[stylist] cane technique in the snow?

[James Canaday M.A. N6YR]

yes,
well written Robert.  I do try to feel for the margins of the 
sidewalk, and sometimes sidewalks will be a little sunken too which 
in a snowfall of less than five or six inches allows you to detect 
the edges of the sidewalk too.  grab and stab, good term.  walking in 
residential areas often means there are fences, stonewalls, trees, 
sticking up  out of the snow.  so, in these kinds of circumstances, I 
widen the arc so I can still get a good solid tap on a solid object 
for sound and line orientation.

I've found if the snow is six or more inches, I'm probably better 
walking as if it is sidewalkless travel and walking along the left 
edge of the street, as long as the street isn't heavy traffic.
boy are you right about using your ears!  some sounds you probably 
won't hear when there's a blanket of snow, and others you will only 
be able to get when there's snow.  and yes, others will perhaps be 
clearer and audible for a greater distance.  I love how the city 
sounds under snow.


oh yes, the wonderful pedestrian barriers of snowplow making!  I find 
the most frustrating part is maintaining a straightline orientation 
while I am scaling them.

jc

Jim Canaday M.A.
Lawrence, KS

At 07:12 PM 12/17/2008, you wrote:
>Thoughts on cane technique in the snow:
>
>The basic technique needed for snow travel is the same for non-snow travel:
>arcing the cane a little wider than your body is always needed. Centering
>the cane at the mid point is still relevant. The stride and ark coordination
>of ... With the tap at the right, the left heel is coming down and next as
>the right leg is coming forward the tip is now arcing to the left, with the
>left tap comes the right heel striking the ground and on and on. But what is
>different is that the snow is covering the surface we are traveling over and
>so it impedes the arcing of the tip, and muffles the tap and changes the
>feel under foot. And so each of us tends to find that special balance in
>movement of the cane and body to still get the needed info we require to
>travel on at speed and safety. So an arching of the cane can be "grosser" as
>in higher, with more wrist and arm put into it. Then of course, to get a tap
>that tells you something, the tap requires a much harder force and the
>result is not so much a tap that will yield a sound that will travel out and
>about to give echoes to go by, but may, if it successfully reaches down
>through the thickness of the snow to the surface, it can tell you if it is
>concrete or dirt or grass. And sure, if the snow is quite thick, the cane
>wielder may use a modified "Grab and Stab" technique; grapping the handle of
>the cane like you would an ice pick and were going to stab it down into a
>bloc of ice, in this case of course, through the blanket of snow down to the
>walk; this technique employs a lot of arm movement from left to right, for
>going the general rule of keeping the cane/wrist centered.
>
>Then for what you encounter under foot- In general it is not to hard to
>figure out if under the snow is either a once scooped walk or snow matted
>grass. And if indeed you are traveling down a walk that once was scooped,
>yet is now covered, there will be the "walls" of accumulated snow on either
>side which have never been cleared and left to pile up. And yes, slants down
>can be trickier to find, drop-offs too. And if you have piles of snow that
>have been thrown up by snow-removal equipment, these obstructions can prove
>to be puzzling; depending if they consist of frozen hard pack snow or
>something you can kick your toes or heels into to gain purchase as you go
>over them.
>
>A very good rule (one that is not only for snow travel), but keep a
>conscious ear on your surroundings and use it to guide your direction. For
>it is not uncommon to get so engrossed in the struggle to work through what
>is immediate to our front, that we lose track of our place within the larger
>picture. In fact, sometimes in snow travel, you may go for quite a distance
>without having the opportunity to touch base with all the normal touch
>points such as a good tap for echoes, or feel for drop-offs,  that we
>normally rely upon, and so some travel is by what we call "dead-reckoning"
>(this should be the right direction based upon my best guess). And so, it is
>important to frequently take stock of what you hear in the far to middle and
>near by distances, judging distances and/or angles of various sounds to you.
>Like, reading and tracking your movement thru the auditory landscape; paying
>attention to paralleling traffic, that you are walking toward a particular
>sound or away from it, etc.
>
>And so ... That is about enough for now. Got to go and shovel some snow; had
>our first measurable accumulation needing my attention.
>
>
>
>
>
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