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.