Hoping, dear readers, that you are finding it a kind of strange gift to be shut out of most social events and gathering holes. At first, I discovered the joys of just staying home, cleaning out the corners of our home where detritus had piled up and whittling down the pile of deferred correspondence.

But, watching the birds avidly dining at our feeders, I got restless. "Why don't we get out on our snowshoes?" I suggested to my husband Rod. So far we've gone four days in a row.

We started by travelling our ski trail through the woods behind our home, down to the beaver dam and its lovely ice ri...