That is a deer trail that the GG is walking on. Today, we were actually walking on snow and ice out in the swamp behind our cabin on Long Point at Houghton Lake. Those are not his footprints. The snow is so crusted that you cannot see our footprints. The deer live in the swamp in the interior of Long Point, behind our cabin. And they visit our cabin’s yard at night, meaning you have to constantly watch where you are putting your feet down by the seawall because there are deer pellets *everywhere*. Yes. Everywhere. When we were up at the HL cabin on New Year’s weekend, I was about to go out the back door for my morning walk at 0-dark-30 when I saw the motion of aminals (intentionally misspelled) in the yard. I freaked for just a moment until I realized they were deer. As I began to walk along Long Point road, more deer skitted across the road ahead of me. Into the swamp, where they live and breed.

I was returning from my morning walk this morning in full sunlight. Sigh. I had planned to get up a half hour or so earlier than I did, and return from my walk just as the sun was coming up. Not. As I rounded the last corner, I spied with my little eye the GG heading across the street into the swamp. I grabbed my real camera out of the cabin and followed him across the street. Into the deep gray green greasy Limpopo River Long Point Swamp. It is still iced over (as is the lake), so it was easy to walk in there and I got some pictures and you can click here or on the pic to see a few more.

And then. Today is the day that all ice shanties are decreed by whatever authorities to be off the lake. The ice was still sorta safe yesterday. Today was so warm up there that I am just not sure any more. There will be more, maybe quite a few more, dips down into the teens or below but the ice was booming like crazy today and the sun was warm and if I had a shanty out there, I’d’ve had it off the ice a few weeks ago. Maybe.

We’re back on the Planet now and the next time we get to Houghton Lake, there will be boats on the lake instead of snowmobiles. And so it goes. Good night.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 15th, 2009 at 7:24 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.