Tonight's Evening Snowshoe

After finishing up a movie this evening with my sweetheart (we first met 30 years ago this week in Albuquerque!) I decide to go snowshoeing. We have just set a record for the most snowfall for one month in Spokane and it just keeping piling up. Today, however, it began warming up (known locally as a Chinook wind or the Pineapple Express) and melting. I was invited to go cross-country skiing but I declined as it is no fun when the snow is this wet.

As I put on my snowshoes in the howling wind and began my little trek the sky was ablaze with an orange-tinted glow from nearby city lights. The beautiful silhouettes of the pine trees where a wonderful greeting. I headed past my favorite Ponderosa Pine in the nearby woods with its large trunk and thinning crown. The snow is thick but because of its moisture content I was not sinking as deep as the other night.

As I sunk into a rhythm with my poles and exaggerated steps my mind began to wander. I started thinking about trappers checking their lines out in the wilderness and about northern indigenous people eking out a living from the land. My meandering thoughts also took me trekking along with polar explorers advancing toward an invisible goal.

With all the deep snow around lately I had seen no animal tracks of any kind. I was approaching the ridge line overlooking the valley as I was thinking these thoughts and then, there they were. A set of day old tracks, possibly of coyotes. It has been awhile since I have heard their calls around home. Following the ridge line south I began to see more tracks and then a big circle of them with a dark patch in the middle... the carcass of a porcupine. All that was left was his pelt, a leg and his head. A few steps further and I saw the spot under a fallen pine where he must have been hunkered down in the snow and the signs of struggle. Many tracks led to and from this scene of death and survival.

Alone with these thoughts I climbed the hill to our "view point" and stood in the strong wind and looked out over the valley and at the city of Spokane 4 miles off. I trudged on past the old sledding hill and back home.