Tracks In The Snow

I left my house at 5:30 this morning, driving through several inches of freshly fallen snow. The country road lay smooth and without a track of any kind under my headlight beams. Eventually, a set of small tracks hooked into the very center of the road from someplace in the darkness beyond. I supposed the tracks to be from a chipmunk or squirrel or some other such diminutive creature and I followed the tracks down the very center of the road. The tracks carried on, straight as the edge of a piece of paper, once they struck the road. Rather fascinated by the prints, I tried to keep them centered between the beams of my headlights as I drove. Suddenly the tracks stopped. No turn right. No turn left. Not a single step back. No critter in sight. Had the thing vanished in mid-step? I have seen a similar thing when a bird snatches something from the snow, but they always leave impressions of their wings or some other sign of a tragic end.


I drove overtop the place where the tracks stopped—on into the cobalt darkness. New, smooth snow sparkled under my lights. Something occurred to me. I glanced in my rearview mirror. Just my tracks—just that, and me at their end.

--Mitchell Hegman