You wake-up in the morning open the curtains and look outside, and there it is; everything you see is covered in a nice layer of fresh snow. Beautiful if I may say.

When you go outside you realize you are the first person to go outside; there are no existing tracks except from maybe a few deer tracks. Then when you start making your way out, every step you take leaves a new footprint in the snow, it is lovely, but it takes quite a bit of effort. Sometimes while making your way through the snow you have to take a few steps back and try a new route until you reach your destination.

Other people that woke-up after you, or just didn’t feel like being the first to go outside will follow the initial trail, after a little while a clear path is made. Walking becomes easier, but you still have to watch your steps a little bit, and there is plenty of room to explore other paths.

Then the majority of the people come outside, and they just follow the path created by the those before them, all goes well and walking is relatively easy. But this is also where things start going wrong, because it seems easy they don’t look where they walk, and stepped on snow gets very slippery, so they fall.

Now this is going to be a small stretch, but there is something to be learned here:

1. It is great to create your own tracks in fresh snow
2. When things seem easy that is when you should be alert

I for one love to walk in fresh snow, but unfortunately I am _not_ a morning person, so usually I am not the very first, but I am very happy being the second person outside.

Mark Nijhof