Camp in Winter

My family has a cabin on a lake, we simply call it camp. Camp has been in our family for generations. My great grandfather bought it. My grandfather grew up loving this place, when the time came the next generation (my dads) spent summers up at camp, then my cousins and myself, and it is slowly changing from my generation to the next.

My cousin Nathan and I have had numerous adventures together. As kids we were inseparable. We mostly boated around on the lake in every kind of boat you could think of, paddle boat, kayaks, canoe, sail boat, motor boat, row boat, we even once built a raft out of 5 gallon drums and boated that around.

While we come and visit in all seasons winter is usually the loneliest time for camp. Keeping this in mind while at work I was thinking of what to do with my days off. My thought process was...'I could go skiing, I could then go food shopping, do my laundry, and cook lots of something tasty to bring me through the next week.' I then realized that this is exactly what I'd done the last month and half. I was bored with it. I got in touch with my cousin Nathan. We both decided that we needed to do something different, we needed a change of scenery. He suggested that we go snow shoeing up at camp. And so we were off on Wednesday up to camp to visit our little slice of heaven.

We were going to go around Cook Hill which is up a little ways from the lake but found the road hadn't been plowed probably since the beginning of time. The back up plan was the lake. Now in the summer Nathan and I have taken every single boat we've ever been in and boated to the landing on the town side of the lake (the opposite side) and back. It only seemed fitting that since we have the opportunity to walk that we should.

Real winter had come to Camp. Throughout Vermont winter of 2012 has been a dud. All the ski resorts are sad about it and there hasn't been hardly any work for the plow guys. Some how Camp had been spared, at least when we arrived and had 2+ foot snow banks. We realized that snow shoes were a really good idea at this point. There was deep snow on the lake, and it hadn't settled at all so our snow shoes sank a couple of inches every time. We made it about a 1/4 of the way and realized how far the opposite shore actually was. When we got to the store we each got a drink and a snack to get us back. The way back was much easier because we walked in snowmobile tracks. We figured that camp to the store and back was approximately three miles one way which means that we had snow shoed six miles. After looking online I found that snow shoeing in deep snow burns double the amount of calories that regular walking does. It was as if we walked for 12 miles.

The things that struck me about camp in winter time is how quiet it was. There was hardly any wind and it was as if the sound just was absorbed in to the snow. We also saw that camp was being used, or at least the property was by ice fishermen wanting to get to the lake. We've given permission to people to use the property as a entrance to the lake from the far side. Our camp is one of few that does this, if nobody did it than the far end of the lake would be very quiet. The only public access to the lake is on the opposite side. It made me happy to see that camp was being used.

Overall a great day, I came back feeling much better about everything.