A winter ski trip to the woods

January 31, 2024

I had a great outdoor trip season last winter.

A 2 night solo ski trip, a 2 night snowshoe trip with my friend Kim, and a 5 night snowshoe/hiking trip with Damien. All in the span of five weeks. It was a little reminiscent of that year our friends David & Emily rented a cabin in Stratton, Maine and we got to visit them and borrow the cabin for our personal use multiple times. That was amazing!

(That year I didn’t write about the place, the skiing and snowshoeing, or our time with our friends, per se, I wrote about my tension and dis-satisfaction of always wanting more. I like having the record of that life experience, the travels and the tensions. And the memories of all that snow shared with the people I love.)

Moving right along…

Leaning hard into winter activity and the seasonal importance of wintering (hibernation, rest, lying fallow, cultivating cozy, etc.) changed my relationship with winter. I absolutely love doing wintery things in winter.

The lack of a snowy and cold winter is one of the things I am concerned about in moving to Nova Scotia’s South Shore. I have come to need and want this in my life.

However, I’ve also learned that people change and things are not always as we expect, and new experiences and new locales teach us new things to love. (Plus, I can always drive over to New Brunswick or up to Cape Breton to have more winter experiences.)

Anyway, last February I did a solo ski trip in Mont Tremblant National Park, north of Montreal.

I took a bunch of video clips and photos with the intention of making a trip video. But my schedule got a little busy after that with doing the other trips, plus of course work and school.

Then it was April, school got really intense. And who wants to watch a winter video when spring is just around the corner?

So I never did make that video. Then, early this month in those expansive days after the Christmas holidays, I felt motivated to pick it back up.

I’ve been watching quite a lot of YouTube over the past year, vlogs and travel/adventure videos mostly. I’ve been inspired to experiment myself with this kind of content creation/story telling/memory keeping.

I’d like to get better at video-making which means doing it. But in making and publishing something that is quite beginner in skill level and equipment, I recognize that I have huge room for improvement in my story telling, video and audio recording.

Enough rambling. Here’s the video. (If you’re reading this in email you’ll have to click through to the blog to watch it.) If you watch it on YouTube the video description has some trip details and other info.