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| © Jan '12 photo by smck |
Minimalist Hiking
An excerpt from a previous writing -
Being a loner a lot of the time on such
things as running, biking, and trail (or no trail) walking, after
reading the 10 Essentials of Winter Hiking I realized that I often
have been a minimalist in terms of doing well thought out
preparations for a hike - whether winter or summer - and have
survived some dumb decisions by the application of a number of lucky
breaks.
I had moved to Nova Scotia in January
of 1974 in the midst of many feet of snow and temperatures that at
night were sometimes as low as minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit. The
house took weeks to warm up and was so cold the first few days - even
with two stoves burning day and night - that the inside walls were
coated in ice from the moisture in our breath, I guess, and we would
sleep bundled in clothing in our sleeping bags covered by quilts.
(My now ex-wife cried a lot in those first two weeks or so). It was
at this stage of our new arrival that I decided to walk the seemingly
marked property line of our 50 acres to get a feel for what our
property was like, as when we had bought the old farm we had just
looked over the house and took the land for granted. So at about
3:30 in the afternoon I went out the back door and over the hundred
feet or so to the southern boundary and headed westward to the
cairned back corner some unknown distance into the wood. The snow
was deep and I was wearing rubber wellingtons and decent enough coat,
hat. gloves etc but nothing else such as a compass, or a light or
matches or whatever and of course this was in the days before cell
phones. In fact the house phone (not yet connected) was an old crank
phone - four longs two shorts - party line deal. I reached the
corner well marked wooden pillar incised with various information by
Lands and Forests surveyors and turned north into a long marshy heath
with bushes slashed to form a fairly well marked trail. It had been
snowing now for about a half hour or so and my deep foot steps in the
snow were filling rapidly, and early twilight was darkening just as
rapidly with the cloud cover and the snow. By the time I crossed the
heath - nicely frozen under the several feet of snow - and entered
the dark and brooding spruce wood the trail was becoming less
well-defined, and in fact the trail was no longer a trail and the
twilight was no longer a light. I debated turning and following my
track back to the house but with the falling snow covering in the
tracks and the lack of light to see by I figured that it was best to
head on to the north and eventually I should run into my neighbors
property about a half-mile or so in front of me. The 'or so' of the
previous sentence was in actuality more like a mile but I liked the
uphill, solid ground (versus marshy heath which could have had
springy open water areas to suck me in). It was really dark by now,
but if you have ever hiked by dark night in snow covered terrain you
know that it's amazingly simple to see 10 to 15 feet around you, so
that avoiding trees and picking a reasonably straight line trail is
fairly straight forward. I wasn't overly happy about being
semi-lost in an unknown forest in the dark of a snowy bitter cold
night but I wasn't worried either. I planned on giving myself an
hour or so to find the neighbor or a road and if I didn't, I figured
I would hunker down beneath a big spruce, pile up a little snow for a
wind barrier and wait it out till morning. I didn't want my wife
worried if I didn't get in but I knew that she knew I often sorta
forgot to get home when I said I would so it would probably have been
midnight or so before she would have called the Mounties. Eventually
I reached a 'choppings' - a somewhat of a cleared area of forest
where pulp-wood cutters had clear cut 15 or 20 acres leaving great
piles of toppings - so I turned following the choppings boundary line
to the eastward, toward the river and the road that followed it. As
I crested the top of the hill before descending toward the river I
caught a dim glimpse of a streetlight far back in the village of
Grand River and I have to say that it really boosted my morale a bit.
I was headed in the right direction. On reaching the Frank
MacDonald road I turned toward home and by the time I came to my lane
I knew I just taken a memorial hike of about four miles in unknown
territory at night in a light snowstorm. Up the quarter mile of lane
to the house and into a hot shower that warmed me up with cold toes
and fingers stinging madly.
"Have a nice walk?", she said
as she served me up steaming hot tea and such after my shower.
"Yep!", said I.
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