Journey By Owl Light

The day was tenebrous, still and grey, and the bird feeders on the Two Hundred Acre Wood were all empty. The deep soft snow was well over my knees, and it muffled the sounds engendered by a laborious journey into the woods on snowshoes, dragging a toboggan chock full of grain, apples, suet and sunflower seed.

Now and again, one is granted a spontaneous and serendipity gift in the woods, and I have learned — the hard way of course — not to seek such gifts actively, but to cultivate a slow patience, to wait and see what the day holds in store — there is always a little something on offer on these potterings if one is thoughtful, patient and observant. Wild gifts are often so small and subdued that they are almost insignificant in the general scheme of things: an artfully curved branch bending under the weight of snow or icicles, a single delicate faded winter leaf caught in a tree somewhere, windblown milkweed pods, variegated lichens blanketing the rocks which poke their crowns out of the deep drifts of white here and there.

In the words of Ursula Kroeber leGuin, I am a slow unlearner, but how I love my unteachers in this quiet northern life.

Yesterday's surprise gift was a tiny Saw Whet Owl who perched in the crook of a tree along the snow drowned trail and watched with great golden eyes as I tugged my burden (a much needed bounty for the deer and birds however) by slow inches into the woods. This is the time of "the sugar bird" as this fierce wee predator is known in the Lanark Highlands — his springtime courting songs are heard just as the maple syrup season is beginning, and his presence is a sure sign that springtime is on its way, even though other markers of the changing season have yet to make an appearance in the woods and fields.