MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Winter 2021

69 BIOPHILIAC words :: Leslie Anthony When the pandemic shutdown hit in March, like many folks my partner and I started a daily walk routine as a way to escape the house and get some exercise. At first our forays were confined to our immediate neighbourhood, a combination of paved trails and street walking on a loop I often ran in the summer. The lakes were still frozen, slick patches lurked on the trails, and it was still snowing occasionally. It felt a bit more like winter than spring, so on sunny days we ski-toured up the shuttered nearby ski resort. The mountain was empty, the skiing fantastic, and those excursions some of the best days spent during the early pandemic. They were also revealing: There were all sorts of interconnecting trails and old roads to explore while making our way upwards. Furthermore, without humans around, animal tracks were suddenly legion, crisscrossing the runs everywhere—bear, bobcat, cougar, coyote, ermine, rabbit—a window into who we actually shared the area with. As spring advanced and the valley’s main paved trail became disturbingly busy, swarmed with people not practicing proper distancing, we moved our daily walks to a golf course. Here, we could walk a 5-kilometre loop from one end to another on cleared golf-cart tracks with hip-high snowbanks. With winter still raging on the upper mountains through April, it was our month spent wandering the golf course that really provided a window into how the valley rolls into spring. It started with migratory waterfowl that showed up as soon as there was any open water. First came Canada geese, whose large males would, in a few weeks, stand on the path and aggressively challenge you; the usual mallards, teals and pintails filled the duck ledger, but there were also gadwall, wood duck and buffleheads passing through with a new lot every few days—like a shift change. As snow melted to reveal bare patches, hundreds of robins and finches came out of the woodwork, hunting together through the grass shoots, flying up into the low branches of trees as we passed. Then the crows and ravens arrived and things got a whole lot noisier. We also started to notice deer tracks. This was interesting because deer are never-seen phantoms in this area, and yet here they were, surrounded on all sides by neighbourhoods. Then, out of this same urban patchwork bears appeared, one by one, day by day, to mow through new grass THE LAST BEST PLACE Where the concepts of movement, discovery & adventure are all relative A red fox with its winter fur during a snowstorm. MAXIME LÉGARÉ-VÉZINA