- Analysis for [[2021-11-03 The Impossible Knife (SS)]] The first time I ever heard about snowshoeing was in a L. E. Modesitt book. The protagonists of _Fall of Angels_ are magically transported from a space battle to orbit around an inhospitably hot planet. They land on a high, flat plateau in the Westthorn Mountain Range. It's known as the Roof of the World — which I later learned is what the Tibetan plateau is known as in the "real world." The settlement, which they call Westwind, is cold and snow-bound for much of the year. To survive, the involuntary settlers must learn to hunt with primitive weapons like snares and bows — on showshoes. When I first read the book, I had never used snowshoes. I live in a region that gets some snow and periodic blizzards, with ski resorts in the nearby mountains. I've gone skiing before — but conditions in my area tend to be icy. My dad used to say that if I could safely ski in Maryland, I could safely ski anywhere, and he's probably right. But honestly, I don't _like_ skiing very much. I do it because I like going on ski trips with friends, and I was determined to put on a brave front and learn how to do it. I eventually took lessons, and what I learned is that it's hard on my hips, scary when you fall, and optimized for the kinds of people who thinking jumping out of planes is exhilarating. For myself, I usually get down the mountain with a sense of grim determination and relief. It's no more fun for me than rock climbing — which lots of my friends love. But snowshoeing? I _love_ snowshoeing. Growing up, my mental image of snowshoes came from cartoons — tennis rackets tied to shoes, basically. It wasn't until I went with some friends on a ski trip that we'd scheduled for what turned out to be an unseasonably warm week that I saw a modern snowshoe. My husband and I decided to split off from the main group and try snowshoeing since the conditions were pretty bad for skiing, even with manufactured snow, and it was _awesome_. For my purposes, snowshoeing is like hiking except better because all the underbrush is under the snow, so you don't have to stick to the trails. The snowshoes just clipped onto my normal shoes and let me go wherever I wanted — even up hills. We chatted and looked at beautiful waterfalls and admired the wildlife, and I wasn't ever terrified. Unlike poor Marianne, who would have been terrified whether she had snowshoes or not. While I was writing _The Impossible Knife,_ I spent a little time researching how to build makeshift snowshoes, just in case it would have been totally ridiculous of her not to make a set. I found [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8ZP3PV1Oqk) which explains how to use a knife and an evergreen tree to make snowshoes. It seems pretty easy — in the end I decided that the story didn't really have room for a digression into this process, but I was kind of disappointed I didn't get to show off my research, because snowshoes are pretty cool. In a emergency survival situation where you don't have the benefit of modern clipon snowshoes made out of plastic and steel, you can apparently make a set out of evergreen trees. Basically, you cut flexible evergreen branches and shape them into an oval with a cross-beam for support. Then you use the roots as cordage to lash the branches together. You can also make [longer snowshoes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKKZ5EYpGaQ) with straight branches that you can strip the bark off of whittle grooves into for the cordage, but this method seems like a lot more work. ## Further Reading - For more neat stuff you can do with trees and stories, check out my article [[All the Things That Trees Can Be]]