Travelers crossing trackless snow must guess which footprints lead the right way

Evidence

We plodded on for four hours, snow all round, and nothing else to be seen but an ocean of glistening peaks against that sky of infuriated blue. How I found my way I shall never know, for the only marks on the snow were occasional footprints of a man, and I had no means of knowing whether they led in the direction I ought to take. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 190

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the classic western travel-narrative device of reading faint signs for direction; parallels the snow-navigation motifs in frontier diaries like those behind A Midwife’s Tale’s seasonal movement.