The first big snowfall of the year gave me the motivation to dig my snow shoes out of the corner of the garage where they’d been buried for months, so I could take them to the arboretum and stomp around in the fresh snow — but first, I there was the little matter of clearing ten inches of snow off my minivan and the car parked behind it. I wasn’t looking for a way to warm up before tramping through deep snow, but I got it anyway.

I wasn’t the first one to break the trails around the arboretum this morning. Many, many other people got there before me on skis and snow shoes or just in their boots, but there was plenty of fresh snow left for me to go tramping through when I finally got there at about half past noon.

Starting from the parking lot, I followed the service road around the Curtis Prairie, taking the shortcut past Curtis Pond. I tried to keep to the outside of the road, stomping through the deep snow when there was enough room, but I did occasionally have to move to the middle of the road in the bottlenecks where the trees or undergrowth closed in.

I kept going through the Gallistel Woods, then across the woods into the Wingra Woods. I like to walk past Big Spring whenever I visit the arboretum, if I have the time.

After walking almost an hour and a half, I crossed over the road again to get back to the parking lot through the Longnecker horticultural garden. That’s the longest I’ve ever snowshoed through snow as deep as that. I was surprised how easy it was. I mean, it wasn’t a walk in the park (well, it literally was, but you know what I mean) but it was fun. I could have done another circuit around the arboretum after taking a break, but I had a gift card with some credit still on it I wanted to use at REI, so I took off the snowshoes and headed out of the park.