Sunday, February 10, 2008

A Memorable Excursion

It's a freezing cold day outside with temperatures near zero and the wind whipping out of the northwest at 25 to 35 mph with higher gusts. Thankfully it's not really snowing here, although just off to our east it has to be snowing quite heavily. In those areas where it is snowing, blizzard conditions are prevalent. It's one of those days you definitely don't want to venture out in unless you have layers upon layers of clothes on. The nice thing is, this cold blast is only supposed to be shortlived. Tomorrow already the temperatures will be up into the teens and by the time Tuesday rolls around, we'll be in the 20's. This kind of cold weather really makes a person long for the warmer season.

Back when I was in high school, one of the activities I'd do during the winter time to stay active and to beat away the winter blues was to go cross country skiing. We have this big field in our backyard where we could go quite far to the south, but mainly I'd always make a trail to the township fairgrounds which are right next door. I'd make a few loops around the ball fields and depending on the depth of the snow, I'd get quite the workout. You see, I'd be making my own trails because we never had a snowmobile that could help to groom the trails. So on the warmest of days, I'd definitely work up a sweat. But in general, the trails that I made were always flat and following the same trail day after day did get rather boring after awhile. Eventually I'd try doing something different and create a new trail, but even that would get boring. So on those days when my sister would be over (on her days off from school or work - seeing that she liked cross country skiing, too), we'd head over to the local ski hill which had cross country ski trails located there.

I can't tell you how many times we'd make a visit there to do some cross country skiing. The local ski area is a small resort, operated by the township and it requires volunteers to help run it. The cross country ski trails were seldom ever taken care of. In fact, they were rarely groomed. Many times when we'd make our first trips out to these ski trails, we'd have to traverse around and over fallen trees or overgrown shrubs. Eventually someone would come through with a chain saw or the snow would get deep enough where we could finally just ski over a lot of the fallen trees that laid in the midst of the trail. But regardless of the obstacles, we always had fun. We even brought along our dog who loved to follow us behind our tracks. He really got a good workout following us.

There are only three main cross country ski trails at the ski hill and we'd always try to break things up a bit by trying a combination of two of the three or just one of the trails. It really depended on how we felt physically and the conditions of the snow that day. Trail "A" was the shortest of the three but was definitely more advanced with a variety of different hills to ski down or climb up. Trail "B" was the longest of the three and definitely the most challenging of all. One of the hills at the mid-point of the trail is extremely scary to ski down because it has an incredibly quick drop. We almost always side-stepped down this particular hill unless the snow happened to be extremely sticky that day. And trail "D" was probably the most boring because it's just a plain, flat trail. However, it is probably the second longest of the three. My sister and I always chose trail A the most because it was the quickest of the three. If we felt that going down that particular trail was never enough, we'd always go a second time. Whatever the case was, we always enjoyed ourselves there. Our goal was never to fall - which often was difficult to do because the conditions always varied. One such time we went and it was extremely warm out - probably in the mid 30's. We had just started skiing and I always went first. I skiied down a short hill and at the bottom of this hill was a surprise puddle. The water was up to the top of my boots and my feet were soaked. Needless to say, my day was done.

You may have caught on to the fact of the odd labeling of trails at the ski hill. There's a trail A, B, and D. But where's C? That was the exact same question my sister and I had pondered for a long while. We knew there had to have been a trail "C" at some point in time. But we just didn't know where it was. All of the trail maps located at the ski hill only had the three trails listed. That is until we took a journey down trail "D" one day. Most of the trail maps out there were copied onto a piece of paper and laminated. But there was one trail map on trail D that was a hard-covered plastic copy. On it was the fabled C trail. My sister and I were thrilled. We had finally found the location of the fourth trail. The only trouble was seeing if we could actually follow the route the entire way and finish the course.

So during one day when the weather was half-way decent, we decided to see if we could find trail C. It actually followed along trail A, then trail B, and then finally broke off on it's own. We were having a good time and were actually able to follow the trail quite easily since most of the blue diamonds marking the trail were still in place. Eventually, though, we hit a dead end and found ourselves out in the middle of nowhere. No matter which direction we headed, it proved to be wrong. We couldn't find a single blue diamond any longer. Simply put, we were lost. We were rather disappointed, but the only logical thing to do was follow our old trail and head back to where we started. I think at one point we were standing ontop of a small frozen lake because we were suddenly amongst this wide-open space in the middle of nowhere. It had to have been a lake, otherwise I think we would've encountered some brush. So we doubled-back and followed our tracks. We met back up with trail A and followed that to its conclusion. After that, we were wore out. That tired us out for the rest of the day. And we never did try to find the finish of that famed trail C ever again.

Cross country skiing is one of those activities that can really be fun once you get the hang of it. I had always downhill skied when I was younger. But when you cross country ski, it really gives you a good workout. Skiing is something I haven't done much at all the past three winters. It's one of those sports I miss doing and hopefully soon I'll be able to get back into. I just mainly do it for the fun and not the competition anyway - so don't worry, I won't be entering any races anytime soon.

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