Today I headed up into the hills again. Last night there had been some freezing rain, which down here in the city was already beginning to melt. A constant drip-drip as shrinking icicles desperately clung like barnacles to just about everything. The streets were strewn with salt and grit – the kind of stuff which makes mincemeat out of bare feet – so, alas, it was a day for the old huaraches.
As I headed into higher elevations, the streams of run-off snaking along the sides of the roads began to disappear. Instead, a thin blanket of snow left over from a few days ago reasserted itself, and, coating the asphalt itself, a brittle, crunchy, reflective surface of frozen freezing rain began to make the going a little tentative. Never mind, I thought, not long to the forest paths now, which shouldn’t be as slick as the ice-rink coating the road’s surface.
How fitting: it really nearly did become a dead end today on this path!
Well I was wrong. The ice rink turned into a bobsled run over the inclines in the forest. The paths themselves had been trodden down into a lethal fall, while the unpacked snow to either side broke into piercing sherds if I stepped into it. It was like a thin sheet of glass molding itself to the underlying contour of snow. Run slowed to walk, which in turn slowed to little more than a funereal pace.
Dressed only in a T-shirt, I’m glad I could keep up my inner warmth for that quarter hour of hobbling along until reaching a road cutting through the forest. From there it was plain sailing all downhill back home, but for a while it came pretty close to becoming a dead end!
Joy of Barefoot Running 