Well, one strategy for getting through winter involves taking advantage as best you can of the sunny days. In keeping with this, last weekend I headed out for a bit of an excursion out back, along with Jen and the dog. The point (aside from avoiding cabin fever, February blahs, and impeding obesity) was to try out Fred’s trekking skis, which are something of a cross between snowshoes and cross-country skis. You can kind of seem them here:

They’re relatively short, and have a patch of “seal skin” fabric on the bottom to keep them from sliding the wrong way (which is backwards). I’ve been told that they came from Siberia (or was it Scandinavia?). Originally, that is; the skis that I used came from the store in Kemptville.Jen strapped on a set of “boreal” snowshoes, which are huge and tasseled. Wooden, too; none of this new-fangled aluminum stuff. I guess they’re suited to the deep powder. Anyhow, they smooth things out pretty nice for the skis.

It’s funny how you notice different things in the winter, with the leaves gone and all. Stuff you’d miss in the spring all of a sudden comes out loud and clear. Take a look at this:

See the nest? First of all, you’d never notice it in the summer because it’s surrounded by prickly ash, and chances are you’re not going anywhere near that stuff. But with the braches bared, you realize that some critter was crazy enough to set up house in the middle of it all. Wondering if there was an egg or a bird in the nest, I took a closer look,

…but it was just a patch of snow; nobody home.