Coyote track in my woods after fresh snowfall/ photos by Jonathan Schechter

                                                     

The coyote breeding season is well underway in Michigan. I am delighted at their

 primordial music of yelps and howls I now hear often at night from the far end of my

 woods and the swampland beyond. But my best pleasure comes from seeing the tracks of two coyotes on the land I share with them; a mated pair is my hope for without the presence of

 coyotes the landscape is less natural and less wild. And it is the coyote that keeps the wild in 

the deer, and the turkey and the grouse wary.

And that is the way it should be.

I followed their tracks to the edge of the swamp catching a momentary fleeting glimpse.

And I suspect 'my' coyotes are leaning my ways and wanderings faster than I discover their ways.