Tiger tracks!

Making days count 56

The first thing I noticed this morning was that the snow was still there and more deer tracks patterned the front and back yard. This observation led to an interesting discussion with my son as he shared the following excerpt with me from the book he is reading.

The Tiger : a true story of vengeance and survival / by John Vaillant.—1st ed.

For most of our history, we have been occupied with the cracking of codes—from deciphering patterns in the weather, the water, the land, and the stars, to parsing the nuanced behaviors of friend and foe, predator and prey. Furthermore, we are compelled to share our discoveries in the form of stories. Much is made of the fact that ours is the only species that does this, that the essence of who and what we understand ourselves to be was first borne orally and aurally: from mouth to ear to memory. This is so, but before we learned to tell stories, we learned to read them. In other words, we learned to track. The first letter of the first word of the first recorded story was written—“printed”—not by us, but by an animal. These signs and symbols left in mud, sand, leaves, and snow represent proto-alphabets...

As I ‘read’ the front and back yard, I could see that the nightly visitations of deer followed certain routes, but via different paths. I was thankful to notice that the back fence deterred visitation to the neighbour’s fenced garden plot.

A heart-shaped hoofprint in the snow!

It was a beautiful clear cold day, and my walk was a mixture of clear road, slushy sections, and deep snow!

Harzel glowed in his snowy surroundings, and with the white seagulls glimmering against the cerulean sky, it was quite breathtaking.

Majestic snowcapped mountains offered an outstanding backdrop.

A beautiful bright clear day.