Cross country skiing burns over five hundred calories every hour. We worked up a sweat under our layers, dragging ourselves up a groomer. On one side trees slid upwards like a drift. On the other the hill cut away to a view we could sense was beautiful although we couldn’t see it through the whited-out woods. And there was a silence. There was a silence that was quieter for being deadened by the snow. The air, it seemed, was padded.