On a few brief occasions yesterday the sun did manage to flash its golden presence, finding a break in the overall cloud cover lowering over the Ottawa Valley, bringing with it days of incessant rain. The gardens don't mind. They look both snug and smug in this humid atmosphere, flaunting their green freshness and the beauty of luscious blooms enjoying their opportunities to dominate their micro arras surrounding our home.

In the late afternoon there was the opportunity we had awaited; the rain had lifted sufficiently to encourage us to rush out into the great out-of-doors for our daily ravine walk. Somehow, for the most part, even though all-day rains blemish our expectations for a ravine walk, we do manage to get out there. We expected that the trails would be mucky and slippery and they most certainly were. There hasn't been an opportunity for them to dry out; the forest floor is completely saturated. The creek, while not dreadfully high, runs vigorously and muddily.

The trails so much of a challenge that in some places they just ooze thickly with gliding clay. Not too much of a problem for properly-shod walkers to manage, but a problem writ large in some places, in particular for bicyclists. We hadn't been out long after starting out when we heard the excited shouts of people and soon discovered they were coming from two young boys, around eight and twelve years of age, accompanied by their father, all on bicycles. The bike tires were thick with accumulated muck. And the younger of the two boys found himself in a dilemma; he'd got off his bike and was walking it along a narrow portion of trail that is particularly tricky at most times, and he was slowly but inexorably slipping down the slope toward the running creek, his bike following.

As we descended a part of the trail that clambers above, knowing enough to avoid it, we saw the father set his own bike aside and move toward his son, pulling his bike up, and then his son, with no little amount of stretching and grasping until success was realized. We spoke together for a while, and then they set off again. We watched as this time it was the father whose bicycle slid out from under, and he found himself laid out on the muddy trail. The boys and their father were wearing running shoes thick with muck, the muck reaching up around their legs and their hands encrusted as well. An afternoon's outing whose reality did not quite match their anticipation.

We came across a surprisingly large number of other trail walkers, where we often enough see no one else. Partly because it was Sunday, partly because people were sick of being sequestered by weather conditions in their houses, and figured if they got drenched in a downpour it was warm and humid enough not to matter, in any event. As it happened, the rain did hold back. That is, until we completed our circuit and reached home.

And in the evening, thunderstorms blasted through the area, one after another.