Canoe country. It’s also snow country, and General Winter’s annual invasion marks the end of the paddling season for many canoeists and kayakers. Many, that is, but not all. Brazil has as much claim to the title as, say, Ontario, and it doesn’t often snow in the Amazon Basin. But the “canoe country” that I’m thinking of is mostly a state of mind, a place whose boundaries were defined in the birch-bark chronicles of nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers like Nessmuk, Calvin Rutstrum, and (more recently) Bill Mason. In any case, round about December, give or take, a fair bit of the northern hemisphere starts to look like the scene described so evocatively in Christina Rossetti’s “Mid-Winter”: Earth…hard as iron/Water like a stone. From then until ice-out, millions of canoes and kayaks languish in their storage cradles, collecting dust or shrouded in snow. And by January their owners are getting stir-crazy.

 

 
What’s a snowbound paddler to do? I’ve explored options for the home front in a couple of earlier columns. Now, however, it’s time to think about ways to engage General Winter on his own territory. There’s no shortage of alternatives, and some are heavily promoted. Downhill skiing and snowmobiling, for example. But these won’t interest anyone who prizes silence, solitude, and independence. Many turn to cross-country skiing, instead, though here, too, solitude is hard to come by. Most cross-country skiing is done on trails, and many trails are crowded, particularly on weekends. Worse yet, an increasing number are multi-use highways, shared with snowmobiles and ATVs. The result? Skiers looking for a chance to stretch their legs and breathe deep in cold, crisp, clean air—”straight from the North Pole,” in the words of one hopeful, if naive, neighbor—find themselves slogging through a stinking miasma of unburned fuel and two-stroke oil instead, coughing and gagging and longing for the comparative tranquility of their morning commute in rush-hour traffic.

Of course, cross-country skiers can always leave the trails and strike out…well…cross-country. It seems only natural. But it isn’t as easy as the pictures in the catalogs suggest. Off-trail travel in unbroken snow is hard work, for one thing. And much of canoe country is forested. Skiing through dense stands of cedar, hemlock, and spruce is a sweaty, scratchy business, periodically enlivened by the snow-covered hollows that form around the trunks of big trees. Every backcountry skier eventually learns just how hard it is to climb out of a hole wearing six-foot-long shoes.

Sooner or later, though, the forest gives way to an open slope, and gravity takes control. In seconds, the sweat-soaked skier is sliding downhill, going faster and faster as the gradient steepens. It’s hard not to be exhilarated. This is what skiing’s all about: freedom and speed. But freedom isn’t free, is it? There’s a price to be paid, and the bill comes due when the plummeting adventurer skids on a patch of ice and slams into the only tree on the slope, or soars over an unexpected drop, invisible in the white sameness of the winter landscape ó or when he simply catches an edge and takes a tumble. And then something snaps. Painfully. Suddenly, the crowded trails that the skier left behind don’t seem so bad. Even a passing pack of snowmobiles would be welcome. Yet none appears.

You get the point, I’m sure. Backcountry skiing can be dangerous, and even expert skiers suffer occasional misadventures in the brooding hills. The novice is best advised to stick to gentle, groomed trails and take the crowds in stride. Does this mean that only experts and daredevils can find silence and solitude in the depths of winter? Happily, things aren’t this bad. Skis aren’t the only way to explore the frozen world. You can also do it on snowshoes. Read more