Today was a very different scenario from yesterday’s.  The storm is gone and skies have cleared — but as usual, with the clear came the cold.  It was 6 degrees when I started and 4 when I finished.

Still, though I got rather chilly hiking through the neighborhood to the trail, just a few minutes on the snowshoes warmed me right up.  Part of the reason was that, while I’d looked forward to having at least the remnants of yesterday’s broken trail to take advantage of, I saw when I got there that a cross-country skier had taken advantage first.  Not wanting to mess up the ski lines he’d established, I broke trail parallel to his path.  The going was even harder than yesterday, with the few additional inches of snow that had fallen.  I soon had my gloves off and jacket half open.

Then a half mile in, the skier’s tracks ended!  He’d turned around and gone home.  I know what you’re thinking — the same  I did in the moment:  what a nancy-boy!  A mile of cross-country skiing on a fairly solid trail isn’t even a warm-up, for Pete’s sake!

But for me his wussiness was a godsend.  I jumped right over onto my tracks from yesterday, and my workload was cut in half.  Until the trail turned cross-ways to the wind, that is, and my old track was obliterated by drifting.  Then it was hard work again.  But by that time I had cooled such that the gloves went back on and the jacket closed up.

I got my real treat when I headed back from town.  The sun was right on the horizon, and I paused to listen to the almost-quiet woods.   Nothing was moving, and I got to enjoy a few minutes of seeming isolation before one of the townsmen fired up his snowblower.  But when I got moving again, the sun was right in front of me, painting the snow crimson until it sank below the trees.

I got back to the road, shed the snowshoes, and enjoyed the styrofoam crunch of near-zero snow underfoot for the mile back home.  It was a blessing to get back into the warmth of the house — my face was near-frozen, and the jeans I’d gone with today left my thighs and trailing portion quite chilly as well.  They’re still thawing out.