Just as well that we had an all-day snow event yesterday. Plodding through the ravine on the trails we now take as alternatives to our usual circuits while the bridges are being reconstructed required a little more effort, but on the other hand, provided a relief to the icy conditions that had prevailed for more than a week. The snow will adhere to the ice and the footing will become more assured.

Besides which, it's just plain beautiful to view a forest during a snowstorm, with the pure white of the new-fluffed snow etching its beauty over the landscape. As many times as we've been exposed to it throughout our lifetimes, those scenes still make us catch our breath with the wonder of it all; nature at one of her most painterly devices, aside from the miracle of spring rebirth and the parting colours of autumn.

The trails on our side of the ravine that the work crews labouring on the bridge reconstruction have widened to permit the passage of their huge tracked vehicles and the smaller ones as well, look little like their original presentation. They've been widened, some trees taken down, and what was once a nature trail has become a hard-pounded cart track, with ridges frozen into place, and droppings of large pieces of rock and dredged clay frozen into place, alongside wide areas of flattened ice-packed earth and clay. Difficult terrain, truth be told, to comfortably stride.

And since there has been such a prevalence of ice given the freeze-and-thaw and reversals that normally take place and which, surprisingly haven't hindered the work crews, large tracts of ice present themselves. To which presence we have resorted to pulling cleats over our boots. And they generally work wonderfully well, giving us ease of movement and security of footing. Except, that is, when they fail on occasion.

As occurred with me a week ago; one of those times when you feel yourself gliding, then sliding, your balance disrupted, unable to right yourself though not for lack of trying to, and then falling with a thump and finding yourself flat on your back. Thumping down on the very same ice surface that caused the slide; not a very gracious position to find yourself in and a hard bed to lie upon. And a week later, in the very same place, despite that we were wearing our trusty old cleats, it was my husband's turn.

On each occasion, we both dusted ourselves off and carried on with our hike, feeling discommoded slightly, but not incapable of continuing. At our age that kind of fall could be a real problem, so we're fortunate that for us it was not. For each of us several days following our fall, meant a few aches and pains; for me it was primarily an elbow, for my husband a shoulder.

So it's clear that the screws on our pull-over cleats are due to be changed for new ones, sharper and less likely to usher us into another fall. Still, with the new snow that has been dumped over the ice, there's no particular hurry....