Don Lyman
The Boston Globe, February 24, 2023
Coyote tracks in the snow in the MIddlesex Fells Reservation in Stoneham. DON LYMAN
Walking through the woods in the Middlesex Fells in Stoneham in late January, the day after a light snowfall, it finally looks like winter, after what has been mostly a season of cold rain and mud — atypical for the Boston area. The soft, moist soil is now hard and frozen with a covering of snow a few inches deep.
The migratory birds of spring and summer, like wood thrushes and Baltimore orioles, are far away in warmer places. Their mellifluous songs are replaced with the occasional scolding of a chickadee — “chickadee-dee-dee”, and a blue jay’s “jay jay!” alarm call in the distance.
I don’t see any animals, but the tracks of squirrels in the snow reveal their presence. A straight set of dog-like paw prints, one in front of the other, tells the story of a coyote that passed this way. Coyotes are “perfect steppers,” which means they put their hind foot into the print of their front foot, resulting in a trail of single tracks, according to an article in Backpacker magazine about how to identify animal tracks in the snow. Foxes are perfect steppers too, but their tracks are smaller.
The coyote’s trail winds through the woods, past pine trees and greenbriers. The greenbriers are bare, devoid of leaves, like most of the trees and shrubs in the forest this time of year, but their stems are green — a distant reminder of summer.
I look up occasionally as I walk, hoping to see the coyote that left the paw prints, but it probably traversed these woods under the cover of darkness the night before.
Rabbit tracks in the snow, close to the coyote’s trail, reveal what the predator was probably hunting for. Interestingly, the prints of the rabbit’s larger hind feet are in front of the prints of its smaller forefeet. That’s because as rabbits hop, their forefeet land first, followed by their hind feet which hit the ground ahead of the forefeet, according to Backpacker. The same holds true for squirrels, which also tend to hop along the ground.
An adjacent tangle of thorny greenbriers probably affords the rabbit some protection from predators like coyotes and foxes. Having been snared in briers and having to struggle to free myself from their formidable barbed wire-like thorns, I can attest to their effectiveness as a barrier.
The coyote’s trail disappears near the briar patch, then reappears on the other side. I follow the coyote’s tracks a bit further, then turn back toward the main trail.
A young man jogging along a frozen path about a hundred feet away nods and waves. Even though the temperature is about 30 degrees, he’s only wearing gym shorts and a T-shirt — a braver man than I, to be sure.
A vernal pool in the MIddlesex Fells Reservation. DON LYMAN
I stop to look at a vernal pool. These temporary ponds fill with water from rain and snowmelt and are used in the spring by amphibians, such as frogs and salamanders, as well as invertebrates like dragonflies for breeding before the pools dry up in summer. I often visit this pool in March and April when I hear spring peepers and wood frogs calling for mates during their spring breeding rituals. It’s frozen over with a thin layer of ice now, and the buttonbush that fills much of this half-acre ephemeral pool is bare and scraggly looking. In summer the six-foot-tall shrubs will be covered with green leaves, and their namesake white spherical flower clusters will attract bees, butterflies, and other pollinators.
Staring at the frozen pool triggers a memory of when I was a 12-year-old boy walking along the edge of Little Creek — a small stream that flowed next to the golf course at the Quantico Marine base in northern Virginia — when much to my amazement I saw a big bull frog swimming under the ice. I thought cold-blooded animals like frogs would be fast asleep in the mud during winter, but maybe the frog was itching for spring as much as I was on that long-ago winter day.
It’s hard to believe that in just a couple short months, this vernal pool will be teaming with life, as the first warm rains of spring awaken an army of amphibians from their winter dormancy beneath the frozen leaf litter and forest floor. Upon emerging, the spring peepers, wood frogs, and spotted salamanders will make their annual march to the pool to mate and lay eggs. Hundreds of spring peepers will create a deafening chorus of high-pitched whistles, interspersed by the duck-like quacking sound of wood frogs.
But for now, the woods are mostly silent.
I remember the errands I have to do, and continue walking back to my car. In the moment I’m reminded of a line from Robert Frost’s poem, “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” — “The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.”
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