I’ve been taking some time away from most things that aren’t serving me well at the moment.

I do that at times and give myself a reset. Odd things still happening around here, but I choose to just move past it without writing or speaking about it. Sometimes it’s just best for me.

We got quite a bit a snow Thursday night into Friday…

We spent some time outside Friday afternoon with the grandson playing at the front of the property with him where things are more wide open.

We made a makeshift ‘sled’ from a Rubbermaid container and he slid down the hill off the side of the storm cellar. Built a snowman in the front yard that looks a little…suspicious 😂

Point being, we stayed in the front of the property.

Then this evening, right before dark, my camper living kiddo comes over to the main house for some things and when she leaves back out to go back to her place, she FaceTimes me and says there’s these “weird looking tracks” all around the back part of the property (where none of us have been since it snowed) .

So I get my boots on and grab a flashlight and go out to look.

At first, the snow prints are just random shapes. But they aren’t melting snow shapes. They are compressed shapes. Meaning something pressed down to make them and left compressed, compacted snow in the bottom of the imprint.

I keep walking, careful of where I step to make sure I’m not adding to these imprints more than I need to. I’m wearing boots so my prints are distinct from the others.

But the more I walk, and the further I get from the main house, the more weird it gets.

There’s no pattern to anything. Theres no side by side stepping, or regular animal strides to match to.

Then some even look like a Man’s snow boot print. With the toe of the boot facing back towards my house. But no boot tracks behind it, leading the man there. And no boot tracks in front of it.

Then there are single prints that…I know how this sounds…looks like human bare feet…and even roundness of toes.

My dad is almost 70 years old and he’s been in the woods his whole life. I sent him some pics and videos and he can’t pinpoint an animal to any of the imprints.

For some reason, that makes me feel more unsettled than anything else.

My dad taught me everything I know from building things, to fixing cars, how to skin fish, and how to navigate the woods. He has the most logical explanation for everything under the sun. Except this.

What I do know though, is there isn’t a single deer track from the deer family that visits our yard and co-exists with us. I keep deer feed out for them and they are comfortable with us. Their tracks being missing from back there tells me that whatever was going on last night, the deer knew to stay away.