Year ended with a unicorn sighting

Okay, despite my better judgment, I have to tell you about the unicorn I saw.

That’s right, a unicorn, or as close as I’ll ever get to seeing one.

For the past several years, I’ve liked to take what’s known as a First Day hike, trekking out for a walk in the wilderness on the first day of the year.

Sometimes I’ve done it solo. Other times my wife has surprised me and joined her husband in the craziness.

Jan. 1 tends to be a little cold, in case you haven’t noticed. So sometimes these hikes are not only painful but brief.

It’s one thing to feel at one with nature alone in the woods on a chilly afternoon on the first day of the new year. It’s something else again to freeze your buns off.

Obviously it’s a good idea to check the Weather Channel, which we did as 2017 wound down.

New Year’s Day promised to be incredibly cold. (The promise held true.)

So this time around we opted for a Last Day hike to close out the year rather than a First Day hike to kick off the new one.

Connie, a little bit to my surprise, decided to come along.

We headed out to the Loblolly Wetlands Nature Preserve about 2 p.m. on Dec. 31, the afternoon of what would be New Year’s Eve. The high temperature was supposed to be about 10-above that afternoon, and we figured that we could handle that with enough layers of clothes.

The day was spectacular, with sunshine and blue skies and no real wind to speak of. The trails heading east from county road 250 West were pristine, except for the tracks of wildlife in the snow.

Deer had moved through. So had rabbits. And there were occasional swirling paths that Connie explained were probably field mice or something smaller. 

But mostly we were alone.

My camera was with me, and I was seeing things I’d never paused to see before: A winter-dried Queen’s Anne lace had been transformed into a tiny basket which was now filled with snow. I snapped away.

We hiked back to the pond at the northeast corner of the preserve, saw absolutely no activity, wondered if the wildlife had all decided to head indoors to watch football, then talked things over.

I like the woodlands hike, which rambles east from the pond through the trees and loops back. But it can take awhile, and both of us felt 10-above zero beginning to settle in our bones.

So when Connie suggested we take a different loop, one I’d never hiked, along the edge of the woods and leading back to road 250 West, I quickly agreed.

Her “station” during environmental field days for Jay County fifth graders is along that stretch, but it was new to me.

We hadn’t gone far when we flushed our first deer. A doe ran across the path in front of us.

Only a few minutes later, I spotted another deer. It was maybe 300 yards ahead of us, stopped with its back to us, right in the middle of the path.

My camera’s zoom capabilities always astound me. Even from that distance I was able to get a pretty good shot.

It wasn’t good enough for the paper. Mostly, it was the rear-end of a deer.

But when I got back to the car, I took a closer look.

And that’s when I saw the unicorn.

The young buck I had photographed had just one antler. It was a two-pointer, but somewhere along the line in its short life the other antler had been eliminated.

How? I have no idea.

But I do know this: That’s as close to a unicorn sighting as I’m ever likely to get.