A day in the woods

We set out, breaking trail in the new snow, Oli out front, his pace a bit faster than mine. I am steady, even plodding; he’s just a touch ahead of that.

Mind you, Oli isn’t the fastest; that would be any number of endurance athletes around here who run marathons in less than three hours and make it to the Slayton Pasture Cabin at Trapps on cross-country skis in less than 25 minutes. Some of these speedsters compete at going uphill in the snow in winter. Keeping up with companions in the mountains generally doesn’t bode well for a long day. But I’m with Oli and the pace is fine. Anyway, this would all be over in less than an hour and a half.

We switched the lead a few times on the way up, back and forth, doing this without the need for any discussion. We’d never explored on skis this wooded slope, south and west of Stowe, though we’d been up on the ridge where we were headed. He’d hunted the area and I’d climbed around it in the summer.

His call had come in the morning. I scooted home mid afternoon and grabbed my gear. Half an hour later, Oli and I were in a blizzard, following one another, a little chatter now and again, but mostly silence as we searched the forest for cues on where to go up and where we might come down.

Oli’s an easy guy to be in the woods with. He’s not in any particular rush, and if we ran into trouble he wouldn’t panic; he’d know what to do. Not that our level of concern is particularly high in the Vermont backcountry, but I’ve gotten lost for hours and hours and was glad at those times to be with understanding mates.

Oli also reads wild signs: wildlife tracks, deer and bear rubs; he can distinguish bear and moose and coyote scat; he knows when a trail is actually a wispy deer track that will soon lead nowhere as opposed to a trail someone, sometime, might have cut. Mostly, though, he likes the quiet. You can only be silent with your closest companions.

The thing about a ski climb in a storm in the dead of winter, even a modest uphill New England plod, is the anticipation — of the summit and the descent.

There’s tension. You might get lost, you might miss the turn, the right tree or dip in the ridge that will enable you to find what you’re hoping for. In a blizzard in a slightly unfamiliar place, the edge of anxiety and anticipation is a little sharper.

After switching back and forth for an hour, we pushed through the spruce line and onto the summit ridge.

Oli had an idea about a possible clearing and an open way down. His memory was triggered by a line of large spruce trees and a clearing marked by a stand of old birch. I had my doubts, but when your partner gets a notion, and you have none, you just follow. We removed our skins, stashed them away and began our descent.

After a few turns we emerged into a small, flat clearing where I looked up to see a large dog bounding into view, alone.

It was a stunning sight at that late afternoon, black-and-white hour, deep in the snowy winter forest; we were an hour or more into the woods, above 3,000 feet, not a person or a track in sight. At first I thought it was a coyote or even a small wolf, and just as I called out “hey!” I caught sight of a man following the dog on a snowboard. He was using poles to push himself through the snow. “Hi!” he replied with a note of familiarity, as if greeting us on a village street.

We exchanged a few words about where we’d come from and where we were headed, and he indicated the direction of a good way down. So we headed off together.

He led us into a few tight turns in the spruce, which opened up into wider-spaced hardwoods. The snow was deep and forgiving. It was a nice descent, all the way down to the car in the fresh snow. Magic, really.

Somewhere on these outings I always find myself reviewing the steps and chapters it took to be out here, to find the tingle of discovery, fear and euphoria, and recognizing, quite suddenly, my altered frame of mind, the heightened awareness, the welcome lightness.

By the time we threw our gear in the car it was completely dark.

The guy with the dog introduced himself as John Wulf, a science teacher at Champlain Valley Union High School. We talked backcountry skiing a bit. He’d been the high school teacher for one of our reporters at this paper. It was one of those classic mountain-town moments.

Content, I don’t think Oli and I said much on the way home. We probably discussed stopping for a beer, and I considered how that might prolong the good feeling. At home, the inevitable question from my all-knowing skiing wife: “Where’ve you been?”

“Skiing in the woods with Oli.”

“How was it?”

“Great.”