A White Winter Wonderland

Sometimes, when the snow is deep, snowshoes are the best way to explore the winter woods. Even though skis are better for gliding down hills, snowshoes are better for navigating winding singletrack, stopping to listen, and getting up close to interesting things along the trail.

Snow falls lazily at the trailhead. Light flakes go up as much as down, and don’t seem to be in any hurry to reach the ground. Despite their pure appearance, each one has a speck of dust at its center. High in the Earth’s atmosphere, that solid particle gathered water molecules around itself and organized them into a structure, which became ice. Then more ice crystals grew from each of the six angles. As the baby snowflake was tossed about in turbulence, it traveled through pockets of varying temperatures and humidity, growing differently in each microclimate, until it became heavy enough to reach the ground. Sticking out my tongue to catch a flake, I disregarded the dust and relished the taste of cold.

Goldenrod gall flies lead a curious life. The result is globe-shaped lumps visible on dried flower stems in the snow-covered meadow near the trail. Last June, as the goldenrod plant began to grow, a tiny fly with black-and-white wings laid an egg on the stem. A larva emerged from the egg and chewed its way into the plant flesh. Some combination of the chewing action and hormones in the larva’s saliva triggered the plant to grow a thickened spot known as a gall. All summer; the larva hid in the gall and grew fat by filtering sugars out of plant juice. Now, protected by antifreeze made from those sugars, the larva will rest until spring. If you slice open the gall, the larva can be used as ice-fishing bait or as survival food. They taste slightly sweet and are surprisingly rubbery. Chickadees don’t seem to mind. One of the galls in the weed patch sported a gaping hole where a little beak had interrupted the larva’s long winter nap.

Pileated woodpeckers stick around all winter, and their work can be easy to observe in the winter woods. Wood chips on top of the snow are one clue. Too big to be sawdust from the trail volunteers, they spill out of a large, rectangular hole in dead or dying trees. Sometimes you’ll hear the dull thuds of their steady chipping. Their giant beaks gain them access to delicious carpenter ants hidden inside the snag. Scanning the treetops, you might discover the striking black bird with white face markings, a scarlet crest, and a red stripe on its cheek. Come spring, a male and his mate will find a hollow tree and use their beaks to drum in a way that echoes across their entire territory.

Fishers are large members of the weasel family who leave five-clawed tracks along firm surfaces, and paired depressions in deeper snow. With one two-to-three-inch footprint slightly ahead of the other, they often cross our trails and even run along them for a while. Then the long brown Being will lope off across the snowfield with back feet landing in the holes where the front feet just left. They are solitary through the winter, but in their early spring mating season, the males put on the miles in the hopes of encountering more females.

Seeds may make you think of spring, but winter is a good time for them to travel. Birch trees grow their seeds in cylindrical bundles called catkins. Silhouetted against the gray sky of winter, the ruffled clusters decorate the birch’s dark, purplish twigs. As the catkins crumble, we find their contents scattered across the snow. The seeds are tiny, football-shaped, and have a papery, ear-shaped wing on each side. These help them to catch the wind. The catkins also shed their bracts, which are modified leaves that protect the flowers. These have three toes in front and one behind, like the tiny foot of a bird.

Ruffed grouse make tracks with three toes in front and one behind. Their trails look like daisy chains wandering aimlessly through the underbrush. These remarkable creatures have one of the smallest brains of any bird and yet are smart enough to grow their own snowshoes. Each year, a comb-like fringe made of the same stuff as your fingernails grows along all of their toes. The additional surface area helps them stay afloat on fluff. These pectinations, as they are called, also help grouse grip onto icy treetops as they feed on the catkins and buds of birches and aspens. Then, by springtime, they will have worn away.

White-tailed deer make deep, heart-shaped tracks all over our trails. Their hooves are the opposite of snowshoes and are a liability when the drifts get deep. Eventually, deer will be confined to well-worn trails or locked into a deeryard of packed snow under the cedar trees. Their tracks often lead to the contorted twigs of a small tree or shrub. Years› worth of deer browsing on twigs sculpt their favorite foods into sad little bonsai trees. Deer don’t have top teeth in the front, so they just clamp a twig between their bottom teeth and their hard palate and rip, leaving a shred of bark still clinging to the angled cut.

Chokecherry shrubs are common understory shrubs across much of the Midwest. They are easy to spot in late summer, when their fruits dangle in long clusters of red, then black. In the winter, they blend right in. A close look, however, reveals slender twigs and pointy buds in two shades of brown. If you don’t have your reading glasses on, use your nose—chokecherries are the original scratch-and-sniff! Use your fingernail to scrape away a bit of the bark on one of the youngest twigs. If the shrub is actually a cherry, a quick sniff should reveal a scent like almond extract or apple seeds. It’s the smell of cyanide, a chemical many plants in the Rose Family use to protect themselves.

Snow fleas are tiny, six-legged arthropods also known as springtails. As the day warms and the crust softens, you can often find a patch of them looking like black pepper spilled across the snow. They have a forked appendage called a furcula, which hinges forward like an upside-down mousetrap and locks underneath their body, storing potential energy. When startled, the snow flea releases the clasp on its furcula, and it launches itself into a flight that neither they nor their predators can predict. Since they eat decaying leaves, bacteria, and fungi, no one is quite sure what they are doing on top of the snow.

Otters are one of the best examples of animals that play. Pushing off with their five webbed toes, they tuck their front legs under their belly and slide with gleeful abandon. This results in a foot-wide toboggan run snaking down through the trees. Even on straightaways, they will gain momentum for long glides. It’s a bit backwards, but their cousins, the fishers, eat squirrels while otters are the ones who eat fish. Winter seems to be a good time to visit all the lakes and rivers to assess each one’s potential as a sushi bar.

One of the best things about snowshoeing through the winter woods is that if you ever get winded trudging up a steep hill or breaking through deep drifts, there’s always something to look at, listen to, taste, feel, or smell while you pretend you aren’t stopping to catch your breath.