Winter wonderlands
The forecast was for clearing in the afternoon, but a misty rain still sprinkled lightly on my windshield from the slate gray sky. I was headed to my property in Clarendon County to put out some corn and maybe - get in a hunt. The last few days had been a misery of cold, cloudy and wet wintry weather. I was ready for a change and a chance to get outside.
At the land, I took a bucket of shelled corn down a narrow, crooked path to one of our stands. The soft earth in the path was punched with a cluster of deer tracks. We made the path, but the deer took ownership and use it to travel from a nearby beanfield to one of the ponds on the property. The wet leaf litter on the sodden ground made my passage almost perfectly silent. I was able to slip in and out with a very minimal disturbance. Only the wind knew I was there.
The next stand was a short walk down an old woodland road. The cold rain was heavier now, but the canopy shielded me somewhat. Big drops plunked down around me. I poured out the corn and headed back to the dry comfort of my truck. Then something caught my eye through the muted woods, off to one side of the trail. I stopped and stepped back.
A brown shape, and another, then movement. Two deer were watching me. They bounded away, and three others followed. They vanished into the woods without a sound. I realized they had let me walk by but lost their nerve when I stopped. I smiled and walked on to the truck.
The light rain had stopped now, but the sky was still overcast, and I decided to hunt another day. I wanted to check on the spillway at the back of the property. With all the rain I knew there would be a heavy discharge from the flooded woods. I just wanted to make sure everything was OK. I took a shovel and a hammer and walked across the soggy beanfield to the drainage ditch at the back of the woods. I had installed a flashboard riser there several years ago.
With the spillway, I can manage the wooded wetlands that flood periodically. In wet years, I can hold water through the winter for the ducks, and I can partially drain the woods through the summer to keep the hardwood trees alive. I took the shovel in case I needed to remove an obstruction from the ditch and the hammer if I needed to remove a board from the riser. Neither was needed.
When I walked out of the woods into the open beanfield I realized that the sky was much lighter. The clouds were clearing out in the west, and a beautiful blue sky was showing there. Heavy gray clouds still lingered overhead. The golden sunlight slanting in from the west created a magnificent rainbow under the overhead clouds and across the gray firmament to the east. I stood in awe.
Then, almost as quickly as it had formed, the rainbow started to fade. Only one side lingered, and it seemed to move away, into the distance. When I got back to the truck the rainbow was gone.
The next day dawned clear and cold. I waited until nearly midday, then headed to the high country club in northern Sumter County to do some scouting. I stopped at the sign-in box and saw that no one else was on the property. I had the whole place to myself on a beautiful winter day.
I signed out an area that I call the "swamp road." It roughly follows the edge of a hardwood swamp and creek that runs through the club lands. Steep pine-covered ridges rise from one side of the road toward a central high hill. The other side of the road looks out over the flat swampland. I wanted to learn the lay of this land and look for signs of deer, turkeys and other wild critters.
Puddles of crystal-clear rainwater were scattered down sections of the winding road. In some areas, water ran down the faint wheel paths to lower places. It was evident that this road was seldom used. Eventually I encountered a fresh set of four-wheeler tracks. Someone had passed this way after the rain. Deer tracks were punched into the leaf and pine straw-covered ground.
The air was crisp and cold. The sky was clear, with a soft breeze whispering through the pines. A perfect day for walking. I carried an old hoe handle as a walking stick. It is perfect for poking things. This property is beautiful and new to me. It is a true wonderland. There will be more walks here through the winter. This is the Christmas season, and we might not get snow, but we do have winter wonderlands.
Reach Dan Geddings at cdgeddings@gmail.com.