I have spent many hours on snowshoes. My first taste of snowshoeing was at age four or five in Fort Nelson, B.C. (Treaty 8 Territory). My father was serving there as a member of the Royal Canadian Army Pay Corps and was given training suitable to the environment. One weekend he brought home a pair of snowshoes, and he would balance me on top of his feet as we walked through the deep snow of the abundant forest right across the road from our house (nearly identical to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s childhood house in Fort Smith, N.W.T.).
I lost my father when I was ten and our family moved to a small apartment during my teenage years. My craving for the forest, despite our lack of resources, led to a few winter expeditions in the snow-laden forests of northern Algonquin Park with my older brother and like-minded friends. We would take a train from the modern central station in Ottawa to a “station” in the park that was no more than a signpost, clambering out into the crisp night air under a dark sky filled with stars, and watching the caboose disappear in the distance.
Fellow passengers thought we were out of our minds, but we were filled with a spirit of adventure. We would travel with packs and snowshoes for several days through the backcountry to another station where the train would (hopefully) stop and pick us up, by way of frozen creeks, rivers and lakes—and careful orienteering through the deep woods.
Each day would be its own adventure, with variable temperatures and visibility. If the sun was out, contours were easy to see—whether large, like those of hills and valleys, or small, like those of half-frozen creeks (which were easy to tumble into). If the day was grey or it was snowing, wayfinding was tricky, and it took longer to reach our planned destination.
There is something cleansing and centring about living with only what you can carry in a backpack, often in freezing temperatures, where carelessness could result in very real danger. How important it was to work together, to watch out for one another, and to pay careful attention to choosing the right direction to take, double-checking compass readings against what we could see before us and on our detailed contour maps. Because we were not following established trails, it was always important to be certain of where we were at any point in time.
Those experiences taught me a lot about perseverance. When you have no choice but to keep moving, no matter what the conditions are, you must adapt and rely on one another to get through.
They also taught me a lot about prayer, especially how it can often be superficial—more about us doing something spiritual than letting our spirits be deeply affected by our conversation with the living God.
Feeling the depth of nature in a remote winter forest is like an extended time of prayer, when things you have been holding inside can eventually be released into God’s hands. The winter forest is so much bigger than you, like God is, and it sometimes draws the truth of your life from you, like God does, so you can see where you are—and where you ought to go next.
