Who Lives in These Woods

Let me introduce the neighbors, because Vermont's wildlife has changed dramatically in a century and it's a genuinely good story.

When the state was deforested and hunted out in the eighteen hundreds, most of the big animals simply vanished. Deer were nearly gone. Beaver were trapped out entirely. Moose disappeared. Turkeys were wiped out completely.

Then the forest came back, and with it, the animals. White-tailed deer are everywhere now. Beaver are back and busily flooding people's driveways. Wild turkeys — reintroduced from birds trapped in New York in the sixties — are abundant, and you will very likely see a flock crossing this road. Moose came back on their own, walking down out of Canada, and there are now something in the low thousands. Black bears likewise, several thousand of them, shy and rarely seen.

And then there's the catamount — the mountain lion. Officially extinct in Vermont since the eighteen eighties, and yet people report seeing them constantly, with total conviction, year after year. The state says no. Vermonters say they know what they saw. It is a permanent, unresolvable local argument, and Vermont's a state that enjoys one of those.

Dawn and dusk are when you'll see things. Slow down and keep your eyes on the field edges.