The clipper system snow made two things possible: a bit of cross-country skiing last night and a bit of animal tracking this morning. The skiing was merely OK: there was only a couple of inches of snow covering the grass, and because the ground wasn't hard-frozen, my skis tended to ice up. The tracking, however, was great, at least, for the hour or two it lasted. The snow was just deep enough to hold any impressions made by the critters moving across it, but I knew that, with warmer temperatures in the forecast, the dry powder wouldn't last long, so I was out early. I had hoped for a big book of stories to record and read, but for unknown reasons, very few animals left records of their passage through our backwoods. The Gray Squirrels, for their part, have been abundant and active during the Thaw, and since it wasn't really all that cold in the wake of the storm, they were outside chasing each other and scurrying around on the ground for cached acorns when I walked into the forest behind our house. They had also clearly been active in the darkness and at dawn. Here's proof, complete with toenails.