Admittedly, it was not a very well-conceived strategy. True, the abundance of snow we've collected this winter is fast fading and roughly 50% of the trails in our wooded ravine are now free of snow and ice. But the remaining 50% remains covered in thick ice layers, still to melt, stubbornly holding on to winter. Just a few days earlier we had watched as we came across a ravine acquaintance slithering precariously over the ice, shorn of protective cleats. He laughed, we laughed and said we'd retain our boots-and-cleats combination for a while yet.

Yet yesterday was utterly unbelievable in its balmy presence, heat positively suffused the atmosphere, our backyard felt like a veritable little heat-box, and we revelled in the warmth. Our gardens in the back are completely free of snow and ice and crocuses are emerging. As we prepared for our daily ravine walk I ventured to suggest we use our hiking boots, and my husband was swift to agree; freed at last from the weight and awkwardness of winter boots and cleats on this fabulous spring day, complemented by sun and gentle breezes. Surely, under such circumstances, we reasoned, the ice remaining would be turned to slush -- as has happened often enough before.

Just before setting out my husband looked fruitlessly for a ski pole to take along to aid in balance in case it was needed, just as a kind of last-minute insurance-assurance, as it were. Forgetting that he had long since abandoned use of ski poles for that purpose, and had put them all downstairs in the basement. So, off we set, faces to the lovely breeze, certain that the ice would have turned rotten.

Except, it hadn't. And we were forced to re-arrange our usual round trip, avoiding some areas and trying out other combinations. Where we could manage to walk around the ice it was well and good, but there were so many areas, up and down hills that would not allow the wary to avoid the ice, tension and sliding exposed us to more challenges than we had reckoned with. Finally, on one of the ascents my husband slipped and fell. The shoulder that was just beginning to feel really good after an earlier fall that injured it a few months back, is re-injured.

We proceeded as far as we felt we safely could, before gingerly making our way back, exhausted and frustrated, me kicking myself metaphorically for a too-optimistic recommendation that turned out not so wonderful, after all.

Later, when I was at the supermarket doing the weekly shopping I happened to come across an acquaintance who informed me that she was just now getting out and about after having suffered a really disastrous ice-fall when she was getting into her car, one winter day. When she appeared at the emergency wing of a local hospital she was amazed to see the numbers of people who presented with ice-fall injuries. She had surgery done at the same hospital, with a metal plate inserted in her shoulder.