My snowshoes are beautiful
Written late February through Early March
My snowshoes are beautiful. Vintage wood and rawhide, with leather bindings, they seem to glow with warmth against the snow. They’re my mother’s old shoes, gifted to her by her grandmother when she was 16 and living in Gaspé, so that the two of them could go out together in the woods and fields...
That’s not what I was thinking about, when I decided I was going to get into snowshoeing, but their beauty and history does make me happy whenever I use them. What I was thinking about far more was my own campaign against an almost lifelong dislike of the cold, and thus of winter, that I was determined to overcome.
I think I approached things the best way I possibly could last fall, by thinking carefully through what barriers existed to my enjoyment, and dismantling them one by one. Problem: I was cold inside all the time, so didn’t want to go outside in the far greater cold. Solution: I started dressing in more layers inside, so that I was always toasty, and getting out didn’t seem like such a hardship. I continued the theme of layering for outside, acquiring more base layers in merino wool and synthetic materials suitable for the cold, and making greater use of those I already had. I religiously doubled up my hats and socks. And I decided I was going to become a person who snowshoes. It seemed to be the closest winter analogue to hiking, which I already knew I loved, and it would give me the flexibility needed to better find birds, so there was real motivation to actually leave the house. I also knew I needed to find local spots I could walk to myself, making it an activity independent from anyone else (I don’t drive, a real barrier when living in the suburbs). And I continued, as I had for the warm months of summer and the cooling months of autumn, to bring my camera with me everywhere, so I could see birds through the long end of my 75-300mm lens, and could create art out of what I encountered in the woods.
As I write this, I’m on week seven of one of the worst migraine stretches I’ve yet experienced, every single day shaped by varying levels of migraine pain, the only reprieves existing when the pain levels are fairly low, or for a few hours while cannabis is in my system.
I had grand visions of being out on the trails every morning, spotting birds and building strength, and that hasn’t happened. The gap between the ideas I have of how I wish to move through the world, and what my body is capable of doing, can lead me to despair sometimes. But I wanted this, the birds and the woods and my glowing snowshoes, and the life I am able to carve out for myself in the snow, so I went out when I could, when I was feeling well enough or high enough to manage. I found that the exertion of snowshoeing meant I was warm all the time, my feet warm, my hands warm, the danger lying more in sweat than the cold air itself. I found myself delighting in the exercise, the strain, the chill in my cheeks, the soreness of muscles used.
I’ve spent most of my life with some amount of anemia, haphazardly and mostly inadequately treated, which along with some other health issues (migraines being at the top of the list, but not making up its entirety), meant exercise has mostly been something to be endured. I might have always loved hiking, but it left me utterly exhausted. I had some iron infusions at the end of 2023, though, when the situation became more dire, and I spent the following year diligently taking iron supplements and building up endurance through hiking and (figuratively) chasing birds. By the time I picked up snowshoes, I found myself almost in awe at how I felt with the weight of wood strapped to my feet, overcome with the dawning realization that this was what exercise was supposed to feel like.
“We get to climb this hill!” I told my sister in delight a few days ago, snow falling on my cold cheeks and gathering slowly on top of my woollen jacket. “Yes”, she responded dubiously, “we sure ‘get’ to.”
Everything is about birds if I can make it about birds, so each time I’m in the snowy woods, it becomes a woodpecker hunt. A knock, a call, and my head is cocked, as I make my way slowly but determinedly towards the betraying sound. Stopping, listening, scanning the trees, repeating until I catch a flash of movement (or sometimes, if I happen to be with my sister, until she does). There is much patience and much waiting, the woods quiet and every sound seeming to echo, the location of a sound difficult to determine at first. I’ve become pretty good at it, I think, or at least I’ve become much better than I used to be. And the prize, almost every time, is a woodpecker. Tiny downy woodpeckers, small enough to fit in my hand, with the ring of fluff around their beaks; the larger and very similar hairy woodpeckers, with their longs straight beaks and determined expressions; pileated woodpeckers, those large, unmistakable birds with black bodies and a vivid red crest on their heads, their sharp way of moving making me think of them as the small flighted dinosaurs of the woods. Even, a couple of times, red-bellied woodpeckers, their bodies finely streaked in black and white, white head with red arcing over it. Common further south, I understand that they’ve only moved this far north in recent, warming years, in time to delight me when I stumble upon one in the heavy snow (even as I can’t forget what that northward movement signifies).
There are other woodpeckers here in the warmer months, but in the winter, those are the ones most likely to be around. And I am never disappointed to find any one of them.
My attempt to love the cold this season hasn’t always been easy. I struggled to find winter boots, meaning I spent the entire winter making use instead of my heavy old hiking boots, which only really worked down to -10° Celsius, and left my feet cold if I stopped for longer than a minute to look for birds, leaving me disgruntled and heading back to car or building sooner than I otherwise would have wished to. I am perpetually stiff, my muscles knotted, and I’ve had to learn to stretch more before heading out, so I don’t end up limping with an aching hip halfway through a trail loop, my back fiery because I slept strangely. I still forget sometimes, and even the not-forgetting involves carefully trying to remember each stretch I’ve decided I’m “supposed” to do, a habit at the very beginnings of forming. There have been times I grimly walk to the trail head, wind in my face and damp creeping in, cursing every good thing I’ve thought about cold and wind and winter.
The parts of the season I dislike have not disappeared, I’ve just found that, when I take the right steps, when I focus on the right things, when I practice doing so over and over again, I don’t care about the bad parts nearly as much as I used to. I hardly care about them at all.
I have always found myself feeling the most alive, and the most at peace, when I’m outside. I’ve known that was the case for many years in spring, in summer, and in fall, but this past season I’ve found it to be the case in winter, as well. I am in a bad living situation, with a search for a new home dragging out endlessly, and a life shaped in dramatic ways by chronic pain. Often my thoughts are tightly circling recriminations, a litany of shame and regret and rage and self-loathing. Yet in the swish of my snowshoes in fresh mounds of white, the trees rising up beside me or a clearing opening up its arms, my ears tuned towards any call or tap or song, my muscles straining, those thoughts are always silent.
And on snowshoes, a trail is only a suggestion. No matter how deep the snow, I can veer off whenever I feel like it, a freedom to traverse a cold world I once found inhospitable, a freedom which fills with me an almost giddy thrill. In those old snowshoes, no matter how imperfect things might be, no matter the constant hum of pain, I’m unstoppable. The woodpeckers and I in the snowy woods.
I heard the first red-winged blackbird of the season today, and quickly spotted them perched high in the neighbour's tree, calling and calling their harsh song. The snow is melting, and after an almost scentless winter, things are thawing enough to unearth the smell of damp earth and old vegetation. I hope there will be at least one more snow significant enough to get out one last time, but spring is clearly here.
And for the first time that I can remember, I find myself mourning the change of season, even while I’m eager for the crocuses and budding leaves and spring migration of birds (an event I’ve never witnessed with intentionality, seeing as I’m still in my first full year of birding, and one which I’m wildly eager to experience). I was far more successful than I could have imagined at convincing myself to like winter, and I’m going to miss it. But now I can’t imagine being without snowshoes, and without these snowshoes for as long as they can possibly last, so I know that come this fall, when I usually start to dread the coming cold, I can instead dream of untouched snow, dreamy flakes falling through bare trees, the tapping of woodpeckers and the knowledge that all of it is just waiting to welcome me into the cold.
Member discussion