White Track

White Track

Snow paved paths white as deer tails

curve between Queen Anne skeletons

blooming with frost in February.

Cloven prints like pointed hearts cut

from sugar dough mince along the cryptic aisle,

immaculate impression until the melt.

I stay on paths beaten by deer

to protect my skin from thorns --

black locust, wild blackberry, multiflora rose.

Rime transforms every weed into etched

crystal candelabra, intricate lace on the altar 

of limbs, yet thorns beneath lace still pierce.

A doe, delicate legs tucked under,

a heart's beat off the path

lifts her head but does not bolt.

Through veils of breath we regard each other --

her lambent eyes, mine

awed by grace.

harvest moon rising

harvest moon rising

through long spiral seedpods of

a honey locust

Full moon last night, looking huge among the branches of a honey locust, then appearing to shrink as it rose above the tangle of pods. The "honey" part of the tree's common name comes from the sweet pulp of the unripe pods, which Native Americans used for food. The pulp contains large seeds in slots, like beans in a bean pod. As the locust pods ripen, the beans turn shiny dark brown and the surrounding skin turns from bright green to dark maroon. Deer and other herbivores such as  horses and cattle love to eat the succulent pulp. The hard seed coat breaks down during digestion, so when the seeds are secreted they germinate more easily. 
          The trunk and limbs of the honey locust are covered with dense clusters of long thorns, which start out soft and green, then turn hard and red, and finally brittle and gray. The hard thorns have been used as nails and the rot-resistant wood as posts and rails. It is thought that the tree evolved these thorns as a defense against browsing Pleistocene megafauna. Imagine chomping into those thorns! About the only thing that threatens these hardy trees is the mimosa webworm. Colonies of these caterpillars form large web "tents" and proceed to defoliate the tree. This year we had to clear an area with a lot of honey locusts in order to erect a wind generator and solar panels. Chopping down a honey locust doesn't kill it, as it just send up new shoots from the stump or roots. The trunk must be double ringed and left until the tree dies before it can be felled. Then the wicked thorns have to be carefully clipped off and burned before we can use the tree for firewood. 

spotted fawn triplets

spotted fawn triplets

grazing on long grass run to

their mother to nurse

These fawns are grazing in the grass not far from the low fence around our house with no other whitetail deer in sight. Perhaps they are the offspring of more than one mother, though it's fairly common for mature does to have twins (67 percent) and not uncommon to have triplets (12 percent). After awhile, one doe appears and the fawns all run to her to nurse. Busy mother! Whitetail fawns are born in late spring or early summer. Their reddish-brown coats have several hundred white spots, as camouflage in the shifting sunlight of the woods. The spots gradually disappear after three or four months. They begin eating vegetation a few weeks after birth and are weaned around four months. By six months they may begin breeding. Healthy, well-nourished whitetail deer are prolific breeders. On average, 100 does will produce 104 offspring, though about one out of three of the fawns will not survive until autumn. Deer usually browse on grass only in the spring and fall. The rest of the year they eat native forbs, especially sunflowers (I have had deer jump our low fence to eat sunflower seeds out of the bird feeder), and woody vegetation such as wild rose, wild plum, chokecherry, dogwood, pine and red cedar. Unfortunately for people with orchards, they are very fond of fruit trees. Unfortunately for the deer, they also love corn and will browse extensively on fields of genetically engineered commercial corn, with all its pesticides and herbicides.

gray clouds blur the sun

gray clouds blur the sun,

deer tracks on the white creek bed,

a string of geese flying east

A gray overcast blurs the sun, fuzzy white with a faint pink aura crowning the orb. On Pilgrim Creek a lone deer, walking along the middle of the snow-covered ice, left neat heart-shaped prints in the snow, like calligraphy on a white scroll. A long string of geese, with only a small vee at the head and a few outriders, is flying east over the snowy fields. Seems way too early and too cold for migration, but there they go.