London

relief

So on Sunday the sun in London was looking like the moon and I thought to myself, self, I'll bet you the sun is shining brightly higher up. Go find it.

I've been missing the sun living here in London.

The drab streets.

The freezing fog.

The old men fishing off the bridge.

Makes me want to jump off a bridge, holidays or not. It's hard to be Christmas cheery when it gets dark at 3:30.

You can't even drink this gray away. I've tried.

So the store was kind enough to let me test-drive a pair of snowshoes, since it's pretty clear that I'm going to buy a pair. I've already spent a small fortune on skis and I must admit I like skis much, much, better, but sometimes you need snowshoes, particularly, if, say, you want to go out and walk across a snowfield with a big fat camera without getting your bum all wet and your feet frozen.

That's been happening more and more. Snowshoes are unruly things. The first pair I had were a wooden set my mother bought me for Christmas years ago.

They worked well enough but they weighed about 100 pounds and they didn't stay on. Then it stopped snowing for about 6 years in a row and so they became wallhangers.

I sold them, traded them for two pairs of skis and then made the mistake of buying another set of wooden bear paw snowshoes and they were heavy and they didn't stay on either, even though I bought a fancy set of bindings for them, too.

I sold them, too. Nearly gave them away. I bet they're hanging near someone's fireplace. But that was then and this is now and snowshoes are pretty much the same as they've always been - sort of unruly and clumsy and slow - but the bindings have gotten much better. This particular pair come on and off with a tug of a single strap. Pull one strap, they're tight. Pull a string, they loosen up. The back strap, the one that goes around your heel, tightens down like a ratchet.

So I left London and took the new snowshoes and Boy Wonder with his snowshoes and we went up to Marias Pass and sure enough the sun was shining and well, it was just, it was just Pleasant with a capital P.

We went about a click out and a click back not too far because when you load a kid up in a winter coat and snowpants and then strap snowshoes on him, he well, he slows way down. Slow to the point where I can keep up with him, which is kind of nice. The snowshoes I was testing worked as well as I expected, maybe even a little better, because they didn't fall off and I didn't have to adjust them every five minutes.

We went as far as Three Bear Lake, took some pictures, looked at the sun until it went down and then went home. London was still in a fog. The old men were still on the bridge fishing.

It was dark at 3:30. But it felt like the holidays at least and that is very, very nice.

Chris Peterson is the editor of the Hungry Horse News.