Picture yourself sprawled face down in
two feet of snow. The equivalent of
half-sheets of plywood have been strapped to your feet and you are not certain
you can extricate yourself from the snow.
A pair of over-exuberant dogs are bouncing—no—swimming like porpoises through
the snow around you. Some birds in a
nearby aspen seem to be laughing.
What I have just described is
something we call “snowshoeing.”
I am mostly kidding, of course. Snowshoeing is far more beautiful than the
tumbles you might (will) take.
Winter in the mountains affords a
great and extraordinary quiet. Pure
white meadows of untracked snow sparkling from end to end. The rest of the expanse—the rolling, upward
surging landscape—is either evergreen, blue, or white. Nothing else compares to the purity, the serenity
of deep untracked snow. The sun is
brighter. The whites are whiter. The greens are greener. The blues are bluer.
Winter seems one big soft thing.
Yesterday, that girl and I drove into
the Elkhorn Mountains to snowshoe with our friends Patti and Tom. They own the 4R Ranch, a 900 acre slice of
mountain perfection just below the highest mountains in the range. We started our trek right at their front door
and snowshoed in a perfect returning circle under a warm sun.
-- Mitchell
Hegman
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