If you walk out your door today, heading for deep woods or frozen shores, will you find something beautiful? Will you stop your skiing, snowshoeing or walking to digest the play of light or appearance of shapes or mingling of sounds?

While there is no guarantee, there certainly is the opportunity to discover beauty in the wild places around us. But what is beauty?

I have been mulling this question in response to the most moving, most compelling, and yes, most beautiful stop during a recent after-work snowshoeing jaunt. Let me set the scene.

I crossed a tributary of the Kennebec River and proceeded into a mixed forest crawling up a steep hill hugging the brook. Crossing the melting brook required a thorough search for a shallow fording spot or finding now elusive solid ice; I opted for the ford. Once on the other side, a streamside trail wound through the hemlocks and cedars along the water's edge. I followed it and its profusion of deer tracks until veering up a steep, heavily forested spine towards the hilltop.

The snowshoeing was steep, forcing me to zigzag much of the way up. I continued to follow deer sign. Now, in addition to tracks, I routinely came across fresh deer scat. Sweat began to run as the route up steepened, requiring series of kicks and lunges. Chickadee calls rang out. Life was good.

Eventually, I reached the wooded hilltop and took an old, overgrown logging road through flat terrain. Soon, I came across signs of activity in the crystalline snow. Otherwise straight walking coyote tracks wheeled and wound around a trampled area in the snow. Some blood and bits of scat contrasted with the clean snow. Off to the side, I found a clean, white, broken femur. Inside, remnant blood appeared a brilliant shade of crimson. Just steps after leaving this scene, I spotted three deer running through the woods down slope of me.

I did not expect to come across another kill and/or feeding site. However, on my way back to the stream, just that happened. Near the bottom of a ravine, what at first looked like an otter slide turned out to be where something dragged a small deer down into the stream responsible for the ravine.

Halfway down the smooth slide, laid the deer's stomach and intestines. The main carcass dangled in the intermittent stream, perhaps four feet below the innards.

The ravine held a classic "postcard" beauty. Deep white snow offset the green and slate gray lines formed by melt water trickles feeding into the main rivulet. Tall hemlocks and pines climbed up the slope with a scattered mixing of slimmer birch and aspen.

Yet, it was not this traditional serene forest imagery that captured my imagination and sense of beauty. Rather, there was a deep, elemental artistry to the carcass itself.

The deer remains were nearly picked clean. The now meatless ribs were splayed out like an opened Japanese fan. The two front legs layer in the foot-wide, tumbling stream. The buff colored hairs and dark hooves pooled a bit of the clear water flowing over bright green, moss-covered rocks.

The vibrant green moss combined with the almost glowing redness of the half inside-out carcass to create a powerful contrast with the dark trunks and stark snow. At that moment, it was art, it was moving, and it was, to my eyes, beauty.

I sensed a beauty in what was the place of death for something that surely struggled mightily to live. What, then, is beauty? Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful." This notion of imagination is vital to my appreciation of the carcass scene. My imagination connected the dots to link the rite of spring renewal with the cyclical passing of food energy between prey and predator. The snowmelt passing over the dead deer seemed very symbolic, almost as if the waters wove the one passed deer into the tapestry of a greater forest and watershed and ecosystem.

Poet Kahlil Gibran is quoted as expressing that, "Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror." This may be the essence of the beauty I embraced within that ravine. The vision of that clean-picked deer carcass draped over snow and a mossy streambed was eternal. Sure, the remains would continue to be consumed, even after the meat was gone. Stronger melting and flooding could wash the carcass into the main brook and sweep it away even further.

Wherever it ended up, it would vanish in the not too distant future. Still, the universal principle exhibited was undying. The form and composition of the entire site was evocative of struggle, cycling seasons, death, life, rebirth, and interconnectedness.

The common (and probably true) clichˇ is that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." That being said, I don't expect everyone to find a dead deer in the woods beautiful. Still, I'll argue that there is beauty waiting for us to experience. One need not look just to art museums or coffee table books. Our woods and waters hold a vast collection of beauty, and the splendor is ever changing. Who knows what beauty may strike you on the trail?

Rex Turner is the Director of Education for the Maine Lakes Conservancy Institute and resides in Augusta. E-mail: rturner@mlci.org