Woodland walks reveal wildlife and wonders
Woodland walks reveal wildlife and wonders
Ifound the trail more than two decades ago. It begins in a forest clearing and disappears in the nether reaches of a big swamp.
A topo map led me to the trail. I was studying the map, hoping to find a good place to hunt deer away from the crowds, and noticed two small oxbows nestled together in the backcountry. A narrow cut between the lakes would surely provide an ideal crossing site for whitetails moving from one side of the lakes to the other. It looked like a good place to scout.
I picked up the trail just south of the oxbows. I was surprised how distinct it was. The tracks of many deer filled the well-worn path.
A huge, ancient oak shades the ground where the trail begins. It serves as a marker of sorts, delineating the end of the road-hunter’s realm and the beginning of miles of untouched backcountry.
From here, the trail winds along a ridge shrouded by persimmon and ironwood trees. A hundred yards farther on, the trail pitches off into a marshy button-willow thicket. On the soft, swampy ground, the path becomes even more distinct.
At this point, it seems the dense vegetation will halt your forward progress. But if you bend low and push your way through, you soon find yourself in a clearing.
The sight here is spectacular. Several enormous cypress trees stand like vanguards over the swamp. To the left, you can gaze across a serenely beautiful lake that probably has never been crossed by a boat. To the right are more cypress trees and the headwaters of the second lake.
A slough connects the two lakes. Beavers have transformed it into a pond, and in the process, they created a bridge of sorts for wilderness whitetails. The trail leads straight across their long, broad dam.
A quarter mile or so beyond this point, the trail becomes a crossroads. At one juncture, you can turn down a path skirting the shore of one lake. Another byway leads to a bit of high ground where animals find refuge from the annual floodwaters. Yet another leads the traveler to the banks of a broad bayou that snakes for miles through the bottoms.
If you continue on the main trail, you find it becoming less
and less obvious. Then, in the middle of the swamp, it simply fades away.
I’ve spent many days sitting alongside that trail, watching the many travelers who use it. Not all of them are deer.
On several mornings, I’ve seen families of raccoons waddling down the path. Opossums and armadillos often walk the trail. I saw a bobcat one day, stalking some unseen prey. And on three occasions, I’ve watched black bears pass my stand.
The deer, however, have created and maintained the path. It is their road, and they use it often. Usually, they walk alone. But I’ve seen as many as a dozen walking single file down the path.
I used to think that deer trails were ephemeral things. Some are. You’ll find them one year, and they’ve disappeared the next.
This trail, however, has a permanency about it. It’s remained clear since the day I found it. Fresh deer tracks always mark its surface. As long as it remains away from the beaten paths of humans, I think it will always be there because everything the deer need — food, water, shelter — can be found along that walkway. They enjoy restful solitude here, a place to live out the short years they’re allotted with little to disturb them.
Sitting there one day, watching the residents of the woodlands come and go along the trail, I thought about the fact that hunters, like their quarry, also follow well-worn trails. At least I do.
My trails are not created by footprints in the earth, but the trails are distinct in my eyes nevertheless.
Some are just side trails, part of the crossroads encompassed by every trail at some point or another. These lead off to places I must visit occasionally to tend to some important bit of busyness — the trail from my home to the post office, for example, and the trail from my office to the city.
Like the deer, though, I have one path I travel more often than others — the main trail, if you will — that leads to a place where I can spend days in restful solitude.
This trail begins in the city at the edge of the mountains but soon pitches off into the vast bottomlands of the Mississippi
Delta. A big river, the Arkansas, delineates the end of the urban realm and the beginning of hundreds of square miles of rural backcountry.
The path gets smaller here but no less distinct. And the sights along the way are spectacular. To the left, you can sometimes spot eagles in the cypress trees crowding a roadside oxbow. To the right are fields overflowing with snow geese and ducks in the winter and tupelo swamps
where otters swim year-round.
The little towns along the way seem empty just before dawn when I usually pass through. That’s good because the lack of people and traffic means there’s always wildlife to be seen. Raccoons, opossums, deer, mink, an occasional bobcat or coyote — you never know what will show up around the next bend.
The sun usually rises as I near the trail’s end and pull off on the side of the road. On this trail, however, the end is only the beginning. When I leave my vehicle and walk the path to the two oxbows and beyond, I know I’ll enjoy a peaceful day in the woods with only the travelers of the trail to accompany me. Those travelers always make good company.
I imagine you, too, have a trail you travel more often than others, a trail that leads to some special place you’ve come to know and love. Following trails is part of being a hunter.
Do not spend too much time, though, looking at the tracks beneath your feet. It’s not so important to know who has traveled the trail. What’s important is seeing the things you pass along the way and understanding what you’re likely to discover up ahead.
At the end of every good trail, another begins.
May the trails you travel be like that.