Driving along the National Capital Region's Eastern Parkway is always fascinating, the scenery beautiful, from sightlines along the Ottawa River to the installations along the way; the RCMP horse paddocks, the areonatucal museum, the parked small private aircraft sometimes lofted above and close to the roadway as they lift lightly in and out of the grounds, and the beautiful specimen trees; sweeping grassed areas leading down to the river.

As we passed the paddocks there were no horses out yesterday, a cold and blustery day with large wet clusters of snow clumping up the environment and becoming thicker and more insistent under a lowering sky.  The paddocks were crammed with Canada geese squatted there busily pecking away at, one imagines, the grains in the equine scat, among other delectables. 

All the birds assumed the same concentrated stance and were numerous enough and close enough as we passed to present quite the panoramic scene of peculiar-seeming oblivion to the weather.

The Ottawa River is not yet frozen, the water was dark and oddly turgid in appearance, though later, before the snow thickened and socked right in there were so many black wavelets on the water they resembled a grater with the regularity of the waves, looking rigid and concentrated, responding to the atmosphere and the conditions.

A thickening white mist began to float over the water like ectoplasm, finally encompassing it to such a degree that, meeting the thick clusters of snow falling from the lowering sky, visibility was so limited that the river itself disappeared from view.