Temps have warmed into the double digits for the first time in days. Yesterday after tackling a batch of work at my desk, I bundled up and ventured out for a mini-hike in the woods with Zaydee.

Crisp Crunch Crisp Crunch

I love the sound snow makes at zero degrees.

Jack Frost has been busy decking the woods like Martha Stewart might deck the halls. Sparkles galore. The forest feels super clean. Tantalizing little critter tracks are carefully placed accents in a fluffed up room cleared of clutter. The cold air bit my cheeks while I strolled through the picture perfect landscape. Something ahead looked slightly out of place. Green gray, it lay like a pillow in the trail. A rock? Too smooth. Too exposed. Unless? No…the bears are hibernating and not rolling rocks right now. ‘Tis the season for gut piles but this wasn’t a pile. There wasn’t a mess. Just the misplaced pillow and not a couch around.

I approached.

The pillow was full of grass. A deer’s stomach. So it was a gut pile…minus the guts, fur and gore. Sounds gross but there was something oddly beautiful about the cleanliness, the color, the shape, the placement. The only clue was a dot of blood here and there in the snow like carefully placed red candy Christmas cookie decorations. Cliff has five deer hanging outside his cabin. None of them have stomachs. So here amidst the perfect Jack Frost winter white landscape, a beautiful wild creature with long eye lashes breathed it’s last. Birds feasted. So will I. (Cliff keeps me in meat).

Frozen hard as a rock, the stomach lay in the trail where I walked carefully with trekking poles; careful not to stumble or fall thus risk ripping my own stitched up innards.

Life is beautifully odd.