march 15, 2007
Well. Here's an odd posting. About winter in Newfoundland, and there's a kid with a Newfoundland pony in summer. Apologies - I've not got to the scanner recently, but all will become clear. Keep reading.
A couple of weeks ago it was the day to snowshoe with the kids. Of course with a promise of a cookup with instant noodles, hot chocolate, kippered snacks and other things that taste sublime in the woods with the addition of a little bark.
We took the East Coast Trail from Flatrock (15 mins from where I live downtown) towards Gallows Cove, Torbay (son at pony camp in Torbay in photo above!). Snow clean, deep, powder-perfect, inviting blank canvas. Kids are still at the age where going A to B is arduous and probably boring so, well, B is generally shortened. They scramble after rabbit tracks and sniff out fully-skirted spruce trees like beagles. But if their quotient of fresh air is the same as a long walk then does it really matter? And if we didn't find lots of dead branches to built a lean-to (another enticement to a walk/snowshoe/ski) then building a snow wall around the stove and digging tunnels in snow is generally good enough.
Our snowshoes are not the fancy astronaut aluminum ones now available (maybe one day) but rather handmade ones by folks around the bay (i.e. rural Nfld) - wire, neon green nylon string, black electrical tape, rubber inner tubes - the result is very cheap and they work like a dream.
5 comments:
Hi Alison! What fun, to be snowshoeing, and on decent locally made ones at that. The new fangled ones are only useful for well prepared trails and useless for real bush-wacking. Not a word about where I am and what I'm doing, either!
Hi Alison! What fun to be out snowshoeing and on locally made ones at that! The modern new-fangled ones are rubbish in my opinion, useful only for well plowed city sidewalks...
I'll be home soon to get my own out...
Hi Michael - Ok, ok....where are you and what are you doing?
spring actually seems to be happening here. That is, dog poop & discarded xmas decorations are appearing below the snow. Should be warm enough for pond practice time in another 3 months - yahoo!
Oops... Wilderness internet does funny things sometimes, I guess, like double posting. Sorry about that!
No prob - i should have caught it :) alison (it's spring-like here)
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