The Great Snowshoe Adventure

I walked to Meg's in the twinkling nourishing late afternoon sun. As I could see it was trying to leave me, and the valley for the day, I walked faster. I managed to catch it for a good while, trotting along shining virgin snow through the trees, Kraftwerk in my ears. It took me ages because I couldn't help stopping to film every perfect thing that I saw - so you can imagine, my crunching toes were pausing every metre. As my chase for the last strings of sunshine began fading, I then turned to the elated realisation that it was fast becoming a blue twilight on my trundle up steep hills - as well as the increasing knowledge that I had no idea where I was. I could feel my cheeks burning with deep rouge shades and beamed at all the wooden wobbly houses that were now all the way around me, chugging out their own cozy stories of fine smelling open fires.

At last I found my long lost buddy Meg, who I haven't seen since that voyage. Mulled wine aromas wafted out into the freezing falling evening + we slurped happily away catching up on months of adventures.

Then it was time to come back the way I'd come, only muchly more ambitious and exciting. We strapped snow shoes on our feet [like the 19th century tennis racket technique] + began stomping far up high, high above everything that lay down below. We had a sliver of moon + a banquet of stars shining through the creeping trees as we weaved higher + higher into deep perfect moonshine snow. As always, Meg looked like a composed Chamois structuring out the massively hidden route as I lagged behind, tripping constantly over my new enormous feet and sporadically falling right over the edge, clasping onto cascading bundles of freezing clouds and giggling so loud that we didn't stand a chance of seeing any Marmottes.

If there hadn't been promise of hot chickpea curry + oodles of red wine waiting for us back home, I'd like to think that we could've carried on hiking further into that starry starry night.