Matt and Anne bought me a set of new modern snowshoe bindings to go on the old 1970’s snowshoes we have. They arrived in Newton on Friday. We took them up to Maine that evening. Matt and Anne had got there a little while before us. I installed the new bindings right away and, eager to try them, asked Matt if he wanted to come along for a walk.
It was a bright moonlit night, with a waxing gibbous moon about three days before full, no wind, and pretty warm — at least in the upper 20s. The snow had a hard crunchy crust from rain earlier in the day. I’ve been wanting to get out on snowshoes on a moonlit night, and the warm temperature, clear sky, and new equipment made it irresistible.
I was out of breath a third of the way up the logging road to Sleeping Rhino, and let Matt take the lead and break trail. It was a lot easier going following him than crunching through the crust myself.
There were no tracks in the snow when we started. New snow that had fallen this week (Bridgton got 16 inches on Monday, and Casco couldn’t have had very much less) covered up the tracks we had made last week, but you could still see where the old tracks had been. I never before realized how well I know our trails, but we knew where we were in the moonlight. We went up to Sleeping Rhino, right on the Blueberry trail, spotted the little sign I had made at the intersection of the Rock to Rock trail, and came back to the house on it. The woods were as beautiful in the moonlight as I had hoped. It was perfectly quiet when we stopped, but only when we stopped. The crusty snow was very noisy to walk on when we were moving.
Saturday night was overcast, so the moonlight was less bright, but all four of us went out after dark and walked all the way around the property. We had been around the trails in the afternoon, so there was no problem breaking trail. Arlene and Anne went inside after one lap around, and Matt and I did a second lap because it was so nice out there.