Where the wild things are

I have completed my holiday trifecta of hikes at St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge - Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Each ramble was glorious in its own way - the refuge never disappoints.

Thanksgiving Day was breezy and birdy - the lighthouse pond was packed with ducks. Rafts of green- and blue-winged teal, widgeons, greater scaup, ruddy ducks and buffleheads bobbed and dabbled, while coots and moorhens muttered and squabbled. On the tower trail (my favorite walk), bald eagles patrolled, ospreys fished and a fleet of white ibis probed the muck, while a marsh hawk flew low over the flats, panicking the ducks and willets. The bushes were alive with yellow-rumped and pine warblers, flycatchers and phoebes.

On Christmas Day, the refuge was flaunting its winter finery, with tussocks of marsh grass gone tawny and slender rushes gleaming like bronze-tipped lances. The landscape was cloaked in a soft grey cloud that brought the colors - brown, russet, green, black, silver - into sharp relief. And as I walked the back portion of the tower trail, the cloud cover closed in and I felt I could walk into the mist and vanish, lose myself in a place between earth and sky. A kestrel perched on a dead tree, keeping a keen eye on me, his feathers fluffed out against the brisk air. A squadron of white pelicans sailed majestically overhead and on my way back to the parking lot, I surprised a big snaggletoothed gator by the trail - he hoisted himself partway up on his stumpy legs, then settled back into the muck with a reptilian sigh.

Today, I walked the coastal trail behind the lighthouse farther than I have ever followed it.

In the sand, I saw paw prints - bobcat and raccoon.

The ruddy bloom of glasswort flung a red carpet over the flats.

I stopped at the lighthouse to take in the vista before moving on to the tower trail, where I hoped to leave the crowd of photographers and birders behind.

I was the only one on the tower trail, although the parking lot was filling up when I completed the loop. I don't mind sharing the trail - the refuge - with other people, but there are times when I need to feel I am the only one there.

Going to the refuge takes me out of myself - and brings me back to myself. Robert McFarlane, in his wonderful book "Wild Places," talks about the peregrini - "monks, anchorites, solitaries and other devout itinerants" who sought out wild places out of a "longing to achieve correspondence between belief and place, between inner and outer landscapes." That's exactly what I am seeking on my rambles - a way to both ground my restless heart and set it flying free, skimming the tidal flats like a marsh hawk.

It is a good way - the best way, in this pilgrim's opinion - to begin a new year.