Walking on Water

We got cross-country skis in the 1990s, and haven't been able to use them since. After almost two decades of wimpy winters, during many of which we haven't gotten any snow until late December or January, we have finally have a normal winter for Minnesota, the coldest one in 30 years by one reckoning.

Some people are using this throwback weather to "prove" that global warming is a hoax. This is a normal winter for Minnesota; the south and east did get a bit of snow and set a few record low temperatures, but it's a different story in the rest of the world: Europe and Alaska have been very warm this winter. All the snow at the Sochi Oympics is being made by machines. Australia was burning up during the tennis tournament, and parts of the American West are experiencing severe drought. Fox News reports that water rationing may be in store for parts of California, Nevada and Arizona. Globally, we're still setting far more record high temperatures than record lows.

But we finally got some snow here in Minnesota, and riding the exercise bike gets a little old. We dug the skis out of the basement, only to discover that the plastic and rubber in the ski boots had disintegrated. I tried to put on my ice skates, but they're at least a size too small now.

Last fall the friends we bike with suggested snowshoeing. I pictured Canadian mounties with tennis rackets tied to their feet. But, what the hell: we got snowshoes. Mine have lightweight aluminum frames; other designs have all-plastic construction similar to a skateboard with bindings and teeth.

I don't know a thing about snowshoeing. But it seems self-evident how to use them: they have two ratchet bindings that go over the toe and arch of the foot, and a strap behind the heel. They pivot at the ball of the foot, so the toe of the shoe stays high when you lift your foot and doesn't get hung up in the snow. There are steel claws on the bottom for traction.

I expected snow shoes to be clumsy to walk in. But once you learn to pick up your feet up high enough to avoid kicking the binding, or tripping yourself up by catching the claws on the surface, you're extremely stable.

The claws keep you from slipping on ice and packed snow. The snowshoes keep the snow out of your boot tops. Going up hills is easy; my snowshoes came with poles, but they seem unnecessary unless you're on really rough terrain. Going downhill is a little trickier: angling your feet and side-stepping seems the easiest way.

A lot of people snow-shoe on trails in parks. We just followed the tracks of a cross-country skier through the woods at the end of our street. I was expecting a quiet snow-bound trek, but snowshoes make a fair amount of noise, between the crunching of the snow and the scraping of the shoes. It was ten degrees, but there was little wind, so we didn't really feel cold.

When we reached the lake beyond the woods, we blazed our own trail. We got four or five inches of fresh powder recently, on top of 12 to 18 inches of old snow. The lake was an untouched expanse of virgin cream. We set off straight across. The snowshoes usually punch through the snow and you sink in six to eight inches. But instead of getting stuck up to your knees and filling your socks with snow, the snowshoes keep you high and dry. Walking in fresh snow is also quieter .

If you do it just right, keeping your weight on both feet, you can walk on the top of the snow. It's like walking on water.

We crossed the lake and came to a sidewalk that had been half-heartedly plowed. We stayed on the icy part because you make a lot better time. Then we crossed a street that had been plowed to the pavement. Walking with steel claws on asphalt is like fingernails on a chalkboard, and the snowshoes make a dreadful racket.

We normally take walks when we can't bike, but we've been walking a lot less because of the treacherous condition of the streets. Earlier this year my wife slipped on an icy spot while crossing a busy street with her arms full of groceries. Back in the nineties my volleyball team lost three setters in a single season to knees torn up from nasty spills in parking lots.

One of the major hassles when it finally gets around to snowing in Minnesota is shoveling sidewalks, parking lots and streets. Even if people do their duty, there are always little slippery spots that form from drifting and melting, creating booby traps.

Is all this energy-intensive technology like snowblowers and snowplows going at it the wrong way? Instead of spending all this time and effort trying to maintain that ever-elusive bare pavement, maybe we should just wear snowshoes.