COASTING ii 



It was dark when this coast ended. Pushing 

 my sleeping bag into a loose snowdrift, I brushed 

 the snow off myself and slipped into the bag, 

 planning after a sleep to get up, make a fire, 

 and have supper of raisins but I slept through 

 the night. 



It was not yet daylight when I awoke, but I 

 concluded to have another royal coast. I again 

 climbed the slope and down I rushed, landing 

 several hundred feet to the north and a quarter 

 of a mile below my night camp. 



After getting my sleeping bag I went on down 

 the slope where I found tracks of many kinds 

 in the deep snow in the forest. There were 

 stitch-like tracks of mice, big tracks of snow- 

 shoe rabbits, trails of squirrels to their supplies 

 of winter cones under the snow, and tracks made 

 by grouse, camp birds, and crested jays. I came 

 upon the place where a mouse had peeped out of 

 a hole in the snow and had been captured by 

 an owl. At another place a coyote, after miles 

 of zigzag wandering, had surprised and captured 

 a grouse beneath a snow-covered bush. I crossed 

 the tracks of a three-footed snowshoe rabbit fol- 

 lowed by the tracks of a wildcat and wished I 

 knew their story. But at last I came to the 

 tracks of big animals just what I was looking 

 for. 



In snowy regions the moose, deer, and elk have 



