January Seasonal Essay

It is a great pleasure to walk in snowy woods, but if the snow is deep it is hard work. The answer? More flotation, walk on top of the snow the way snowshoe hares do, get a pair of snowshoes and poles. Snowshoeing has become a popular winter activity. Even 15 years ago there were over 600,000 people involved in it in the USA. Snowshoes were in use by Native Americans when Europeans first arrived and were quickly adopted by them. These ingenious snow-walking implements may well have come from Siberia as the first people to inhabit the Americas crossed Bering Straight, and probably were invented in Asia many thousands of years ago.

There are several sizes and shapes of snowshoes and if you are thinking about getting into this activity, in order to choose wisely I suggest that you look at any of the several books on the subject in the Saratoga Springs Public Library. Search nonfiction call number 796.92 which is where I obtained the information above. This will help you to match the snowshoes you buy to the kind of snowshoeing you contemplate: flat ground on trails, racing, or taking off into the woods. You could also rent a pair for the day and see how it goes.

There are some fine areas around Saratoga Springs for this recreation. You could begin hiking in the State Park or at the Saratoga Battlefield. In many trailless areas snow travel is much easier than going through summer woods littered with a tangle of brush and fallen branches. If you can navigate with map and compass, try the plateau that lies west of us, its slopes are not steep. Start at Lake Desolation and head northward to Spruce Mountain, descending the trail to the parking lot which requires someone to pick you up there. I have snowshoed on the Tongue Mountain penninsula where there are beautiful views of Lake George. A good way to do this is to have two people or groups of people, one group starting at one end of the trek and the other at the opposite end. They pass each other somewhere near the middle of the roughly four-hour hike and then drive home in each other's cars.

It is especially rewarding to walk in the woods in new fallen snow, untroddden by anyone before us. The silence is complete and that white covering is the very image of purity. One time, while snowshoeing in January, with snow falling steadily in windless deep woods, I came to a thin branch across my path on which snowflakes were accumulating. With hand raised to push it aside, I stopped, suddenly aware that in this thin line of snow perhaps an inch or so high, each flake was intact, its six sculptured arms unbroken. The whole was a naturally formed vitrine of cut glass.