Winter Jewels

by Donna Hruska

It was mid-winter in northern Wisconsin and our family had just discovered the newest winter sport–snowmobiling. We were spending our vacation learning how to handle our machine, racing around on the frozen lake, thrilling to the sensation of skimming over the ice at alarming speeds. That soon paled. We doubted that we could sustain a lifetime interest in a sport that promised only racing in endless circles on frozen water.

Led by other couples who live in the area year around, we began to explore remote regions of the great north woods, many of them inaccessible by any other means except by foot in the summertime. The trails sometimes followed logging roads or fire lanes. At other times they narrowed down to mere paths, just wide enough for our machines to get through. On occasion, when far back in the wilderness our snowmobiles cut their own path.

The forest was a fantasy of tall pines burdened with heavy clumps of snow, of birch trees whose snow-covered branches appeared cut from the sheerest lace. The white under the trees was criss-crossed with fresh animal tracks. We saw deer, alone and in herds, marveled at an old buck who watched us curiously from a hill in a clearing, before turning his back and disappearing to the other side. Once a fox scampered across our trail and off between the trees. Another time we flushed a grouse almost at our feet.

One night, near the end of our vacation, our friends invited us along on a night-time safari. We started out about eight o’clock. Because we were so well bundled in our windproof suits, feltlined boots, gloves to the elbow, face masks and goggles, no one in the group noticed how the temperature had dropped. Later, we learned that the thermometer shivered at eight degrees above zero.

It was a clear night, with no moon to light our way. The stars gleamed as tiny pinpricks in a black sky. Our five machines roared off along the ditches of the roadway and thumped over the plowed mounds of snow into a woodland path. Our headlights pierced the blackness, making a tunnel of the trail.

Suddenly, we had entered another world–a world that seemed to have been touched by a frosted wand–for every tree, every bush, every weed thrust up through the snow glistened and sparkled, as if jewels had been suspended from every branch.

We stopped then and marveled, with breath caught achingly in our throats, each of us wordlessly aware that he was in the presence of one of nature’s gifts, incredible beauty, created with little fanfare–knowing, too, that this was one of those rare moments that can distill the essence of an entire vacation.