Leaf crunch
Now that Autumn is here... Would you purposely alter the path of your stride if you saw a crunchy leaf ahead so that you could step on it and hear the crunch?
You better believe I would!
No, but I would do it for snow. Snow crunch sounds delicious.
shareSnow crunch is another delightful crunch but one I rarely get to enjoy where I live. I'm usually teased with snow two to three times a year that ends up falling as cold rain.
shareHow about the crunch when you step on the thin ice that forms over water from melting snow? It forms along the sides of roads and sidewalks.
shareI like when the snow has a thick enough crust that you can walk on top of it without breaking through. I don't even know if that's possible around here now that I'm a ~190-pound adult, but there was a period of a couple of weeks when my cousin Peter and I were 10 or 11 years old in which the conditions were just right for that to happen and we explored the vast woods behind his house for hours on end most every day during that period. It was fun because the snow was deep enough that it covered all the underbrush that normally makes it pain to walk through thick woods that have no trails, so we could walk anywhere, as far as we wanted, with ease. It seemed like a different world.
We always wanted to do it again during subsequent winters but those conditions never repeated. It can be done with snowshoes of course, on any type of snow, but those are clumsy and awkward. Plus you don't get the fun of the icy surface that you can slide around on.
That kind of snow is usually more slippery. There's a nice shimmer on it.
shareYeah, to get it like it was for those couple of weeks when I was a kid there needs to be a lot of snow on the ground; at least 4 feet or so, then there has to be a period of warm weather that melts say a foot of it, leaving the snow very wet, and then it has to get blistering cold again for long enough to freeze the water in the snow solid. That normally happens to one degree or another every winter here, but it's rare that it happens to such a degree that the crust is strong enough support even a 10 or 11-year-old's weight without snowshoes.
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