The atmosphere was so spectacular as we drove along the Eastern Parkway en route to the glass store that I was very glad to have remembered the camera, after castigating myself that I'd neglected to do so when we had embarked earlier in the day into the ravine for our daily ramble. This was, after all, the occasion of the first significant snowfall following hard in the wake of Friday's overwhelming fog conditions casting an opaque grey pall over the landscape, limiting visibility markedly.

Snow fell all day on Saturday in light, incessant curtains of white flakes. The squirrels in the ravine were frantic in their erratic and occasionally very bold forays meant to retrieve the peanuts we were doling out in the usual cache places.

When the more assertive squirrels, intelligent enough to recognize us whether by the fragrance of the peanuts we carried or by some other means like visual identification (same for the family of crows that always follows us through our circuit for the identical purpose), awaited their turn, after rushing purposefully toward us, they rarely miss their catch; those that do, give up looking and appeal to us again for a repeat throw, in the process often discovering the original.

When we finally emerged from our walk, we looked like white-washed ghosts, covered in a thick layer of fine snow particles, our boots clumped with the snow hard-packing into the interstices of their soles. I had given slight thought to memorializing the new winter scene with snow clinging elegantly to bare branches and conifers alike, but had dismissed it; plenty of time for that as the season matures, I felt.

So, on the drive downtown the camera came along. Every part of the landscape covered with snow. Regardless of how often we experience that final transition into visual winter it always takes our breath away. Both because of the exquisite beauty it portrays and because, invariably, it happens when the turning weather becomes icily cold, with wind to penetrate, punctuating our breath, ensuring we are well aware of just how cold it has become.

Along the Ottawa River the clouds seemed darker, lower, more threatening, and that in itself can appear beyond beautiful. It makes the discerning eye feel almost rhapsodic with appreciation. The Parliament buildings on Sussex Drive appeared muffled in the gentle white of the falling snow. In fact, visibility was affected to the degree that the usual scene available looking across the river was muted in shades of notional appearances of the urban landscape known to be there on a clear day.

The atmosphere changed as we drove along, becoming heavily foggy in some places over the river, and then again, as we proceeded, the sun, despite the dense layer of dark clouds began to bully its entitled way through, and we could see its bright outlines, waxing and waning, and finally enough sunlight briefly shone over the river that a bright highway of light appeared on the wind-roiled surface.

The phenomena was brief and evanescent, returning speedily to the dim, dark, yet still lovely atmosphere of moody, fog-hidden landscapes, where geese flew above the river and others sailed happily upon the waves under the forbidding clamp of the sky.