I almost stepped in deer poop. Lucky for me, it stands out well against the snow.

It wasn’t steaming, but it looked as the tracks I was following through the snow in the woods out back of my yard. Snow had been falling all day and was falling still, but the prints (and the poop) were fresh laid, with nary a dusting over them. I like to tramp around back there in the winter; it’s a bit swampy other times of the year. The most recent snow stuck to even the thinnest twigs, and the cloud-diffused moonlight made the woods almost as bright as day. I’ve seen deer out there before, at a distance, and sometimes they visit our streets and yards. More often, I see only their tracks when I visit their neighborhood. In the winter, the tracks are easier to follow, of course. I see where the deer paused and turned around several times, and I look around and wonder why. I see where it strolled, dragging its feet through the top several inches of snow, and where it ran, leaping like a porpoise through the snow. In one spot, it looked as though the deer had rolled around on its back like a dog… do deer do that? All the while, my snowshoes trampled down the trail, and I think the deer will appreciate that. No one else walks back there in winter, so far as I can tell, and I’ve noticed that the deer seem to follow in my footsteps, as I follow theirs. I don’t care if I see any deer or not.  I’ve seen plenty, and they all look pretty much the same.