Just before the latest round of snow, I went out snowshoeing on the Wapack Trail, visiting a section I hadn’t done in many years – between Temple Road in Sharon and the Temple Mountain.

Like most of the trail, it’s gorgeous. It starts with a fairly steep climb, but that early sweat equity earns you terrific views to the south and then the north and west, with just a bit of up and down as you cross over Burton and Holt peaks.

I haven’t done much winter hiking, but I’m discovering how snowshoes make it easy to explore areas that would be too tough to ski (for me, at least). I like it. Monadnock loomed large, and I've only ever climbed it once in winter, a year with little snow.... On the other hand, there are times when the snow is so hard that snowshoes seem superfluous. After crunching up the first climb, I opted to strap my snowshoes on my pack for a while. As I got further along, the tracks dwindled and it was time to get back into Sasquatch mode.

Somewhere on the nameless nub between Holt and Temple Mountain, I noticed deep tracks in the snow along the trail. They were old and trampled over by snowshoes, but I could tell that whoever made them had a powerful stride. I was impressed, figuring I was following the steps of a hardcore ridge runner.

I had assumed the tracks, like others on the trail, were human. They looked about the size of a sneaker shod foot. I thought it odd when they veered off the trail, but that can happen when you’re running at a good clip. When they rejoined the trail, after a short foray along a higher, wooded ridge, I realized my mistake. These were moose tracks. It was good to see them, and also tracks of turkey and squirrel and others I couldn’t identify along the trail over Burton, Holt and Temple. I see deer and deer tracks often enough; they live right in my neighborhood. Moose are more elusive, and need a much greater area to roam. I’m not much of a naturalist – I can only identify a handful of different tree species, for instance – but it looked to me as though that section of the Wapack, roughly three miles, passed through at least three different sorts of woods, each no doubt offering food and shelter to a variety of different animals.

I hadn’t been up top of Temple Mountain since the ski area closed, and I was pleased to read a few weeks back that the state has bought the land. It’s still a fun place to ski or snowboard, if you don’t mind walking up.