MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It's been a long, hard winter in much of the U.S., and that's a bummer if you hate scraping ice off your car windows in the morning. But for people like NPR's Brian Mann, winter is a playground. Brian went snowshoeing in New York's Adirondack Mountains and sent us this audio postcard.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS IN SNOW)
BRIAN MANN, BYLINE: It is a classically cold winter day - 19 degrees. The woods are frosted with snow, and it's deep. I'm on my snowshoes.
I'm bundled up from head to toe, which means I'm warm. One thing I love about winter hiking is with the right boots and layers of clothes, you can feel cozy, really comfortable exploring places like this.
The trail's taking me along the edge of a cliff, and there are cascades of ice, bright yellow, some of it kind of a glowing blue.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHICKADEES CHIRPING)
MANN: I'm not alone out here. Every half hour or so, a flock of chickadees swirls around me. They seem curious. Some so brave, they almost settle on my outstretched glove.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHICKADEES CHIRPING)
MANN: I hike on. There are patches of blue sky through the trees and big sweeps of sunshine on the snow. It's cold, though. My breath freezes in my beard.
And now I've snowshoed up over a ridge, and I'm descending into a valley that is just completely solitary and wild. And the result is just this feeling of really deep winter, and it's really still.
(SOUNDBITE OF WOODPECKER DRUMMING)
MANN: A woodpecker drums in the high tree canopy. The sound makes the forest seem vast.
(SOUNDBITE OF WOODPECKER DRUMMING)
MANN: Now I've pushed beyond where anybody else has gone. That means that I'm breaking trail, kind of wading through snow that's up to my knees, sometimes up to my waist.
(SOUNDBITE OF WATER FLOWING)
MANN: I come to the edge of a frozen lake called Wolf Pond. There's still running water here, a little river that flows under the ice, breaking over black rocks.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS ON ICE)
MANN: You can hear that different sound in my snowshoes. That's because I'm out on the ice now on this wild mountain pond.
Big mountains rise on the horizon, glacial and white. The sky is smoky with clouds. And as I stop to rest and drink black coffee from my thermos, the snow starts to fall again, big flakes bright against the winter woods.
Brian Mann, NPR News, in New York's Adirondack Mountains.
(SOUNDBITE OF PAPA M'S "ARUNDEL") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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