For the first quarter of my life growing up in Indiana, snowshoes were just some exotic thing that would sometimes be mentioned in a novel. However, when we immigrated to Canada and found ourselves living in a very remote lumber camp, surrounded by deep snow and no outside recreation during the winter, we decided to buy some snowshoes so we could at least do a little exploring in the wilderness that surrounded the camp.
We purchased them through the mail, probably after reading from some ad in the back of a magazine. The pair we bought were wide, handmade, leather-woven ones, (shown on the left above.) When we got them, we had to figure out how to get our winter boots snuggly attached into the harness, but soon we were out walking through the deep snow.
The whole idea of snowshoes is that they distribute your weight onto a broad area under your feet, so that your feet don’t sink so deeply in the snow. Even with the snowshoes, you might sink maybe 6 inches (15cm) depending on the hardness of the snow, but your feet would sink a whole lot deeper without them.
Snowshoeing with those wide snowshoes, meant we had to adjust our steps; walking with our feet further apart, and taking longer strides, because if we didn’t, we ended up stepping on the opposite snowshoe as we walked. It seemed like our boots where always slipping out of the harness, which meant a lot of awkward struggles, with one foot sinking deeper in the snow, then trying to balance on the one remaining snowshoe, while struggling to put the other foot back in the harness, then with cold fingers trying to connect and tighten the icy strap back into place.
Despite those awkward moments, it was good being outside in the snow and into the woods, exploring places that would have been inaccessible without the snowshoes.
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