Winter has been a fulltime resident here in West Virginia's Yew Mountains. In the Cranberry Highlands where I snowshoed last Wednesday, there were forty plus inches of snow cover; six inches of powder on top of a base of ice over frozen granular stuff . I wonder what the Inuit names are for that combination. I recall that the Inuit, like the Chukchi in Siberia and other indigenous populations north of the Arctic Circle have eighteen, or twenty-eight, or some multiple of names for snow in its various manifestations.
I left the Cranberry Nature Center, a surreal scene of ice, huge snow drifts , and piercing cold howling wind, and proceeded on the Pocahontas Trail. The going was difficult. Some folks on horses had post holed through the wet snow before it froze five days before. This was the condition of the trail for the entire first hour, until the turnoff to the Cranberry Mountain Lodge, the obvious source of horses and riders who had now rendered that section of the trail unfit for any use, including further horse riding, for the rest of the winter.
Once the horse mess was behind me, the trail was beautiful, and the going much quicker. The cloud cover started to break up, and the sun peaked in and out, softening the snow and prompting a move to hatless shirt sleeves for the climb to Blue Knob. At Blue Knob, there was evidence of some folks recently engaging in mass fun! About two days previous, several folks had snow shoed in from the Kennison Mountain Trail along the Highland Scenic Highway. They climbed the knob in snow shoes, and then snow boarded down the mountain on a beautiful glade run. It looked as if they repeated several times.
After climbing Blue Knob, about two and a half miles from the trail head, I retraced my steps back to the Cranberry Nature Center. I paused at a few of the many south facing overlooks to admire Bruffy Creek Valley, and the mountain landscape. I thanked the Creator for the gift of life, and asked for the strength, courage, wisdom, and perserverance to be worthy.
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