The Snowshoe Guide – Part 1: Fresh Tracks

"Listen," said Dana, and put a finger to her lips.

Genevieve listened. The forest was white and still, with snow-laden spruces bending under their load and a pale blue sky overhead. Nothing moved. Then, very faintly, came the sound of snow falling from a branch, a soft, shushing thump, a hundred metres away.

"That's the whole forest breathing," said Dana.

"It's quiet."

"It's the loudest quiet I know."

Genevieve, thirty-six, an emergency nurse from Montreal, had booked the three-day trek after a brutal winter of shifts. Dana, thirty-three, her guide, was small and wiry in a red wool toque, with freckles across her nose, frost in her eyebrows and a calm, amused way of stopping to point at everything. A snowshoe hare's tracks. A fox's neat line. A porcupine trail like a drawn furrow.

"You see everything," said Genevieve.

"I see what's there."

By midday they were deep in the woods, plodding up a long ridge in the glittering sunlight. Dana made a small fire and brewed hot chocolate in a billy can. They sat on a log, steam curling, snow squeaking under their boots.

"Do you ever get lonely out here?" asked Genevieve.

"Yes. Not today."

"Why not today?"

"Because you ask good questions." Dana looked at her mug. "And because I would like to ask you one."

"Go on."

"May I kiss you?"

Continue the story: Part 2 – Log Cabin.

Continue the story: Part 2 – Log Cabin.