The deer tracks meandered through the snowbound forest, rarely keeping to any direction for more than several consecutive strides, but I had no pressing business and so I decided to follow the hoof prints for a spell.

It was an interesting experience.

I already had considerable respect for the ability of deer to navigate, to be sure.

Like all wild creatures they have an innate sense of how best to get around in rough terrain, an ability that in humans is mostly stunted, if not absent. Which is to be expected, since most of our travel is confined to roads, sidewalks and trails.

Deer, lacking the guidance of engineers, have to get along by their wits.

I was snowshoeing on a fine afternoon in early December. The temperature was pleasant, in the upper 20s, and, most importantly when it comes to being comfortable outdoors in winter, there was only the slightest of breezes.

My route was in the woods along Blue Canyon, a little spring-fed stream that flows through what once was Auburn, the first town in Eastern Oregon. Auburn was founded in 1862, a few months after prospector Henry Griffin saw the telltale golden glint while examining the gravels in a gulch, a few miles to the northeast, on Oct. 23, 1861.

I was walking a couple miles upstream from the site of Auburn, on a section of the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest where the high ground of Elkhorn Ridge dips south toward the canyon of the Powder River.

The snow wasn’t terribly deep — perhaps a foot — but it was fresh snow that hadn’t consolidated or formed any icy crusts, and my snowshoes plunged through nearly to the ground.

I walked along a road for half a mile or so, then veered off and descended toward Blue Canyon itself. I hopped across the creek — although “lunged” or “stumbled” are more appropriate verbs for the movement I can manage with snowshoes strapped to my boots — and paused, looking for a route through the labyrinth of red osier dogwood and alder that borders the stream.

That’s when I noticed the deer tracks.

I’m no Daniel Boone, but it was obvious that a single deer had passed through, and recently, as it had snowed the day before and these prints were pristine, the distinctive shape of the hooves unmarred by fresh snow.

The trail led upcanyon, in the general direction of where I had parked.

I have followed the tracks of deer and elk, sometimes for a purpose such as hunting, but more often guided solely by curiosity.

But usually not for long. Deer, particularly in winter, are usually looking for food, a compulsion that dictates their route.

This deer, though — my deer, as I began to think of this animal I knew I likely would never see — seemed to me to be motivated by something other than hunger. In any case I noticed that the deer apparently didn’t pause at any of several patches of brush that, were I an ungulate, might have looked tasty. I say apparently because I figured that had the deer stopped to browse, there would be a mess of tracks in the snow and probably a smattering of twigs or leaves. But my deer, so far as I could discern from the story in the snow, simply plodded along, with little variation in the length between strides.

As the tracks ascended the canyon’s north-facing slope, which is quite steep in places, I began to notice what seemed to be a clear purpose in the deer’s winding route. The animal didn’t merely bypass the most precipitous places — I would do that myself, a necessity considering my general clumsiness — but it also seemed to read the terrain, to recognize the least taxing route, in a way that I would not have done left to my own devices.

This requires a particularly keen sense when snow covers the ground.

The snow hides obstacles such as logs and limbs, and it obscures the subtle changes in topography that make for more solid footing. Of course the deer likely was at times following trails that other deer have blazed — routes that might be clear even to my dim eyes when the ground is bare but which become indistinct with a mantle of snow.

As I trudged along I began to feel a kinship with this deer, this fellow traveler of the wintry woods. I wondered whether it was dark when the deer made this journey, whether flakes from the last storm were still falling.

After a mile or so I recognized, ahead between the trees, the edge of a road. Straight lines are of course the mark of people, not of nature. The deer track crossed the road and climbed the cut bank on the other side. The animal had, unwittingly, led me to within a few hundred yards of my rig, which was parked in a roadside campsite and looked like it was starring in a commercial for off-road tires, the snow clinging, in a fetching way, to the sidewalls.

I was tempted to forge ahead on the deer’s path. But dark comes fast to the forest, so near to the solstice, and the sun had already dipped behind the ridge that divides Bowen and Sumpter valleys. So I walked instead to the car, unstrapped my snowshoes and clanged their plastic decks together a few times to dislodge the powder.

I started the engine and drove away, the tires spinning briefly before gaining traction, leaving the darkening woods to the animals and returning to the world of straight lines and paved paths which do not wander.