Snowshoeing at Lac Philippe

I love my old snowshoes. They are the traditional wood and sinew style with a long tail and a leather harness. They are beautiful. You can walk on the snow making no more noise than a whisper in these snowshoes. Your stride is just a little longer than normal. They leave a lovely trail. I've worn them for years, so I'm well versed in getting myself up and down slopes, but really, for anything uphill or downhill, they're treacherous.

It wasn't until I was snowshoeing with C and the girls last winter at Lac Simon, they in their modern aluminum shoes and me in my traditional ones, that I realized I was now at a disadvantage. While they could stride up and down the hills with ease(well, L's legs are quite short so her ease was relative) I was struggling to dig my toes in on the uphill runs and tried to parallel on the downhill ones. This year I thought it time to come into the modern era and happily agreed when C offered to buy me some new snowshoes for Christmas.

Today, sporting our thermal socks and underwear, C and I ventured to Gatineau Park to christen my new snowshoes. It was great weather for snowshoeing. The temperature was hovering just below zero-degrees Celsius, there was little wind, and skies were overcast. We pulled into P19 at Lac Philippe, put some water bottles in our backpack, and strapped ourselves into our shoes. Before we left I had done a quick search on snowshoeing in Gatineau Park, and one blogger had recommended this particular trail as a picturesque and challenging one. Here I am as we set out on trail #74.

(We laugh at ourselves. When we venture out into the wilderness, we don't do it half-assed. One day I'll write on our first canoe-camping trip with our girls. For now, I'll just say that we bit off just about as much as we could chew. Anymore than what we had planned would have resulted in a full-scale rebellion on the part of G & L.)

Our intention was to do the trail 74 to 73 loop that would take us back to the parking lot and our car. The mid-way point seemed to be the Renaud shelter, about 3 1/2 km (2 miles) from the starting point.

C is not one to set out at a leisurely pace. We didn't walk the trail, we attacked it! Up hills, down hills, over streams, shedding hats, mitts and sweaters as we went. The wildlife was no where to be seen, although there were plenty of squirrel and fox trails all along the packed trail. I thought that I had heard the trilling of birds but found it was just my asthma kicking in.

Fortunately, C doesn't want me to expire in the middle of the woods so I was able to stop and take a breather (literally) from time to time. These were, truthfully, some of my favourite moments. Each was an opportunity to take a look around and enjoy the barren beauty of this part of the world in Winter.

C would have to remind me how long it took us to get to the Renaud shelter. The trail is really well marked so I wasn't ever worried that we'd gone off course (the trail was also firm-packed snow so unless 300 people had gone off-trail we weren't likely to get lost.)

We did, finally, make it to the Renaud shelter, which was where our path would swing towards Lac Philippe and, hopefully, the less rigorous part of our trek. To prove we had made it at least that far, C took a photo of the sign post. From here, the sign says it's 300 metres to the Philippe shelter. When we got to the Philippe shelter, we were surprised to learn how far we'd actually travelled! (See the photo below.)

Somewhere between the Renaud and Philippe shelters, the skies cleared and the sun lit up the trees and snow-covered hills around us.

We stopped at the Philippe shelter picnic area and I tightened up my boot laces as we watched a family settle into the cabin and mused about taking our own overnight trip into the Park this winter. G & L wouldn't be up to the the trek we had just taken to this point, but if the remaining portion of the trail was reasonable, we could certainly set out in the morning, set an easy-going pace to the shelter (stopping for lunch along the way) and spend the night in a shelter in the woods. It sounds glorious to me!

We set out again on what remained of trail #74 and found it to be a much gentler trail than the first section. Just a couple hundred metres beyond the Philippe shelter is a campsite, and there in the middle of the open space was a blue and yellow dome tent. C thought maybe that would be fun too, but I quickly vetoed that option. I'd much sooner build a quinzee and sleep in that then pitch a tent in a field in winter and leave ourselves exposed to the elements.

The trail took us to Lac Philippe's Parent Beach, and I thought we were close to finished. It turns out that I was very wrong. (In the summer, Parent Beach is one of my favourite places.) We were now on trail 73, which followed the shore of the lake to its most northerly point, and then swung left for just over a kilometre. I'm not going to lie, at this point I was tired and dragging my snowshoes rather than lifting them. The trail was hard-packed, so taking off my snowshoes and walking in my boots was a viable option.

Trudging along, we found the open road that would lead us to the parking lot, and from there to home. We set out as darkness was falling, minds clear, muscles sore, and looking forward to the next time we get to strap on our shoes.

What's Your Name?

I've always had an interest in names: their origin, their meanings, their popularity, what the name invokes when you see it see it on a page or hear it in conversation. I think my name is as big part of who I am. It's a very common name for women of my generation; Jennifer was the most popular name for girls in the US and Canada for decades.

Jennifer has somewhat fallen off in popularity (it hovers around the 50's in popularity, after peaking at #1 in the 70's and 80's), and I'd be interested to know what kicked it off in the to booming popularity in the first place. Did a soap opera introduce a heroine named Jennifer? Was it Loni Anderson's gig on WKRP in Cincinnati that did it? I'm curious how long it takes for it to diminish into relative obscurity.

A name can be common for millennia given the right inspiration. Mary: it's a pleasant sounding name, and easy enough to say; those two things alone might have something to do with continued and consistently high popularity. I think, though, it has more to do with "divine inspiration" than the name itself. Christians all over the world keep Mary alive, along with it's variations (i.e. Marie, Maria, etc.) I don't otherwise think it would be so popular. Come on, it originated in Hebrew and means bitter - who wants to saddle a wee girl with that kind of personality?

How long do boys names remain popular after people start making them unisex names? There are a number of names that were originally assigned to males, now chosen almost exclusively for girls, at least in my narrow North American perspective. Names like Carol, Evelyn, and Dana. Does it somehow threaten the masculinity of the child to have a name shared by females? Only because we think of them as female names, and tease the child into hating his name, I'd wager.

It also fascinates me that a name can be tainted for all eternity (or "for the foreseeable future" if you don't enjoy hyperbole) by one poor example. You don't see any Adolfs running around these days. One man, immeasurably evil by my estimation, and that name may never see any popularity again (what little popularity it may have).

These ideas correlate. If Adolf is a bad name, and Mary is a good name, it is because we believe that the name carries the power to shape the perception of others regarding the character of the name bearer. Naming a boy Carol in North America these days invites bullying. Why? Because for some reason, people think that it's not masculine and people have a hard time distinguishing from the perceived femininity of the name and relative masculinity of the child. If one DOES allow oneself to preconceive particular traits in a person, it's because one believes that the name has the power to infuse the person with that character.

I don't think it's the name of the child that shapes the character, but I do believe the names chosen can indicate the personality of the parents. (What would you think of a current day Mr. and Mrs. Manson who named their son Charles? Either that they're not particularly in news or pop culture, or that they're secretly mass-murderer fans.) I'm willing to admit that it's a bias on my part. I have worked with many, many, children over a 10 year period, and went to school with many, many children my own youth. There are some names that I find correlate with - let's say - less-than-cooperative behaviour. (I won't spell out the names, I know what they are, and these blogs are truly an exercise just for me.)

Although I think it's sad that we can be prejudice against a name, I enjoy it too. I love to read a name and then form a picture in my mind of who that person must be. Clive Cussler's character Dirk Pitt is a perfect example. The two short syllables that comprise his name infer a strength, a firmness of character. It sounds a whole lot like "dark pitt" indicating depth, possibly some sorrow, and black - perhaps in the form of ebony hair. That's what I pictured before I read Cussler's description of the tall, dark haired man, who lost a love, and staked his self-worth on being able to get the job done.

My current favourite names: Elizabeth, Katharine, Eva, Julia, Liam, Alexander, Logan