I am relieved that the 29th of December is past. And with it the milestone of my 78th birthday, receiving calls from family in acknowledgement of that fleeting event. The abundance of hugs throughout the day from my husband representing one of the best gifts of the day. The other was his discovery of a forgotten photograph album. We have so many of them, chronicling the important events of our lives. And we treasure those albums, but rarely do we look at them, since there is always so much to catch our attention, things that must be done, and that take our time.

Riley (left), Button, hiking in New Hampshire

Yesterday afternoon, he insisted that I stop whatever I was doing and sit with him awhile, while he leafed through the album. It was one full of many photographs and quite a number of them featured Button and Riley, both young, though she was a full seven years older than him when we brought him home. It was a sad delight to look at those photographs; a tender and grief-full occupation but one that also brought smiles of remembrance and appreciation to us.

Riley, overjoyed with his first winter in the ravine

Today, the sun is full out, another bright day. The high for the day is minus-12C, so it is very cold, all the more so with the wind. Yesterday the weather began to change from perpetual overcast and mild temperatures that managed to melt most of the accumulated snow in the area, resulting in pools of water and slippery, mucky trails. Now the trails are still slippery, even more so, but slippery with slick ice, making it difficult for people to negotiate their way, and where there is no ice the rough condition of the trails after all the industrial-strength work in there reconstructing the three bridges for months on end, has left it difficult to walk on them. We don't expect there will be trail remediation until spring. A covering of snow would certainly help.

So, given the icy atmosphere and the ice underfoot, it is hardly surprising that in the hour-and-a-half we were walking through the trails no one else was to be seen. Except, that is, briefly, a woman in her 60s (we know, because she informed us so) walking her five-month-old Irish setter. The little dog had come bounding across a bridge that hadn't been replaced, far distant from those that had been, and came straight for us, delighted to see us, prancing, and bobbing and asking for notice, leaping at us, loving life and seeing no reason why others would not.

There is nothing like seeing new life in all its youthful exuberance and open happiness wanting to embrace everything it sees, to provide another perspective on life and its pleasures. While the woman kept calling her dog, ordering it to 'behave' as she laboured to catch up, we enjoyed its delirious romping and its inclusion of us, however briefly, into its little world.

Her young dog, she explained, was exhausting her. They had lost an elderly Irish retriever, and this was the replacement -- while they were still young enough; 'now or never', she had said, convincing her husband. And this little fellow was the result.