Sunday, January 10, 2010

Riverwalk

One of my friends and I went out snowshoing yesterday. My friend lives near a couple of big parks, so we started in one of them, and then after a bit, crossed the road to walk in the park next to the river. We were on the river bank, and could see that someone else had snowshoed on the river, and fairly recently. We thought for a bit about going and walking on the river ourselves, but neither of us knows much about ice stuff, so we decided not to. It seems like a bad time to go swimming, you know?

But, it's been well below zero for a good while here, since before Christmas except for one day when it got to a balmy 35 or so in December.

We walked along the bank, though, and it was beautiful, with the snow full of sparkly crystals, the sky blue, and the pine trees with just a bit of snow set off against their dark green. We walked up next to the boat ramp, where we saw that someone had driven a car or truck out onto the ice.

We figured any car was way heavier than we are, so we went down onto the ice. We brushed aside the snow to look at the ice; there were sort of little bubbles in there that gave an impression of depth, but who knows.

Gradually we grew confident enough to follow the other snowshoe tracks to a little island maybe 20 feet off the shore. It was funny how liberating and almost wild it felt to be out walking on a river, knowing that underneath us there's moving water.

6 comments:

  1. I've never done river ice --- but I grew up on a lake. The best year was when it was really cold before it snowed -- the lake froze solid and we could skate on the whole bay.

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  2. Sounds like fun! At the lake, I wait until I see the snowmobiles out on the lake. I figure it's safe for me to trek around on the ice if they can. We have to be careful, though, because the lake is partially spring-fed and some spots don't freeze as well as others. Even though I know where some of those areas are, I make a point of following the snowmobile and atv tracks.

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  3. Can't even imagine that.

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  4. I've always wanted to try snowshoeing. I just had a flashback to the ice scene in the second Omen film.

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  5. That sounds really fun -- a kind of breaking usual boundaries.

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