Saturday 17 February 2018

Want to see what winter looks like where we live?



A few days ago, this weird winter of ups and downs we're having provided us with one gorgeous day. The sun shone, the temperature shot up just past the freezing - well, melting - point and so of course we headed out for a ramble. Two rambles, in fact, with a gourmet lunch of poutine at the local general store cum diner in between. This post is about ramble #1.

The winding back roads through the hills and forests around our village are our favourite places in the whole wild world, bar none. Just for fun, Paul handed me his camera and I shot a few short videos as we drove. Now these are not in any way professional, so be warned. For the first one I didn't have my reading glasses so I couldn't see what I was shooting. You're looking through the filthy car windshield half the time (hey, it's winter, the car just will not stay clean, okay?). You're hearing the sound of the auto-focus on the camera. And the bright sun and snow make for some overexposure here and there. But there's some of our favourite tunes for you to tap your toe to, and a whole lot of fresh snow and forest scenery.

So if you like that kind of thing, have fun with these.



Our first ramble took us way up to Greermount. There's a road up there there that doesn't get ploughed and it makes a great snowshoe trail.

Here's the first video, shot without being able to see the viewfinder (as you will hear me clearly state at the beginning, lol).






And here's the second where we arrive at our destination. This video's shot mostly by me except at the end where I passed the camera off to Paul so he could get the lovely old church in the frame. He fooled around and put some credits into this one ..



Once we got there, the photographer took his camera back, much to my relief. (No way I'd trust myself not to drop it in the snow while snowshoeing!) Snowshoeing .. yeah, there's a learning curve. Despite having lots of snow, it's been rare that we've had the right kind of snow over the last few winters, so we're both still getting the hang of things with our snowshoes. The trail was fairly well packed from skidoos and ATV's going through now and then, but when we experimentally stepped off the trail it was beyond knee deep, even with the snowshoes, wow. We decided to stick to the trail!

click to embiggen; you might see
an usnea covered tree in the background
If you watched the 2nd video above, you'll note a pickup truck. It belongs to an old man we've met on the trail twice now; his ancestors were pioneers on that land. His says his mother christened the small lake in the pic to the left "Stink Lake". Rightly so, because there's a powerful smell of sulfur comes off that thing!





This pretty little stream on the right meanders and criss-crosses under the trail through culverts, open here then disappearing and reappearing elsewhere in the distance. It smelled just fine. I love this shot for the shadows on the snow from the young tree still holding onto its golden leaves - it's a little beech tree. There's lots of beech in there, maple, a smattering of balsam fir and quite a lot of yellow birch.



Just an itty bitty one.




And of course where there's yellow birch, there's bound to be chaga. That's the only one I saw, but there's no such thing as just one chaga!







Not very many animal tracks in there. The land rises pretty steeply and the hillsides are boulder strewn. It would be tough going for deer.



So the only set of tracks we saw were these ..

Wolf!

The last time we were there, those same tracks appeared between the time we went up the trail and when we came back down! Now while I'm sure the famous saying "show me a man who's been et by a wolf and I'll show you a liar" is true, and part of me would love to see one .. the other part of me is fine with a wolf and I not crossing paths.

Nice to know they're out there though.

So there you go, a sample of the wilderness that lies just beyond our village of 800 souls. I wish there was a way you could have smelled what we smelled, that air is so sweet .. even that stinky lake smells good to us. Ha!

Next time, we'll take you to my favourite walking spot on Calumet Island.

4 comments:

  1. Wow! Thanks for the ride, the tunes, the scenery, the usnea, chaga and all the other pics. Had a blast riding along with you guys. The videos were really good!

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    1. Thanks! I like those videos too, raw though they may be :-)

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  2. Very nice. Very. My heart is being patient for external aesthetics of which it delights in. The open spaces of the prairie are too exposing here for me. Trees and ravines and creeks. Beautiful. I can imagine the smells and the SOUND.

    I never thought about needing a certain type of snow to snow shoe. I've always wanted to try, but our snow here is hit or miss. The cold is always hit, though!

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    1. The sound of that little creek was crystalline. A hushed tinkling. Otherwise it was a whole lot of silence up there.

      I remember prairie snow! I used to walk to school across wide open prairie in Saskatchewan. The sky at sunrise was green and the wind, oh man, that wind. It could take your breath away. I vividly recall spending a chunk of every winter with chapped skin on my face - from my scarf being frozen to it.

      Anyway, yeah, snow here sure does vary. Too fluffy and deep makes for tough going because you have to lift your feet so high, thaws make for a layer of ice that you break through every second step (and fall over, twisting a leg ..). You want a bit of a crust, not too much, an underlayer that packs down and supports your weight. And snow that doesn't pile up on the snowshoes and weigh you down more with every step.

      If snowshoeing was our only way to get around we'd be having a very, very rough winter this year!

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