Some winters challenge the wildlife more and some less – 2010/11 has been very challenging throughout most of the world. Weather records have been broken and here in the Northeast US cold and snow have persisted without break for far too many months.

While walking with the dogs each day we run across some casualties. Dead deer, lethargic squirrels that find it difficult to race back up to their lofty leafy homes, raccoons whose tree-houses have succumbed to the steady winds searching for another abode, coyotes and fox sniffing closer to the chicken coop and wild turkeys digging through the snow with feathers ruffled hoping to appear monstrously huge to any predator that might mark them as an easy meal. This is nature and as is evidently true only the strong survive.

There are many laws that forbid the feeding of wildlife – most of this has to do with the spreading of disease as well as the baiting of locations to make it easier to kill something during hunting season. These laws serve a good purpose – a needed buffer between what is wild and what is not and as wildlife become more adapted to life around humans these laws will be extended in order to ensure the safety of both.

On a beautiful, starkly cold winter’s day it may, at first thought, seem sad to come across the desiccated carcass of a great buck – many-pointed antlers protruding from the snow like the gnarled roots of an ancient tree but not so sad as those deer forever be-headed and mounted on the wall of some hunter’s den. A downed animal in the wild nourishes and houses everything. Meat eaters feast, birds re-line their nests with fur, rodents gnaw and reload their bodies with much needed calcium and minerals from bone, the earth is replenished of organic material, and a lonely opossum, driven out of hibernation early due to hunger, seeks refuge in the chest cavity from two annoying and persistent black labs.

As tough as winter can be there is, always, hope. Finally past the mid-winter mark there are very subtle signs that spring may actually be on the way. The days have grown longer and the sun, if it comes out, feels warm – even on the coldest of days. Soon, as the snow recedes and the ice clings to base of the trees, looking much like café tables for the woodland gnomes, sprouts will break through the endless sea of white – the bright green tendrils reaching toward the sky with great anticipation. The animals will find life easier and the new crop of babies will start their wobbly exploration of the world. The icy cold will melt into pools, warmed by the sun and enrich all life.

So as one season ends another begins and the circle of life is continued.