Where the Tracks End

For some inexplicable reason, I got to thinking about one winter morning, years ago, when I left my house in the predawn darkness and drove through several inches of freshly fallen snow.  The snow on the country road lay smooth and without a track of any kind under my headlight beams.

Just as I began climbing a long hill, a small set of tracks hooked into the very center of the road from someplace in the darkened junipers alongside the road.

Little blue holes in the snow, those.

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.  Intrigued by the tracks, I tried to keep them between the beams of my headlights as I drove.

Suddenly the tracks stopped.  Just plain stopped.

No turn to the right.

No turn to the left.

Not a single step back.

No critter in sight.

Had the thing evaporated in mid-step?  Had it suddenly dropped into a black hole?  Had the cloudy night itself plucked up the hapless critter?   I have seen a similar thing when a bird snatches something up from the snow, but this always leave impressions of wings or some other sign of a tragic or unscripted end.

What here?

I drove overtop the place where the tracks stopped.  On into the cobalt darkness.  I felt a little shaken, really.   New, smooth snow sparkled and danced electric under my wash of lights as I swept on.

I glanced in my rearview mirror.  Just my tracks.  My tracks fading white to blue against the blue-black night.

Just that.

And me at the end of those tracks…trotting on to my own uncertain end.

—Mitchell Hegman