Crash course pays off
The best scene in Wind in the Willows is when Toad of Toad Hall is nearly run over by a motorcar. He is so mesmerized by the speeding contraption that all he can do is sit there in the ditch vacantly murmuring the “poop-poop” of the vehicle’s horn.
In a similar vein, I was emerging from a winter hike up Mount Van Hoevenberg, when a backcountry skier lightly glided by on the Marcy Dam truck road. He seemed to float down the incline, leaving me behind, staring discontentedly at my ponderous snowshoes.
Like Toad, at that very second I decided that this unfamiliar (there’s not much cross-country skiing in my old stomping grounds down south) mode of transport was for me.
So it
