little peppermint shnapps, and Maggie chowing down on a bowl full of dog food. She isn't partial to shnapps, but she likes a beer now and then.

Vaya con Dios.