Snowshoeing in the wilds of Minnesota

Yes, snowshoeing – it requires you to walk funny. And it's difficult to back up. And you fall when you try to take a step forward, when one snowshoe overlaps the other.

I plopped behind my good friend and support partner, Diana Makens, to learn how she (expert snowshoe-er) made it look so easy. There is a knack to it that, once mastered, allows you to go places that are otherwise unnavigable.

Being a Southern Gal, I bundled up in several layers, which got stripped off one by one as we ventured further from the house … first the hat, then the scarf. I threatened to arrive back at the house completely naked and still sweating.

And it was delicious to be out in the woods in the early morning … all that fresh, cold air, and a sense of life all around … wild and domesticated animal tracks everywhere; evergreens bowed down with ice packs on their limbs; trees and rushes poking through snow banks, determined to prove they still existed.

It was an awesome morning!