A Winter Snowshoe in the U.P.

My daughter and I snowshoed with friends this week. The temperature’s been hovering just above zero in the eastern Upper Peninsula so we bundled up to head out across 110 acres of open field and woods behind their house in Dafter.

The snow was perfect for big-footed creatures. Tracks remained where showshoe hares bounded across the snow, kept from sinking by their wide feet and the hard frozen layer created by a recent thaw. We shuffled through the same top fluffy layer, only slightly breaking into the crust. Small evenly spaced footprints had been left by night-hunting coyotes or foxes. A single deer was less fortunate, breaking through to the ground and leaving cupped holes filled with soft snow as it walked straight towards a distant bunch of tag alders.

We entered a young forest, stepping over fallen limbs of poplars, tag alders and spruce. Flakes of wood littered the snow at the base of a dead tree, probably left by a pileated woodpecker searching for ants. The pounding sound of a smaller woodpecker tumbled through the woods, a noise that seemed too big for the black bird we could see banging away at a trunk. Grouse burst from the snow nearby – a startlingly noisy whirring of wings.

The air was still as we headed back. The snow glistened in long slanting rays of the low sun. Back at the house we shed our outer clothing and warmed up over coffee, looking out the big A-frame windows onto our tracks crossing the cold field. We agreed that winter can be the U.P’s best season.