The icy, bone-chilling, premature cold has departed these climes, albeit temporarily. In the meantime, we can appreciate approaching winter in the fact that it has already arrived, bringing with it many of the visual splendours we tend to forget year over year then delight in when we're confronted by them, along with the inconveniences that the season also brings.

Already, the snow piled at the sides of the road is high enough to present as a bit of a difficulty to get to the trailhead of the ravine. We've got to clamber over at the most seemingly less difficult spot, generally where some hardy souls have gone before us to thump down the snowpack, and then muscle our way through to the main trail from our little street offshoot, slipping and sliding, our boots grinding into already-set tracks that are uneven and difficult to navigate.

When the trails are in this condition little Riley tends, if he's wearing his Muttluk boots, to stumble over, and plant his face in the snow. He does this multiple times over the space of our usual walking circuit, and of course simply picks himself up and continues trudging along. With the lifting of the extreme cold, however, and temperatures only in the low single-digit minus-celsius range he doesn't need those boots, and he can manage a whole lot better.

When we started out yesterday on our daily ramble, it was heavily overcast, the sky reflecting fairly accurately, the colour of the forest floor; both influenced by snow; preparing to fall from up there to down here, to join the snowpack already previously plumping up the ground. But then, halfway through our circuit, out came the sun; a quarter of the sky seemed prepared to burst into blue, while the remainder remained sullenly aluminum.

We came across the little female border collie who had a month ago got her tail caught in some underbrush, pulling half of it off entirely. She's healing very nicely. She hardly seemed to notice her loss, but it was a gory, frightening sight to her humans. Her companion border collie was confused and unhappy at her absence while she was in the care of our local veterinarian hospital, but they've long since been reunited and were happily

roaming inquisitively through the snowy woods.

We also came across a rescue dog who lives down our street with two retired people who dote on him. He's named Rascal for the good enough reason that he's a bit of a rascal, but one with a very endearing personality.