Just you and the otter

If you live on a lake, one of winter’s pleasures is walking the snow-covered ice, until the snow gets too deep, after which you can walk it on snowshoes.

You soon find you’re not the only one who takes these walks – animals will have left their tracks before you. Imagine about six inches of snow on the ice and a soft snow falling, a couple of inches of new powder already down, as you embark in your insulated boots.

You stay close to shore, because it’s a bit too early in the season to trust the open ice, but also because this is where you’ll find most of the hoof and paw prints. Now and then an animal will shortcut across a bay, or across the lake proper, but mostly the tracks hug the shoreline, food and cover close by.

Not far on your walk, you come upon sausage-shaped depressions in the snow, each six to eight feet long, paw prints between. These are the slide marks of otters. You know they’re fresh because they remain well defined, the edges not even slightly softened by the falling snow.

You may not like assigning human qualities to animals, but when it comes to otters, you can’t helping thinking that here are creatures who know how to have fun. They don’t walk or trot along – they run and slide. Yes, they take a few running steps, then flop on their bellies and glide over the snow. A few more steps and glide again.

And so it goes, the tracks continuing as you walk along. The paw prints’ orientation shows you and the otter are heading in the same direction. You keep your eyes forward, hoping to catch a glimpse, since these marks can’t be more than a few minutes old. Here and there the trail heads up into the woods, then emerges again on the ice.

You never see the otter, just follow its trail halfway around the lake to where it finally enters and stays in the woods. On this day, the new snow has cleared the lake’s slate; the only tracks in evidence are yours and the otter’s. You’re glad to have shared the moment.