Here are a few things which seem marvelous to me…
*Sharp ice skates with strong ankles driving them along in perfect balance and relaxation.
*Boots creaking on packed powder snow.
*Walking through the snow. …If you’re not post-holing.
*Walking a walking-packed snow path. Nice square tread. About 2 ft wide.
*Snowshoeing.
*Snowshoeing a nicely tromped-in snowshoe path with a nice square tread. (“Tread” means the level of the surface being trod upon.)
*A well skied-in ski trail snaking up and down through terrain, sometimes with tight turns. Where the skiers are always going the same direction through. The step turns all get the same marks. A nice firm stable skiing surface is created. It’s a work of art. It takes artfulness to create it. Artful skiing that is. Or, just plain skiing. I think it’s cute how, generally, skis will be used in the same pattern each time through a piece of terrain. …But if skier skill and maybe even size varies enough this might change a bit. Or a lot. If we’re talking non-skiers.
*When BC skiing, no tracks are usually best. But the uptrack back up a slope can become a thing of mesmerizing beauty. Enjoy.
*Various trail users all using a nice snow trail surface. Each user leaving his mark but none too deeply to mess anything up for the others. All the different sign. I enjoy marveling at various boot treads. I like seeing the nowax ski patterns left after a nowax ski stops during its brief second to grip. But zero nowax marks might be a little sweeter yet to see.
*Snows all around. …Driving in a snowstorm. Or in dicey conditions. Packed powder, ideally. But I mean vehicle tires that grip, bite and do what they’re supposed to do, transforming what could be a sketchy situation into pure delight. Perhaps this miracle is more common now, with AWD and traction-control, 4WD, etc. But Hakkapelittas ain’t bad neither. And a couple years ago in a blizzard the Town Car with snows all around sure was doing better than 90% of other vehicles on the freeway, during a blizzard, in 8″ of snow — with every single one of the other vehicles more modern by far. Like, I could still go 50 while they were 20. It was interesting to come up on the creeping lines of new AWD snails. …Something about those snows.
