I don’t usually walk down the middle of the road. But there was no chance of traffic today, or even this month, for I knew the cars would never find the road now, its form obscured by several feet of snow, and its way revealed only by the slowly winding ribbon of treelessness through the winter forest. The road had long been closed for the winter, and the snow allowed to pile up for those on skis or snowshoes. I had snowshoes, and I followed where the trees weren’t.
One foot in front of the other. Then the other foot in front of the one. My gait was slowed with the snowshoes, as I sank in a little with each step, but not as much as I would have without them. A light snow was falling, and the only sound was the crunch of the snowshoes on the snow.
Signs of a parking lot
While the way may have curved slightly left, or right, or not curved at all, it was all the same, trees and snow, snow and trees, with no hint of progress save my lonely tracks behind me, and no hint of company in the untrodden snow ahead of me.
Eventually, though, the view changed. Up ahead I spied a sign for the buried parking lot, and all of a sudden, I was here. I soon approached a bus shelter, filled with scalloped snow drifts, marked with last year’s shuttle bus schedule. Picnic tables, directional signs, all now shrouded in a heavy blanket of snow. It was somewhat eerie, like coming upon the remains of a lost settlement.
I brushed off a section of wall at the overlook, and sat surrounded by beauty, bathed in solitude, with nothing but the faint sound of the snow falling all around me. And I sat, and marveled at the sight spread out before me, for me alone.
After some time, I turned to go. There was still no queue for the shuttle bus, but I already had decided it was a beautiful day for a walk.