I’ve been using Facebook and Twitter to blather about the pleasure of skiing in the Arb at night, but tonight’s workout was especially dense with all the various aspects of this pleasure. I highly recommend trying to visit the Arb on one of these gorgeous winter nights, and I offer three reasons for making the effort.
The first and best aspect of a nighttime trip is the solitude. Over this and last winter, I’ve probably skied 100 nighttime hours in the Arb, and I bet I haven’t encountered five other people. This is a relief and a blessing, and not just for a misanthrope or a parent whose ears are ringing with kid sounds. I’m pretty certain, for instance, that I was the only human being in the Lower Arb last Friday night: there were no cars at any of the trailheads, there were no fresh tracks on the trails, and of course I met absolutely no one. Where else, even in exurban Rice County, can you be so easily and effortlessly alone?
Second, and relatedly, the Arb is spectacularly beautiful at night. Even the Rec Center is awfully pretty, viewed from a distant ridgeline. The skeletal outlines of individual trees are especially gorgeous: you haven’t really experienced the Arb until you’ve studied the lone oaks on the Hillside Prairie, ink black against the blue-black of the sky, or passed through the towering evergreens in plantation out by Canada Avenue. And don’t even get me started on the glinting sparkle of the snow below and the stars above, much less the lit-from-within radiance of clouds.
Third, venturing into the Arb in the dark isn’t only good for your body, it’s fun for your brain, which is constantly discovering the wonderful strangeness of features that are mundane in the light. Have that oak’s branches always reached so low? Has the path always bent around these trees? Has this hill always had this flat spot halfway up? Good snow cover deepens this phenomenon of rediscovery and re-viewing, as does moving in a new way – snowshoeing or skiing rather than walking.
Lest being out on the prairie or in the woods at night sound scary, let me argue that it’s not. The cold is nothing that the right clothing can’t handle, and there are very few sections of trail that get much wind, even on an otherwise gusty night. Unless you’re out there in a whiteout blizzard, you can almost always orient yourself to the skyglow of the campus or of Northfield proper – or to car traffic, which you can often see or hear. And beyond all that, the entire Arb, Upper and Lower, is crisscrossed with trails and studded with signs, making it is relatively easy to stay – literally – on track.
In short, it’s well worth the time to venture into the Arb on some night this winter. I don’t think you’ll regret it.
