We sat differently at breakfast this morning in this new old house, this Connecticut experiment, this place in the woods.
Our muscles still ached just a bit from yesterday’s load of furniture moved in and pushed around, aided by generous friends as the snow came down in earnest. Now to reap the fruit of our labors.
We perched on a new bench stationed on the side of the table that allows us to peer out over our backyard and into the woods from the rectangle off the kitchen that has now become The Breakfast Room.
The trees are winter-resplendent in their uncomplaining bearing up of two inches of snow, a mere sprinkling for New Englanders but remarkable enough to draw grateful eyes to the beauty of it all. You can see through the woods this time of year, an unveiling of fauna that must have our animals on their toes, or should. I remarked that if any animals moved about in those woods this morning, we’d spot them easily against the white upturning on the other valleyside of our fair-weather stream.
No cameras were at hand, but if this ain’t the spittin’ image.
It was an observation, not an expectation.
Yet not a minute later something moved. I grabbed the nearby binoculars and spotted a nice-sized coyote making his way slowly, right to left across the woods just beyond our rock wall, unaware of our admiration. No, two! No, three coyotes shuffling along from somewhere to somewhere, wild and beautiful!
They looked like German Shepherds, and were about that size. If one didn’t know better, you might even hear ‘Wolves!’ ring out in our amazement. But we do know better.
These were the coyotes who made short work of poor Morris the Deer, cleaning up his body to leave a med-school laboratory’s worth of pristine skeleton, then days later leaving no trace even of bone, just scattered fur here and there as mute testimony to Morris’ majestic life and inglorious death.
It’s amazing to me that from the inside warmth of this house, we become spectators of a wildness that moves the soul on a winter’s morning, hinting at other and deeper wildnesses that haunt this neighborhood, this state, this planet.
Who would have thought it when we said our tearful goodbyes to that other old house out in Indiana and came to this old house in New England’s generous woods?
Coyotes in the snow.
Canter Bridge 