wandering in the snow

After nearly ten years of residence in the frozen north, I decided to buy some snow boots yesterday. Being bored on a Sunday afternoon and intrigued by the neighborhood trees and "hill" and stuff, and with the temperature being a toasty 20F, I decided today would be a good day to try out my new boots.

There's a hill near our home--you can see it if you walk into our driveway and face east--so I headed there first.


The near-perfect path through the trees on the hill suggests to me that they were planted rather than naturally occurring.


This winter has been a great one for people who like winter sports. Snowmobilers are not an uncommon sight in my neighborhood.


I walked down from the hill and along the fence toward a grove of trees toward the end of our neighborhood. The snow was mostly packed, which was nice.


I took my telephoto lens in hopes of seeing some of the local wildlife, but these tracks were as close as I got to that. Bummer.



I decided to cross the two frozen ponds and then head for home. This is where the snow was deepest and most unpacked. It was about two feet deep in some places, which was fun considering the fact that I wasn't wearing snow pants and didn't have clamps or bands on my pant legs. Anyway, I've always had a fascination with cattails (I thought they were hot dogs when I was a kid), so I went wandering through the frozen cattails and beaver mounds.





Wandering around in the snow is a pretty decent workout. It takes a fair amount of effort to maintain your stability, and the deeper the snow is, the better the workout. All in all, good times.