I’m in love with muddy deer prints. Tails of trails. Fresh or frequent. Five minutes or forever long ago. They play and stray. Misses or misters making their mark. No worries. Creatures of grace and wonder, long lashes and lean bodies.

Feeling honored that they share my space. Or is it that I share their space? Soggy wetlands and paths yet to be forged. Their presence welcomed and apparent. My arrival, in the woods, as stealth as I can muster and still they notice me. Before I spy them. Stillness if only for their nostrils’ mist, their hooves sinking, snapping branches, crunching brown leaves.

Prints more frequent in the Spring thaw. New growth, juicy buds, spruce tips, cedar tips, arborvitae fronds. The fragrance of enticing treats pulling them closer for a nibble. Through the cyclic mushy, then frozen earth, their signature on the land preserved