Today we woke up and were somewhat surprised to see about 3 inches of the fluffiest whitest snow ever on the ground, with more coming down. Impromptu backcountry ski!

We loaded the skis in the car, shoveled the driveway, and drove ever-so-slowly on barely plowed roads to the Middlesex Fells Reservation. There we skied thru the snowy woods for three hours. Sometimes we followed the ski tracks of other hardy souls who ventured out in the fluff storm. Most of the time, we were forced to blaze our own trails, a job left to me and my big-assed backcountry skis that I bought three months ago at the REI garage sale for $25 (including boots).

I’m running out of interesting ways to chronicle my XC skiing trips. I apologize for my one-track mind. But it’s a particularly snowy January in New England. If I wasn’t writing about skiing, I’d probably be writing about cabin fever activities like cleaning out my closet, baking bread, cleaning the bathroom tile grout with baking soda and an old toothbrush, and oh yeah, redesigning this website with help from Dreamweaver’s Spry functionality. Look… widgets!

Today was a gorgeous freezing Friday and I had nothing to do until late afternoon. No work, no meetings, no errands, and no burning desire to tackle my ongoing To-Do list. I contemplated staying in bed, nuzzled safely under the electric blanket with Infinite Jest propped up in front of me so I could shave off another 100 pages off of the 1000-page tome that is, indeed, proving to be infinite but does not contain, thus far, abundant jest.

But how can I lay in bed when there’s 6 inches of snow on the ground, just laying there, begging to XC skied upon? So I logged onto Zipcar.com to procure a car and then drove it 20 minutes away to Weston Ski Track, which boasts the lone 15 kilometers of groomed XC ski trails in the Boston metro area.

Though I have gone to the Weston Ski Track once before, we did not actually ski that day due to the icy conditions, and our overall impression was not impressed. The Weston Ski Track is located entirely on a golf course. Though it is common for XC ski courses to double as golf courses, WST’s golf course is particularly sterile, with only a smattering of token trees. Not only is it uninviting, the lack of protection from the sun makes the snow patchy and icy. And both the Massachusetts Turnpike and I-95 are located less than 1 mile away, filling the air with the dull roar of the highway and invisible exhaust particles.

But today, the WST was my only salient option. I arrived at 10am, the official opening time, although I spotted several skiers already on the course as I drove up in my Zipcar (a Nissan Versa with 3000 miles on it). As I lazily unloaded my skis from the backseat, a woman drove up in a Volkswagen. She hopped out wearing bright-green sexy pants and a matching jacket with a XC Ski club stenciled in yellow on the back. Only a hardcore ski jock would wear something so preposterous. She grabbed her skis and ran to the course. Later I would see her doing insane drills like repeatedly skiing uphill without using her poles.

In fact, at 10am the WST was crawling with XC ski jocks. I was probably the least hardcore skier there, in that I’m not training for a race or wearing a club insignia. Other skiers flew past me with scary velocity. There’s 2 reasons why I’m slow. One, my skis — cloddy comfort cruisers — are simply not designed to fly. Two, when I go skiing it’s an all-day affair, meaning I’m used to pacing myself. I have endurance. These speed demons may be leaving me in their wake, but they’re done by 11:30am.

I skied on the icy tracks for another hour, feeling a little ridiculous on the golf course. It’s the XC skiing equivalent of a treadmill. My dissatisfaction comes to an apex when the sound of chainsaw reared across the icy plain. A public works crew was chopping down trees along the perimeter of the golf course. That’s when I realized it’s impossible to really commune with nature when you’re only 15 minutes from Boston.