Deer Carcass & Little Birds....

There's a huge storm hanging in the air, ready to descend. Pat and I drove to the cabin this morning to rescue the topper for the pickup; we've had it sitting on some pallets in the woods since spring. Summer requires an open bed - for hauling dirt and compost and wood; for packing up bicycles and camping gear - the list goes on and on. Winter requires the conversion of the bed to a portable garage. So there we were.
Our boots crunch loudly. Unexpected color - the yellow of the grasses struggling up from the snow, as many browns and tans now as there are greens in May. Puffs of wind rustling the clinging oak leaves; a sporadic chorus of birds. The indigo light of winter reveals much in the woods - the ribs of the land contoured in a skin of snow, the old farm machinery reclining into the earth, the nests perched in the tall grasses. Tracks, each imprinted with blue shadow, mark the trails of countless critters.
I followed footfalls down the white stripe of pasture road; to a place where tracks seemed to come from every direction and converge off to the left; in the wrapped roots of snow-covered trees and tangles of dried vegetation. There, a new color - a gold-red carcass crusted in fat and gristle; whitetail bones and fur scattered outward as the tracks circled in.
I felt only my own breath in the cold, the exchange of warm for cool, contemplating the sight, honoring that life dried and frozen like jerky in the white, picked clean already by those whose tracks circled all around.
With my feet still, little birds swooped down joyfully, chirping, landing on the carcass, biting and twittering, celebrating.
A chill up my spine tore me from their party, whether it came from the inside or the outside I don't know. I turned to walk back; feeling eyes in the woods. Were then wondering at my presence as much as I wonder at theirs?