David Heiller
While filing out of
church last Sunday, I ran into Bill Hall of Moose Lake.
Bill and his wife,
Lou, used to own Moose Lake Florists. They sold it last year. They are retired.
So I figured they must be going to head south soon.
I asked Bill about that as we slowly walked out
of church. He answered that he hasn’t had enough of winter yet to head south.
Not enough winter?
Some people would disagree.
I sensed that the
notion of going south
for the winter didn’t appeal to Bill. He
explained it to me. There’s a reason people who live in the north live longer than people from the
south, he said.
“What’s that?” I
asked.
Going through four seasons is good for a person, he
answered. There’s something about those extreme seasonal changes that is healthy.
That’s especially true if you are active, I
said. If you snowshoe or ski or split wood in the winter, it should make you a
healthier person.
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| My snowshoes, on Malika's feet. ~ Thanks to Malika for the photo. |
You can sit
in your house and watch TV all winter, but you’re missing the point if
you do that, if you don’t experience the change of seasons. If you don’t experience the season.
Oh-oh. I’m feeling preachy. I feel the Sermon of the Snowshoe comin’ on. Brothers and
sisters! Listen and be saved from the dreary wintah! You don’t need a trailer park in Arizonah when you
have a state park in Minnesotah!
“Yah sure,” you say.
“Throw another log in the woodstove, Gladys, it’s chilly in this old farm
house. And listen to what that crazy Heiller is writing about now. He LIKES
winter.”
So call me crazy. Add my wife to the list too, and about 400,000
other people.
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| An Autumn view of our woods from across the field. |
The snow is so deep that you need snowshoes to go anywhere besides
the outhouse. And who wants to go there in the winter? I’m not that crazy.
We take a loppers and a folding camp saw with us and cut the branches
and brush that try to tangle us up. Now we have all kinds of trails through the
woods.
At first it was hard making the trails. Even with snowshoes, we’d
sink in a foot. That’s tough walking. When you’re breaking trail, you have an
extra five pounds on each foot.
But the wind has
packed the snow down. Now it is much easier. And once the trails are made, you don’t sink at all. It’s like having little highways in the
woods.
Even when it’s way below zero, snowshoeing has
been fun. You just have to keep moving. And I
always take a bottle of water with me. Α cold drink of water in the woods is really refreshing. It gives me a lift.
Snowshoes give me a fresh perspective on our woods. I can go places that are too wet and buggy the rest of the year.
It’s interesting to look at the trees. I’ve seen them in the fall and spring but
they look different now. A few are bent and broken. Most stand strong and silent. They all seem to take the worst
Mother Nature can offer without a shrug. It’s their lot in life. They can’t head
south. Maybe Bill Hall knows something that
the trees know.
Cindy and I look at
animal tracks. Some are easy to identify, like rabbits and squirrels and mice.
But some are a mystery.
We went out on Sunday afternoon, January 6, after about 18 inches of new snow had fallen. We came upon fresh
tracks, maybe two hours old, of a very big
animal walking through our woods.
In some places, it walked through the deep snow. In other places, it
took three-foot-long leaps. It veered
off in one spot to sniff under some branches. Cindy and I both think it
was a timber wolf. (There was no belly
drag, despite of how deep the prints went.~chg) We saw two near our house
about six years ago, so it’s not out of
the question.
Those tracks have added to the wonder of our woods.
I’d be honored to have a timber wolf as a neighbor, honored and
a little nervous.
Winter has a lot of things like that to offer. Snowshoes make it easier for me to accept that offer, and even give a
word of thanks.
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