I went snowshoeing again yesterday, and it will probably be the last time this winter. I have enjoyed my outings, but I really hope this thaw continues. I can wait until next December for more cold and snow. I haven’t finished writing an entry about yesterday’s trip, but I thought I’d post this one that I started a few weeks ago.
Of all my trips to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum to snowshoe this winter, I only had company for one. My family declined to come with me, and I didn’t plan far enough in advance for friends to accompany me. I had a wonderful time on each visit, enjoying the scenery and the time outside, but some company would have been pleasant, too.
It has been such a cold winter, that it has been difficult to want to spend time outside. When the temperature has warmed into the teens above zero, I have jumped at the chance to be outside whenever possible. Work and family obligations don’t always permit this, and it also simply hasn’t warmed up that much that often this winter. I regret my December post about being due for a hard winter. God laughed at that one.
The forecast for today called for another teens above zero afternoon, so I made an effort to complete my chores and commitments as early as possible. When I announced to my husband that I wanted to go to the Arboretum again, he asked if I was intending to take our son. (Daughter was at a birthday party.) I said no, since son had resolutely declined all previous invitations, but after feeling the mother-guilt, I asked son to join me.
To my great surprise, he said yes. The reason for this became clear when he asked, “Can we go to Target after?” Target, of course, is the town’s source of all things toy and electronic. “Maybe,” I bargained. “There’s to be no whining, and no telling me you’re finished and ready to go home when we’ve barely started.” He agreed to these conditions, put down his electronics, and got ready to go. I was astonished but pleased, willing to reward him for accompanying me and being willing to try snowshoeing again.
We headed out, and he was in good spirits. The parking lot was full when we arrived, and there were other people renting snowshoes. I thought the trails might be crowded, but once we got on the trail, we quickly found ourselves alone in the snow-covered hills. There are a few options for starting out on the trail. I usually head downhill at first. To my surprise, Matthew found this so easy that he started to jog. I followed, and it felt good. We didn’t run for long. Breathless and laughing, we slowed to a walk, and I pointed out some squirrel tracks in the snow. After skirting a pond, the trail comes to a large hill. This is a challenging climb in snowshoes without poles, so I lent my poles to my son. He appreciated that, but I asked him to be careful with the poles so that he didn’t poke my eye out.
“Because then I wouldn’t be able to drive home and we’d be stuck,” I said.
Having recently studied the feast of St. Lucy in school, he had a ready comeback: “Maybe you’ll be like St. Lucy and still be able to see after I poke them out.”
“Let’s not try it,” I cautioned. He looked over his shoulder and grinned at me. I was glad to see him enjoying himself.
After the big hill, the trail leveled out and then we headed up another, more gradual hill. It’s a lot of climbing within a few minutes, and I wasn’t too surprised when he said he wanted to stop and head back. I said we had only been out for ten minutes, and we needed to go farther: a least a mile. He agreed.
We crested the hill and started down, circling around a section of prairie to a large oak. He wanted to rest on the snow-covered bench beneath it, but I encouraged him to keep going. We continued down the hill to the 3-Mile Drive that winds through the Arboretum. In the winter, it is closed to motor traffic, but it is plowed. We stomped across, our snowshoes clattering on the pavement, and I climbed the snow bank back onto the trail. He decided to cross the road a little farther away and try to snowshoe off the trail. Mistake.
After all of our snow this winter, it is very deep, and even with snowshoes, one sinks into it. He fell and couldn’t get the poles underneath him to help himself up. It looked like he was swimming in the snow, and I couldn’t help laughing. I thought he might get frustrated, but he seemed to find it as funny as I did. I took out my phone and snapped a picture.

Within minutes, he was up again and came back to the trail. Now we were near the wildlife garden: my favorite section of the Arboretum. We saw deer tracks crossing the trail and I pointed them out. He asked if we would see the deer. I said that I always see lots of tracks in the arbor vitae section, but I’ve never seen any deer.
“Snowshoeing isn’t very quiet,” I said. “They have plenty of time to run away when they hear us coming.”
After crossing a ravine on a snow-covered bridge, we worked our way to the wildflower garden. I pointed out the snow stained by what I think are red elderberries and marked by the tracks of many animals. The berries are bright red against the snow, and it is obvious that many birds and animals have been eating them. We traveled farther along the trail and came to another berry bush, along with a bird feeder. The animals have been feeding well here, which is something of a relief. It’s been such a hard winter that I am glad to know that at least some of them are finding food.
We walked farther into the garden, entering the arbor vitae collection. (Just as an aside, I really don’t care for arbor vitae in general, but the Arboretum has an impressive collection. They are well maintained and look beautiful in the snow.) The deer obviously like this part of the Arb. We could see many tracks and places where they have bedded down to sleep.
We also came across a large pile of deer scat in the trail. I told son what it was. “Really?” he asked, bending down to take a closer look, with all of the fascination of a nine-year-old boy or a wildlife biologist. “It looks like berries.”
“Don’t eat those berries,” I warned.
He studied the scat some more. “Why does it look like that?” he asked.
I hadn’t really thought about it before, so I shrugged. “It just comes out like that,” I offered, “like with rabbits.” He is familiar with that form of scat.
“Maybe they eat the same things?” he asked.
“Well, yes, I suppose so.”
He took another look at the pile of poop balls. “If I had a deer, I could use it as a bb gun,” he concluded, and he started to walk again.
I haven’t laughed so much in a long time.
I didn’t walk as far or as fast with my son as I have when I’ve trekked by myself at the Arb. I didn’t sweat through four layers of clothes and (according to my FitBit), climb the equivalent of 50 flights of stairs. But I had a great time with my son, and he had a good time, too.
When we finished, I asked him if he had enjoyed himself, and he said yes. “So, if I were to buy you some snowshoes, you’d come back with me and use them?” I asked.
“Sure,” he replied. “That would be fun.”
Yes, it would.

And then he had a cookie and hot cocoa at the café, and asked me if I was ready to go to Target, where he wanted to look at toys, fortunately one that was not electronic.