The hushed, three-toned world of white, brown, and green; the cold air meeting warming body; the growing satisfaction of tiring muscles -- I loved snowshoeing from the start. But I've never discarded the thought that it is, in fact, just walking with big shoes in snow.
Downhill skiing isn't just skiing downhill -- it's the clothing, the socializing, the archetypal characters. Snowboarding also has its own allure.
But snowshoeing? To elevate snowshoeing in my mind, I needed to discover its culture and provide it a larger context and meaning.
. . .
The Wildflower Inn's 570 acres and available snowshoe rentals make it a promising family venue.
Robert Gottlieb, 51, of Brookline, and his family are Wildflower regulars. He and his wife, Margo Rosenbach, have been snowshoeing for three years.
That's soon after the start of the relative boom in snowshoeing activity: According to the trade organization SnowSports Industries America, participation increased from 1.7 million people in 1998 to 4 million in 2000.
Gottlieb attributes the surge to aging baby boomers. "Older people can snowshoe," he notes, adding that his wife "is not athletic" yet enjoys snowshoeing.
The boomer theory sounds plausible to me, but disturbing. I don't want my winter pursuit to be associated with aging. I'm also not crazy about the familiar slogan, "If you can walk, you can snowshoe."
Advanced age. Limited skill. When Rosenbach later tells me that she first became interested in snowshoeing as she read about it in a magazine, I ask which magazine. "Better Homes and Gardens," she says.
Dave Gwatkin, who through his Vermont Adventure Co. in Westmore offers guided snowshoe tours, says that his customers are "a lot of women, ages 35 to 65. Generally there aren't that many women who want to venture into the woods on their own, but they love going in a group."
Great. Sounds like my wife's book group, on snow.
