Reckoning by the calendar we're over a full month into spring. Sometimes you'd hardly know it here, where for the past week the daytime high temperature has been struggling to rise above ten degrees. With a gusting wind and the occasional fully overcast day it seems like late winter re-visited.

Progress has been made, however. There's very little snow left on our street's front lawns. There's copious amounts of it within the ravine adjacent to our street, but that's another matter; it is melting there slowly but surely.

The proof of milder days is the very fact that we're no longer wrapped in winter gear when we venture to the outside areas of this community. Gone are the dense mittens and the cold-protective headgear. Gone too are the winter jackets, to have their place taken by light spring/fall wear. And it feels downright liberating.

No more boots to haul on every time we exit the house. Except, that is, for those people few in number like us, who enter the ravine daily. Boots are still a good idea. Better yet, boots with crampons. But there are so many areas where the trails have been freed of their burden of ice and snow it doesn't seem logical or reasonable to continue clumping along like that. One of our acquaintances simply carries his strap-on crampons until he reaches one of the ice-festered descents, then he straps them back on again.

We've left ours on, permanently. That is, until yesterday. We figured we could bypass for the next several weeks the one stubbornly worst area of the trails that every year takes forever to lose its thick layer of ice. It's an area that sees almost no sun penetrating to encourage the ice to melt. And without cleats you can forget trying to negotiate that trail section.

So, out we ventured yesterday with hiking boots sans cleats and it felt great. We took alternate measures, bypassing what we consider through long experience the very worst icy challenges along the way. It was a lovely day; sunny, windy, with a high of ten degrees. The air was fresh and sharp, clear and bracing. And it felt quite wonderful to traipse along without those cleats; they're heavy and can be awkward on uneven terrain.

About two-thirds of the way through our hour-and-a-half circuit we came to another familiar descent, and I noted that though the ice covered much of the descending area there were patches of the forest floor bare of ice and I planned to access those, bypassing the ice. And I did. And then I discovered that what looked like terra firma was really terra gliding. I found myself carried along despite my efforts to recover balance, to an eventual glide that became a slide and eventually thumped down straight into the muck.

It really is uncomfortable to have your hands coated with mud and to view your garments flush with it, and to feel also the cold penetrating your nether regions as the very wet mud becomes susceptible to icy infiltration. Just as well I'm limber and bouncable. No harm done.

The balance of the jaunt through the ravine presented fewer obstacles to striding completely upright, and little Riley trotted along jauntily with us, enjoying all the elements of an excursion into the natural world. Naturally, I had to hand-wash the guck off my clothing, but it soon dried handily in the sun and wind, draped over the railing of the deck.