Central Mystery in the Woods

Sunday Dec. 4 after a good 85/100ths inch of rain I went to the Woods via the SW Gate. Along the main SW Trail there was a peculiar medium diameter elm near the lodged Green Ash. The bark of the elm stood out from a distance as almost orange. A little closer approach and I could see the outer bark all up and down the tree had been chiseled off by woodpeckers foraging for bark beetles. In places, they had removed the bark down to the xylem sapwood and left revealed the pretty engravings of the Scolytus multistriatus bark beetle oviposition galleries. The beetles had attacked and killed the tree with the elm disease Ophiostoma ulmi.
East, west and south of that tree there were a half dozen elms with fresh new leaves flushing out along the stem.. likely with the death of the upper branches and the loss of apical dominance. It will be interesting to see if any of these trees are alive in the spring or die over the winter.
Turning north from there off any trails the Woods are now open enough that you can wander and see new things. I encountered two deer beds.. 2 foot long crumpled ovals, like large fortune cookies, where deer had spent the previous rainy night and left the leaves flattened.
There are mysteries here. Large 4 foot x 2 foot shallow divots in the soil, 1 foot deep. Were they excavated by people or the result of some natural process? Like a rectangular crater created by the overturned root mound of a fallen tree.. but where is the tree?
There are the two old hollow steel posts standing a meter tall or more in line like the markers of a decades old botany plot. I would like to work out what they once marked. There are old faded rows of trees, cedars, lined up as if along the edge of two different early farm roads or old boundary fences.. east of Hackberry Alley. Maybe some will match Carpenter's 1950's hand drawn map of fence lines and trees (and pits) in the Woods 55 years ago.
Continuing north I wandered in to the southern end of the group of the biggest trees. There were on the ground the largest bur oak leaves I can recall.. but I could not locate the tree.. must be close by somewhere.
Walking off trail you encounter the small county roads of the small vertebrates in the woods. Narrow 4-5 inch wide paths shared by coons, mice, possums, skunks, armadillos and others as they travel from point A to point B in their nightly commutes.
The rain makes the trails visible enough to walk along and mark with tooth picks. Thinking of the animals that use these same trails week in and week out like we use the roads near our homes.. I thought again of the likelihood that most small vertebrates in the Woods don't often see the Woods the way I do.. its colors, light and shadow and patterns.. because these animals are rarely out during the day. Their world is Oliver's Woods at night. Their view is the Woods at twilight and in evening darkness.
There seems to be a small family group of 3-4 white tailed deer that are using the Woods for their winter shelter.
Now in the Woods the last of the canopy leaves are down. The green that stands out now are Euonymous strawberry vines, Eleagnus Russian olive and Ligustrum Privet (latter two both exotic).