Alien crop circles? Nope, just some spectacular snow art in New Brunswick
CBC
During the winter months, Maritimers have been hitting the snow and spending hours creating intricate, otherworldly patterns that are sometimes gone in a blink of an eye.
"I love the geometry and the amazing things with those mysterious crop circles that we see around the world," said John Panopoulos.
Panopoulos and his wife, Charmaigne Letourneau, moved to Cap-Pelé from Ontario. Panopoulos wanted a new environment for sculpting and Letourneau was originally from Campbellton.
In February, Panopoulos glanced outside his window and was struck by how much the snow-covered lakefront by their house looked like a canvas.
"I thought, let's embrace this opportunity with this lake, with snow, and let's do something out there," said Panopoulos.
"And so I thought of pulling those two elements of crop circles and I pulled out my compass sets and I started drawing out on paper."
The design was 30 metres in diameter and took the couple around two hours to complete.
Panopoulos said there needs to be a starting point. "We have a rope … [and] one person stands in the middle and the other person walks around."
Letourneau is an accountant and so the two came at the project with different styles.
"Being an accountant, one plus one equals two, and it's pretty much, like, go with the flow. And for me to let go and follow along ... I'm, like, 'No, no, we're going to do it perfect,'" said Letourneau while laughing.
The couple, who did snowshoe art for the first time, said it was a great form of cardio and posed a challenge to people to try their hand at it.
In Riverview, snowshoe art has also made its mark after the town invited two Nova Scotia artists to complete a design for the Riverview Winter Carnival.
Truro's Matt Robinson and Debert's Sheldon Benoit spent almost four hours crafting a 30-metre design.
But this isn't their first time at the snowshoe art rodeo. They have done designs like this about five times before, but this one posed a different challenge.