The overnight rains ceased just about dawn.
The trail was fog shrouded and quite muddy.
The dogs and I proceeded down a well worn path until we crossed a small stream, from there we followed the watercourse down toward a pond that I knew was not far away.
A few dear, startled by our quite approach, darted from out of the underbrush; their raised white tails disappeared into the fog like ghostly apparitions.
An unseen woodpecker hammer on a distant tree, sounding short bursts of rapid beats, like some prehistoric drummer he pounded out the cadence to the mornings march.
Robins worked the moist ground, songbirds darted through the foggy morning air.
As we approached the pond I could make out a few beaver scurrying along the shore, no doubt looking for a morning meal.
A Great Blue Heron stood like a silent sentinel on a sandbar, his magnificent form just barely visible in the morning mist.
As we headed out onto a small delta created by the stream as it emptied its load into the pond several duck swam away from the waters edge, leaving their crisscrossed pattern of wakes on the surface of the small body of water.
As the fog lifted the far bank started to come into view.
A flock of geese could be heard overhead but they where hidden from view by the thick most cloud that hung above us, shortly they burst into view a they dropped down to skim across the waters surface.
It was a great day to be on the trail.
"If you're not living on the edge,
you're taking up too much space."
Big Mike