Game Trail

December 15, 2025

Greetings from the wandering,

When my children were little, there was a path through this field and into the woods.  We made it deeper and wider through use, exploring the little forest, what we called ‘Adventure Walks’, usually on our way to town to the ice cream store.  The path is gone now, grown over as they grew up, grew off into other paths.

One morning this week, almost impulsively, I dropped into the field thinking I might follow our old route through the woods, that somehow it would be obvious after decades of never seeing it. If this sounds naïve, you are an astute observer of human behavior. 

The trail, or where I thought the trail would be, was transformed by thick undergrowth. Just to make it more interesting, whatever remnants from our trail were covered by deep snow. The idea that I might find our old stomping grounds sounds worse with each word.

And so, what I was counting on was the game path, the way that animals make through the woods.  It’s easy to miss if you aren’t looking for it, sometimes it is more insinuated than stated.  In these woods the game path is mostly made by deer as they go back and forth between foraging and sleeping and dating.  Sort of a subtle highway system woven into the forest. 

For a second I hesitated, because nothing looked familiar.  Just a tangle of brush and young trees, bordered by a band of more mature forest.  I knew generally the direction I wanted to go, and so I simply plunged in.  You know, expecting that things would work out for the best.

I saw the deer tracks, quotation marks branding the deep snow, and for a little while it seemed like following them was the right choice, I felt like a real woodsman.  Within minutes that feeling dissolved.  The deer path narrowed to more of a pointless meandering, slicing through brambles and brittle branches.

I twisted and shuffled, bending lower and lower as I moved into the thicket, pressing branches and vines away as I folded myself between the bushes and saplings.  Old branches gave way with a sudden snap, flinging bark crumbs in my eyes.  I’m certain real woodsmen don’t say things like ‘bark crumbs’.

The sunlight was thin, filtered by a film of gauzy clouds and the gnarled whirl of limbs above me.  I was still walking in the tracks left by deer, pebbled with their skat, trying to see whatever map they were following.  Thorns pulled at my pants, raked the sides of my jacket making little zipper songs.  I was crab-walking, then crawling, struggling to push through the dense tangle of brush. The temperature was in single digits but inside my layers I was sweating. 

Less than half an hour into this adventure I recognize that deer are far more limber than I am. It’s not like there’s been a debate, it was one of those things I hadn’t considered until the lesson was given to me.  I was grunting out loud as I bent over, cursing at reluctant muscle tissue, crashing through thickets, snapping branches, gasping as I tried to pull myself back on my feet, as uncoordinated as a baby giraffe on ice.

I see deer every day coming out of these woods but on this day I would see no wildlife because I was making so much racket they were all snickering behind trees, whispering acerbic things to each other as I crashed through the bush, gasping and grunting.  Above me the birds joined in, mocking me with their sarcastic sing-song taunts.

I paused in a rare open space and stood up straight, stretched my back until my spine felt like it was made of peanut brittle and eggshells.  “Yoga,” I said to the trees. “I’ll do more yoga.”  The trees refrained from comment.

I came to a gulley and held on to what seemed like a reliable branch to begin gingerly climbing down in the icy snow, which turned into a bouncing slalom on my butt when the tree turned traitorous.  I sat for a moment in the snow, looking at the deer marks around me, picturing them gracefully leaping over same space I redefined clumsy.

I finally came to a creek, which is not where I remembered it.  I shuffled along the high bank, looking for the space my little kids built rocks and branches into a makeshift ford.  Thirty years ago.  I followed the deer tracks to a crossing, looked at their hoof prints in the ice across the stream.  A few feet away was open water, dark liquid glistening in the weak sunlight.  I tried to think how much a deer might weigh, and whether it mattered that their displacement was on four feet.  As if knowing would help.  I finally just skittered across the ice bridge on my tiptoes, which we all know makes you lighter on ice.  I’m convinced that my positive attitude kept the ice from breaking.

I set out on this little adventure walk to think a little, but the demands of the moment absorbed my meager bandwidth. Scrambling on my hands and knees, clambering over deadfalls, breaking pokey twigs, tripping and getting up, trying not to get impaled.  It was a cross-fit event tucked inside a stroll in the woods.

I doubled back a few times after following the deer tracks into dead ends that I couldn’t navigate. I finally crawled out into a meadow, still holding an blemished blanket of white.  A dried leaf skittered across the crust of snow, a maple ballerina, hurried by a puff of wind.  I paused for a moment, listening to my breath make a new whistling noise in my chest. 

The game path was probably not the most efficient choice to make my way through the woods. If deer have some logical reason for traveling the various routes through the tangle of living it was not obvious to me. 

But as I sat in the snow, feeling the sweat run down my back from my efforts, I realized I’d seen this old familiar place in a novel way.  Following the footprints of the animals, pausing where they’d slept in the snow, moving low in the world, caused me to see things I’d missed for all the years before.  I’d added a new adventure walk of my own.

Hope this finds you bushwhacking,

David

Copyright © 2025 David Smith