Ill 
SNOW STORIES 
THE sun went down in a spindrift of pale gold and 
gray, which faded into a bank of lead-colored cloud. 
The next morning the woods and fields were dumb 
with snow. No blue jays squalled, nor white-skirted 
juncos clicked; neither were there any nuthatches 
running gruntingly up and down the tree-trunks. 
There was not even the caw of a passing crow from 
the cold sky. As I followed an unbroken wood-road, 
it seemed as if all the wild-folk were gone. 
The snow told another story. On its smooth sur- 
face were records of the lives that had throbbed and 
passed and ebbed beneath the silent trees. Just 
ahead of me the road crossed a circle where, a half- 
century ago, the charcoal-burners had set the round 
stamp of one of their pits. On the level snow there 
was a curious trail of zigzag tracks. They were deep 
and close-set, and made by some animal that walked 
flat-footed. I recognized the trail of the unhasting 
skunk. Other animals may jump and run and skurry 
through life, but the motto of the skunk is, “‘Don’t 
hurry, others will.” The tracks of the fore-paw, 
when examined closely, showed long claw-marks 
which were absent from the print of the hind feet. 
Occasionally the trail changed into a series of groups 
of four tracks arranged in a diagonal straight line, 
