View from the North 40: A snow job in clown shoes

I hate to say “I told you so.” Life’s too short to waste so many words on vindictiveness. It’s so much more uplifting to just point your finger and laugh, which is exactly my response every time someone says they’re going to try snowshoeing or cross-country skiing for the first time and they come back sore, exhausted and disheartened.

Not that I’m against either winter activity in theory because the theory behind them is that they give humans a way to more easily travel across winter snow so we are better able to commune with nature. That’s totally, mother-naturin’ awesome, right?

Psshh, it’s a public relations snow job.

Snowshoeing and cross-country skiing are work. I’d say “plain and simply work,” but that’s not true. A person can break a sweat just trying to get bundled up to fight the cold just to get started on these activities.

And let’s look at the words I’ve used here “activities” and “work”; you know what that those things mean, right? The exercise of jogging.

Yes, snowshoeing and cross-country skiing are just awkward jogging activities. Awkward, leaden-footed, bound in a Michelin man suit so you can’t hardly move your limbs, kind of jogging — in clown shoes.

Snowshoes are fat clown shoes, and cross-country skis are ridiculously long and skinny clown shoes. You will find no satisfaction, or dignity, dressed like the Michelin man in clown shoes. Like the little brother, Randy, in “A Christmas Story,” you can fall down and never be able to get up again.

Seriously, it’s hard enough to negotiate your way through winter all bundled up, and trudging through snow, but then you add something to the bottom of your shoes that makes each foot 8 inches wider with an abnormally long heel extension, or 2 inches narrower and 8 feet long. That’s trouble. You’ve just strapped an invitation to disaster to your feet — now run.

It makes sense if you are, say, a mountain man or woman hunting for your next meal so you don’t starve to death or, maybe, a Nordic messenger tasked with relaying important information to the next village.

No, no, no. No. If you want to have outdoor fun in winter with awkward foot wear, I suggest ice skating or downhill skiing.

Once you master balancing on skates, all you have to do is push and glide, push and glide. There’s no pumping of limbs bound in layers of insulation and there’s no deep snow to buck. You just push off with one foot then stand there as your clothing-bound body glides across the glistening ice. You’re like a sumo-wrestling winter fairy dancing across silk.

And downhill skiing is easy peasy, lemon squeezy. All the sweaty trudging and splay-footed duck-walking up hill to the tune of your heart trying to explode is replaced by sitting in a chair.

Sitting in a chair. What can be easier than sitting in a chair? This magical lifting chair transports you to the top of the hill, ah what a beautiful view, then gravity takes you back down the hill.

You barely have to work at all.

Even if you fall, you’re still gliding across the ice or sailing down the hill. Progress! You need to get back up in skates? Those clown shoes are super maneuverable and equipped with toe-grabby traction. You fall downhill skiing? Just scooch yourself around until your feet are downhill and stand up — you’re halfway there already on a hill. Voilà.

I’m telling you what, nothing can be easier than that except buttering up some popcorn and settling in for a movie.

(You bundle into a comforter on the couch, and the only clown shoes involved is a pair of slippers. You gotta like that at [email protected].)