John Pepin, Michigan Department of Natural Resources

Starting a new year for me is like trying to build a model airplane or put together a jigsaw puzzle without having any idea what the final product is supposed to look like.

I also have a sense that I am not sure all the pieces I need will be in this box I’ve just opened. Maybe I didn’t notice the seal was already broken along the edge of the box?

As a kid, I tried several times to put model cars and airplanes together with never any real success. I’ve since done much better putting furniture kits together to build dressers and other wood pieces.

Still, help is always appreciated.

Jigsaw puzzles were another story. I was very good at them, and I continue to be. I think that’s probably because I started out with a lot of practice.

Putting together 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles was something I remember us doing together as a family in the earlier years of my growing up.

My dad wasn’t much for putting models together, but he would take his seat at the card table or the dining room table to help piece together an outdoor jigsaw scene from somewhere.

I remember vividly a winter puzzle with a cobblestone bridge, a cabin and a horse-drawn carriage moving through a hardwood forest. That might have been my first one, given that I remember it so clearly.

Most times, where I was seated at the table would dictate which part of the puzzle I got to work on that night.

I remember doing a lot of tree branches or the varying blue and green shades of water, usually working to build out from one of the corner sections.

I also have a fond recollection of a puzzle we finished that showed a fisherman along the shoreline of a great, glacial lake somewhere in the wilds of Canada.

I appreciated that the puzzles often had descriptors at the lower edge of the picture on the box to tell us where the scene we were building came from, albeit some of these descriptions were nothing more than, “Fishing in Canada.”

As kids, we received puzzles as gifts, some with wooden pieces. These often had no more than 75 pieces, but they were some of my favorite gifts.

I liked the small, concise nature of the puzzle pieces as I did the boxes the puzzles came in. I had one puzzle with red tulips and an old windmill. I know we had a Pinocchio puzzle depicting a cartoon scene from the original Disney movie.

Putting together puzzles gave us time as a family to talk or listen to music. I also enjoyed learning how things fit together or didn’t.

Consequently, I have loved mysteries and the measures employed to solve them.

So here I sit, like everyone else, staring down the long end of a new year.

It’s like a teeter-totter proposition for me.

On one side, there the positive possibilities, the fun, success and hopeful prospects of new and exciting achievements and things to learn and do. On the other side are all those good things turned upside-down.

I am hoping to at least break even and find a balance between the two ends.

I will no doubt be working for months to decipher clues to that reveal.

A few early mornings ago, I was confronted by a mystery in my own backyard.

After the last snowstorm, I used the snow thrower to clear a path to the wood rack, the nearby fire pit and then back across a different part of the yard to the patio.

In the gray and snowy light of what was about 3 a.m., I could make out the image of a young deer standing in the pathway between the house and the wood rack.

The deer was nipping at some shoots of still green grass exposed at the base of the pathway I’d cleared.

Along the cross path to the fire pit, there appeared to be two dark figures situated about six feet apart atop the snow. From their size, I thought they might be a couple of young wild turkey “jakes.”

My brain rejected this idea because of the time of day. I reasoned that turkeys would likely be tucked away roosting now, not out hear in the wind and the snow.

So, what were they then?

I kept staring out into the snow trying to figure out what I was looking at. After a few more bated moments, the pieces fit into place satisfactorily.

What I was seeing was two more deer that were laying down in the path on their stomachs. With the considerable depth of the snow, only their heads were visible at the snow line.

My guess is that the ground provided a bit of warmth for them, as did being down within the trail’s snowbanks, rather than out in the wind.

They likely felt more comfortable and perhaps even a bit protected from predators and the wilds of the wintry weather.

Part of what convinced me these were deer was a recollection of seeing two or three deer laying down around the fire pit a couple of winters back, after we’d gone in the house from the fire for the night.

Then too, the deer were using the relative protection of the walls of snow pushed up at the fire pit.

Another, more complex, mystery has also been puzzling me for some time.

This one involves the seasonal movements of birds in the backyard.

We do not regularly see northern cardinals at our house, except for some weeks during the winter and the late spring, though not the entire winter.

A male and a female showed up a few days before the big storm.

They disappeared for several days after the storm and then suddenly reappeared to remain consistent guests at the feeding station.

As best we can tell, the cardinals leave our backyard during the summertime, and we don’t see them again until winter.

That same pattern is also shared with a red-bellied woodpecker we start seeing in the late fall and all through the winter into a good portion of the spring. Then, just when we think the bird will soon begin nesting, it disappears until later autumn.

It’s always a brilliant sight to see this striking woodpecker and both sexes of the cardinals cast against a snowy winter scene. The same is true for the blue jays, nuthatches and the pine and evening grosbeaks.

I need to do more reading on the red-bellied and the cardinals to discover more about their apparent seasonal shifts.

I think there is a great deal to be learned from watching birds.

Beyond just seeing birds in a particular place, taking the time to sit and watch their habits teaches patience, develops an enhanced perception of animal ways, allows for relaxation and clear-headed thinking and produces greater understanding, as well as questions, of ourselves and the natural world around us.

In the hours before the snowstorm hit, the birds were working feverishly to eat and grab food to store. There were countless visits to the feeding station.

I noticed that during this time, there wasn’t much “conversation” between them as this seemed like serious business. However, in the couple of days that followed the blizzard, the birds were chatting and calling frequently.

It appeared to me that some sense of relief had set in. The birds were making fewer trips to the feeders and when they did arrive, they stayed longer. One mourning dove casually lounged in a hanging, metal bird feeder that is fashioned like a porch swing.

I’ve missed the stars most of these nights, obscured by clouds and snow.

Overnight, the snow has fallen once again, leaving the tree branches adorned in frilly, white sleeves. It is a truly wondrous sight to see.

I watch the male and female cardinal taking turns at their favorite bird feeder.

The light is still dim, with an almost smoky appearance to the surrounding woodlands.

Much the same can be said for the days this time of year, with the darkest of them behind us like the night, we now reside within the grayer days of winter.

In these times, the sunlight truly does appear like gold – so valuable for its warmth and light. It can literally make a gray day disappear – on more than one level.

At the window, I wait and watch, sensing the glacial movement of winter’s days and nights, trending minute by minute toward spring.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Outdoors North is a weekly column produced by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources on a wide range of topics important to those who enjoy and appreciate Michigan’s world-class natural resources of the Upper Peninsula.