Tuesday, 1/24

 So...was this a case of great minds thinking alike?

Or was it something entirely different?

As I said I would, I took my snowshoes out for the first time on Sunday morning, trekking over to Park Cemetery to take advantage of the foot of fresh snow we received at the end of last week.   For the past several years, when snowshoeing over there I've followed a very roundabout course I came up with, going halfway around the cemetery, then into the woods around the Fit Strip, avoiding the groomed trails but going up & down the wooded hills surrounding them, all before heading back into the cemetery and going the rest of the way around it.

It takes about an hour and a half, and since it avoids any or all of the places that someone would walk or ski, I get quite the workout, all while enjoying the solitude you get from being in a place where no one else goes.

Or so I thought.

When I got into the wooded part of my trek, I noticed that I was actually following in the snowshoe-d steps of someone else.  And those steps I was following were themselves following the exact same, meandering random course that I came up with a few years ago, a course that takes you off any beaten path and up & down hills that no one else in their right mind would go up & down.

It was weird.

As I was following the footsteps along the meandering course I came up with, I thought of two reasons why someone would have gone before me the exact same way I've been going the past several years.  One of the explanations would be that, if you were looking for a maximum aerobic workout on snowshoes, you might pick the exact same course that I came up with, including the same hills, valleys, and detours.  The odds on that happening are infinitesimal--perhaps on a par with the Lions ever winning a Super Bowl--but it COULD happen.  Maybe great (or at least similar) minds really do think alike.

Or maybe, just maybe, someone decided to (literally) follow in my footsteps after I went snowshoeing one of the times I went last year, thought the course I meandered was a good workout, and chose it as their preferred course ever since.  The odds on that are better than the Lions winning the Super Bowl someone else coming up with the exact same course on their own, but still...

You don't know.

I'll be curious to see what's up the next time I head out to snowshoe, probably after another heavy snow.  Will I be breaking a fresh trail by myself, or will someone else have gotten there ahead of me, following in my footsteps even before my footsteps had the chance to do it themselves.

We'll see.  And if those footsteps are there before me once again, that'll make me even more curious as to why they showed up in the first place.

(jim@wmqt.com)