Today our weather station recorded a high of +10C, which is unusually high for January. I spent the afternoon in the forest clearing trails that were first partly blocked by trees that fell during a storm called Dorian in 2019 followed by an even more severe loss of trees from storm Fiona in 2022. Looking after my mother took priority over the past few years and I just never had much time to get out with a chainsaw.

Mild weather and little snow on the ground means I have quickly pushed through some big tangles of trees the past few days and am now making good progress.

The fresh air was wonderful, one of the many joys of a battery-operated chainsaw, though I did fire up my ancient Stihl for a bit to tackle some bigger trees. I haven’t used it much in the past couple of years and was surprised that it sparked up pretty quickly, even using some old gas. I should be nicer to it.

Today I found evidence that snowshoe hares somehow get onto fallen logs to get close to the tender ends of cedar trees. After many years of seeing very few hares, there has been a spike in the past couple of years and the forest is filled with tracks. I’m guessing there are more places for them to hide in all the fallen trees and brush, but I also remember old timers talking about a cycle “rabbits”, an ebb and flow of them over a decade or more. We are certainly at a peak.