Is it Spring yet???? Hopefully, by the time you read this, our long winter will be over. I have to confess, though, I’m one of these freaks who loves the snow. I’m like all the other little kids, sticking out my tongue to catch a flake, or building a snowman. (Over the years, though, my snowmen are looking less like the traditional round blobs, and more like Fabio. Hey! A girl can dream!)

The day after Christmas, I was up at daybreak, parka over my pajamas, and boots over my bunny slippers. The rising sun cast a pink light on the new-fallen snow, and my camera grabbed me by the hand and demanded to go outside and witness the dawn’s early light. What perfection! And now I have great pictures for next year’s Winter Solstice card. All my Druid friends will appreciate that.

What I love most about a new snow, though, is the chance to become Ace Pegtura, Nature Detective. There on the pristine ground are clues galore about all the mammalian prowlers and sleepless denizens of the night. Having spent much of my childhood in the woods with my father, I know a great deal about animal tracks. But in the snow, they are so much easier to identify. I always chuckle when I walk down the mountain, using my boot prints from the previous trip as steps, and I spy deer tracks inside of my own. How clever they are to think, “why sink my legs into the cold deep snow, when some other creature has made us these nice holes?” I love the way the tiny bird prints go in every direction, grabbing up every morsel of seed, and in the middle of all this evidence of avian mayhem, there will often be evidence of giant turkey feet striding evenly and deliberately through it all. Like Godzilla walking amongst the lesser lizards.

I can easily recover my stolen thistle feeder by following the raccoon prints to an oak tree, where the empty feeder lies abandoned at the base. I see that a fox has come up on the porch, and wonder if the scent of the field mouse brought him there. And why are the squirrels so interested in the woodshed? I wonder if they’ve hidden acorns in there.

Daylight brings a different crowd. My Carolina Wrens are thankfully making it through another winter, on suet and safflower seeds. The woodpeckers are eating peanuts faster than I can stock the feeders. There’s a young doe that comes every morning to eat the cracked corn. The white snow is littered with darting black juncos, and titmice line up to wait their turn at the feeders with chickadees and nuthatches. My cardinals seem redder than ever against the contrasting white background, and my glorious goldfinches are circling the thistle feeders like 747s at O’Hare.

When my friends visit me, they always ask if I feel isolated. And how do I cope with the quiet and solitude? Don’t I ever get bored, especially in the winter?

I look at them like they’re nuts!