Unquiet Forest

View into the west from my cabin

It’s a gray and blustery day at Roundtop ahead of some light snow expected tomorrow.  The wind roared and howled all night long, with gusts nearing 40 mph. The temperature is now nearly 20 degrees colder than Sunday and will drop another 25 degrees before it’s done.  Winter has arrived.

I spent yesterday adding more straw to the chickens, snug in their winter pen, digging out my Yak-trax and my mid-winter parka—my winter chores. This blast of winter will last, in varying degrees, about a week.  Wednesday and Thursday look to be the coldest days, and by then the chickens will get another handful of straw.

Last night I wondered if the coyotes were around again.  Not as close as they were last week, but somewhere relatively near. The wind was from the west, and late in the evening Baby Dog faced the wind and began to bark that deep, serious bark of hers.  I scoured the forest with my headlamp but saw nothing.  With the wind as fierce as it was, their scent may have traveled quite some distance, perhaps even from the next mountain over.  Certainly, I haven’t heard them howling since that night, so they are not near enough to hear that.  But Baby Dog’s unhappy barking led me to believe that something she didn’t like—nearly always a predator—was near enough for her to sound a warning.