Anybody May Follow My Trail

From the journals of Henry David Thoreau:

November 28, 1858/

A gray, overcast, still day, and more small birds--tree sparrows and chickadees--than usual about the house. There have been a few very fine snowflakes falling for many hours, and now by 2pm a regular snow-storm has commenced, fine flakes falling steadily, and rapidly whitening all the landscape. In half an hour the russet earth is painted white even to the horizon. Do we know of any other sudden and so silent a change?

I cannot now walk without leaving a track behind me; that is one peculiarity of winter walking. Anybody may follow my trail. I have walked, perhaps, a particular wild path along some swamp-side all summer, and thought to myself, I am the only villager that ever comes here. But I go out shortly after the first snow has fallen, and lo, here is the track of a sportsman and his dog in my secluded path, and probably he preceded me in the summer as well. Yet my hour is not his, and I may never meet him.