The Ottawa River, on this last day of March 2015 remains yet frozen, not surprising, given how extremely cold this month has been. Some of the snow has melted atop the ice, giving the river a strange mottled look, but the ice remains intact except for one area adjacent the Pickard Wastewater plant. Snow is beginning to melt with the heat of the sun, but this day won't get above freezing, and the melt will be slow in coming, more advanced as April moves in. There are still ice pans moving ponderously along to the Rideau Falls, then hurtling over into the river below with a resounding !splash!, though we didn't venture out there today to have a look.

Our destination was ByWard Market to pick up a few magazines at Fags and Mags, and then on to one of our favourite cheese shops for a medley of both imported and local cheeses; their variety cannot be matched anywhere else -- oh, of course at other cheese specialty shops co-located at the Market -- and they're fairly priced.

We stopped briefly at a lookout over the Ottawa River to have a closer look and take a few quick shots. The view across the river into Quebec always reminds me of a 19th Century landscape. And in the background, the Gatineau Hills can be seen, beckoning and familiar.

We could have parked almost anywhere at the Market, there were not all that many people browsing around. It's just not the 'right' time of year for that. And we don't mind one little bit, since we don't have to bulldoze our way through crowds of people at this juncture. A few booths were set up on the street, selling jewellery, handicrafts and woollens from Central America. And one large booth selling maple sugar products. Soon they'll be joined by flower vendors, gardening vendors, and the usual locals selling local vegetables and fruits later on in the season; root vegetables to begin with, then gradually late spring berries and asparagus and wild garlic, and eventually autumn tree fruit.

It's a pleasant drive along the Western Parkway with long, wide views and plenty of specimen trees, and now and again good sightings of the river itself. A nice trip, one that doesn't take long, and exposes us now and again to the familiar parts of the city we live in that we enjoy visiting on occasion.

It's a prolonged clamber from winter into spring, and this March has been no exception to the usual agonizing wait for spring to truly arrive. The weather keeps zinging back and forth from relatively mild to nastily cold, spurred on by the ever-present wind and occasional snow events. Even so, the snow has been responding to the increasing warmth of the spring sun's rays, and our area snowpack is slowly diminishing. We won't be sorry to see the end of it, even though the process will leave us mired in muck for awhile.

Work crews will be expected to return to Bilberry Creek Ravine to remediate the condition of the trials, left as they were in construction-mode, rutted deeply and the clay exposed where rough-cut and too-large granite chunks with no resemblance to gravel littered along most of the trails, were left behind through the process of earth movers and tracked construction shovels moving dirt, clay and detritus from the new bridge sites to removal depots.

But for the time being, and briefly, the trails remain fully packed with snow gradually turning to ice. Without cleats pulled over snowboots traversing the trails would be a challenge, far more so than they present to us fully geared. And the environment still looks beautiful with its snow blanket, not yet the drear visage of desiccated foliage littering the forest floor and bare branches of trees beseeching running sap to help the sun nurture the formation of new green foliage.

When we returned from our ravine walk yesterday, exhausted but content with the improving performance of Jack and Jill in their jaunts with us, my husband took time out to gather some newspapers out of the recycling box to remove a plaintive reminder that nature, beyond its attraction for us of the beautiful transformations we so admire, also calls its creatures to finalize their lifespans for a multitude of reasons. Our street is a very traffic-quiet one, with mostly the residents driving down it, and mostly because they are residents, driving slowly, carefully. Concern for the welfare of small children and companion pets are a priority.

But some vehicle, we surmise, must have hit a plump little grey squirrel that might have been at our squirrel feeders. We could not avoid seeing its sad little corpse lying on the road in front of a neighbour's house. It was still there awhile later, someone having moved it to the snowmound in front of that neighbour's front lawn. The newspapers were to wrap it with, so it could be laid to rest in a trench left by the melting snow pack, around a large old spruce off the beaten path in the ravine. After my husband laid it there, as its final resting place, he covered it with snow.

Nature in her great wisdom will see to the rest.

The place where we have rented a housekeeping cottage for the last decade and more in New Hampshire  has a neat little portion of their office given over to retail. Over the years we acquired cute little stuffed toys with a wilderness theme for our granddaughter. Eventually we took our granddaughter with us on a few occasions, to introduce her to the effort and pleasures of mountain climbing. Last year we noticed on their shelves a self-published book by a local resident, recalling incidents of a historical nature revolving around the White Mountains. And we bought a copy of Shrouded Memories: True Stories for the White Mountains of New Hampshire, by Floyd W. Ramsey, a former schoolteacher fascinated by the history of his region.

I only began reading it finally a few days ago. And, as coincidence would have it, the first entry was one that has resonance in a way with the recent dreadful, deliberate mass murder of 149 people, plus the suicidist-co-pilot who had planned their murder in his destruction of Lufthansa's economy carrier Germanwings Flight 9525 over the French Alps whose horrible results are even now reverberating around the world.

In 1959, however, it was the hour-long flight of Piper Comanche N5324P owned by 60-year-old Dr. Ralph Miller, ferrying a heart specialist colleague, 32-year-old Dr. Robert Quinn, in an emergency flight from West Lebanon Airport to Berlin, New Hampshire that took local attention. On the staffs at Dartmouth Medical College, Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital and the Hitchcock Clinic, the elder doctor was a professor of pathology, and had flown aircraft for the past two decades.

The national and state forests of New Hampshire in the midst of a snowy winter particularly back then comprised a little-patrolled wilderness area, inaccessible during the winter months, with few roads available for patrol. Their plane, taking off in inclement conditions, ran out of fuel, though they thought the engine had stalled. The pilot, a veteran of two Arctic research flights for Dartmouth College and a member of the Lebanon Civil Air Patrol, certainly had ample experience in such flights.

The plane ferried the two doctors with its pilot attempting to reach Whitefield Airport by radio, into continuing poor weather conditions. Around nine in the evening the Civil Aeronautics Authority was alerted to the plane's disappearance; the doctors' wives raising the alert when their husbands failed to return home.

Mike Dickerman photo The Piper Comanche plane piloted by Dr. Miller was found flipped over and leaning against trees on May 5, 1959, more than two months after the crash occurred. Though both Miller and his passenger, Robert Quinn, survived the initial crash, they succumbed to the harsh elements of a North Country winter four days later. Photo reprinted from the book, "Lincoln and Woodstock, New Hampshire," published by Bondcliff Books, Littleton, NH.

 

A concentrated air and ground search took place over the next eight days. Private planes, military helicopters, Air Force, Army National Guard and Civil Air Patrol planes all took part, but the plane and its passengers were not sighted. There were ground forces comprised of volunteers from the National Guard, state police, conservation officers, civilian personnel and the Dartmouth Outing Club. Where originally some thought the two missing men would have a 50% chance of surviving the extreme cold, snow storms and the winter-unforgiving terrain, as time went on, hopes plunged.

Search efforts were eventually called off. And then, resumed by air, by the decree of the state governor. A pilot finally sighted the plane that had gone down on February 21, on May 5, upside down, fifteen air miles from Whitefield, 12 miles north of Lincoln, New Hampshire. A ground party soon began the trek into the wilderness area to retrieve the men's bodies. When they arrived at the crash scene the men were found, one near the plane, the other lying on a trail; nearby hurriedly-constructed snowshoes made of yellow birch and surgical tape. One of the men wore a winter parka and boots, the other street clothes, his shoes missing.

They left notes behind them, chronicling their agonizing wait for rescue and their attempts to rescue themselves by following the trail, until they found it to peter out, and they had returned to the crashed plane, until they finally gave up hope of rescue, and died of starvation, privation, wounds, and the cold.

Investigators established later that had the two men continued where they thought the trail had stopped, they would have reached a U.S. Forest Service North Fork cabin, eight-tenths of a mile off, where they had turned back, equipped with a stove, blankets, and food.

Thoreau Falls Valley – Pemigewasset Wilderness, New Hampshire

Miss Chief and Master Sneeze are doing as well as can be expected. She named for her indefatigable mischievous nature and her take-charge impudence, and he for the misfortune that befell him when he became ill and is even now still recovering from a miserable cold, causing him to sneeze often showering the atmosphere about him.

We are not yet prepared to have them enrolled in the canine Mensa school of accomplished intelligence but we're working diligently on it.

They have effortlessly mastered the art of cuisine appreciation. They have taste-tested asparagus, persimmon, banana, apple, pear, strawberry, scrambled egg, a variety of cheeses, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, carrots, and found them all avariciously to their taste. Ricotta and yogurt have become a mainstay of their diet, as has chicken soup. Their motto is, 'bring it on!' Which has not, unfortunately, yet weaned them from their habit of foraging for edibles, mistaking inedible non-food byproducts as tasty diet additions.

We are working on their communications skills in understanding language. They do, more or less recognize the pleas emanating from their human companions to pleeeez, pleeez pee already, and alternately, dontcha wanna poo now? Outside, in preference to our home interior. We do from time to time, make any number of excuses for their 'accidents' given the continuing presence of raging winter storming through our backyard where ice and snow remain unrelentingly in presence, and icy winds are of the temperament to blast away our hopes for spring.

And where, unfortunately, as the snow does melt from time to time, plant detritus is increasingly revealed, enticing our two little marauders to leap upon them faster than we can prevent their little jaws fastening on detritus, to complement their diets. So yes, their nutritional knowledge still needs some remedial work.

Their social studies are a work in progress, as we meander in the frozen ravine in our daily rambles and come across other canine companions whom our two introduce themselves to. Gaining the knowledge that some dogs whom we encounter are better left undisturbed and given wide berth in recognition of their cranky disposition that the presence of puppies brings to the surface, while others are amenable to being used as punching bags of enthusiasm by small puppies new to the world eager to make their acquaintance.

As for their alphabet, and Internet-based grounding in the world of higher thought, they are being introduced daily to various modes of intelligence-gathering, from the inexhaustible printed word to the electronic print striving to overtake it -- gaining as well audible clues to the world into which they have arrived and in which they are invested in achieving a working degree of understanding.

Isn't it wonderful that Western society has transcended its once-primitive social views that those with mental illness may not fully share in all the aspirations and entitlements of everyone else without the trauma of psychological problems? We no longer deny the equal rights of people suffering from deep depressions requiring clinical care. To them we say, your aspirations are legitimate, and we will not stand in the way of your achieving your dreams of entitlement.

And then there is the emotional trauma of a family anxious about the welfare and well-being of their loved ones, much alleviated by greater society's social kindness and timely interventions that once denied people with histories of mental illness their full involvement in all the opportunities to achieve satisfaction in their views of themselves as fully functioning members of society with recognized capabilities and the resolve, bolstered by new enabling laws and forgivingly helpful authorities and health professionals to permit them to seek fulfillment in a profession that appeals to them.

Even though the young man whose morbidly suicidal dissatisfaction with his life and possible rage at the world had experienced earlier and prolonged periods of psychological dysfunction requiring isolation from society and significant professional medical assistance, he was deemed suitable to place the lives of hundreds of people in his capable hands. For he demonstrated proficiency in his craft of managing the flight of modern aircraft, passenger aircraft in particular since this is where he sought his future, as an airlines pilot in one of the world's most socially progressive cultures, and one of the world's most safe and reliable airlines. He had mastered the technicalities of flight, but, alas, not the malign functioning of his disturbed mind.

His parents found comfort in the thought that their disturbed son would find mental balance in the joy of a profession that he aspired toward and seemed to excel at. His doctors, in full possession of his mental disequilibrium records and its ability to surface without prior warning, obviously felt no obligation to alert flight authorities, since no one, after all, in this kind of society wishes to be viewed as someone who doesn't respect the rights of the mentally disturbed. Above all, those who treat them.

And the authorities felt comfortable in their oversight of a man whose surface demeanor appeared normal, yet was known to them through his background health record, to be, at times, not wholly reliable in his cerebral and reasoning functioning. But who wants to be labelled a bigot, someone who discriminates against people struggling with mental illness?

His doctor had given 27-year-old Andreas Lubitz a note excusing him from his work schedule, reflecting his then-disturbed state of mind. Never thinking he had the further responsibility given the man's profession, to alert authorities, enabling Mr. Lubitz the opportunity to simply discard the note as irrelevant, and continue on to co-pilot Flight 9525. Since when does patient confidentiality trump public safety? Oh, yes, of course, in the interests of a compassionate society.

Search-and-rescue workers are transported to the crash site of the Germanwings Airbus A320. (Photo: Guillaume Horcajuelo, epa)

Germanwings and Lufthansa protest that their employer did not 'share' with them his medical history. What is their employment practise of imposing a mental health examination good for unless there is a background probe included with it?

Oh dear, we must never, ever impede people's human rights to achieve their aspirations. Individual rights are sacrosanct; a pity they override the pressing issue of collective human rights to safety and security of person, sacrificed to the ideal of moral presumptuousness that holds society not interfere with the aspirational rights of an individual.

It's perfectly normal. All is well. Empathy instructs us to gather in horror and sympathy at the tragedy. Floral and Teddy-bear memorials will be grown to immense proportions here and there giving ease to people's fears.

Our laundry room has two doors, one leading directly to the garage, the other to a side door, giving us the option of exiting the house from either the garage or the side of the house. In the laundry room which doubles as a 'mud room', itself leading to a short hallway with the first-floor powder room and kitchen leading off the hallway, we keep our outdoor wear and those of our puppies. They don't wear their collars in the house, these hang above a small sink in the room, for ready access when we're leaving the house.

While doing the laundry this morning I happened to glance up at two collars no longer used, belonging to Button and to Riley, our beloved miniature and toy poodles. Riley's renewed municipal license tag has the bold numbers '15 on it. His tag was renewed for 2015, and cruel fate decided he would not share that year with us.

Since we lost him we have noticed what seems like a proliferation of puppies with their owners walking through the ravine. Not hugely numerous, but in our state of mourning, seemingly significant. People lose their valued companion animals and take in others to fill the void in their lives. We had discussed the issue between us and reached a consensus, truly sincerely held, that our days of enjoying the companionship of a trusting little animal had reached its end. We would never again bring a little dog into our lives. We had agreed that the companions we had already lost, Button and Riley were irreplaceable, and we had no intention of attempting to replace them.

Despite which we both succumbed to our perceived need to have that companionship renewed through the presence of other little dependents. And so, Jack and Jill entered our lives. The pain of losing a valued companion is of course not ours alone; many other bereaved pet owners feel the anguish of loss as acutely as we have done.

Barbara, one of our ravine acquaintances, certainly does. She now has another puppy upon whom she dotes. Understandably, the same breed as the one she had lost. Berrie is now seven months old. She had been irrepressibly enthusiastic when we'd first seen her months ago, excitedly rambunctious and difficult to control for Barb. Berrie, because of her size and her strength, and Barb's somewhat fragile condition, is left off leash going through the ravine. Barb trusts Berrie to return to her when she's called, and occasionally she does just that.

Berrie's personality has undergone a bit of a leavening off; her enthusiasm is still intact, but her behaviour is a tad less physically exuberant. When she saw us yesterday she rushed over while Barb was still clambering up the long, somewhat steep hill to the bench situated on the crest of a hill, where we were sitting in the sun. Berrie endearingly didn't jump at us this time, but prostrated herself beseechingly before us, begging to be noticed, to be rubbed, and to be admired, a beautiful and healthy young Irish Setter.

Although the weather hasn't yet deigned to relent, and we remain in the firmly fixed aura of winter, our atmosphere icy, windy and snow-beset, our two backyard composters, weekly recipients of kitchen waste, are now finally beginning to diminish in their frozen bulk, allowing us to resume our twice-weekly dumps. And it certainly is not thanks to milder temperatures thawing out the composter contents to allow them to gradually and inevitably turn from recognizable fruit-and-vegetable scraps into garden-quality compost.

It is the re-awakening of the raccoons. Who have resumed their nightly visits to the composters. My husband keeps the composter lids loosely capping the contents. We've had incidents in the past when the tightly-clad lids have infuriated the raccoons to the degree that they'll take to destroying the composter in their furious attempts to get at the contents. On one occasion a young raccoon had been trapped inside one of the composters when the lid turned back around, clamping tight, and refusing exit to the creature. We'd no idea how long he had been trapped, but he was swift in exiting once my husband raised the lid for his release.

They make no mess, never scatter the contents outside the composters. They simply take what appeals to them and politely leave the lids ajar without creating a nasty scene for our later clean-up. So we welcome them; if what we discard is of use to these urban-rural animals that delight us in their occasional sighting and with whom we share our environment, then so be it.

We hear them sometimes, when a dull thud will alert us to the fact that they're in the backyard, rooting about in the composters. And we see them also, on occasion, when curiosity brings them to the front of the house to harvest treats for themselves in the covered feeder that my husband keeps stocked for squirrels and birds, below the bird feeder that squirrels are unable to access. 


The doves roost on our porch during the day and the raccoons and wild rabbits come stealthily along during nighttime hours, and when we witness their presence, it's a calming, enjoyable feeling of being at one with nature that overtakes us. Although it's we who have the enormous advantage and the responsibility to respect the other creatures who inhabit our landscape.

It's not at all difficult for me to dredge my memory to recall the focus felt on achieving a goal that required every last bit of stamina and energy that a middle-aged woman with teens alongside, reaching the summit of a mountain could feel. It was an adventure that my husband and I loved to share with our children. And through the years of visiting the White Mountains of New Hampshire we managed to climb most of the presidential peaks and a good many others.

There were climbs in the Great Smokies, in British Columbia's coastal mountains and outside Tokyo in Japan as well. They all represented a pinnacle of enjoyment achieved through an expenditure of energy and enthusiasm.

It was exhilarating, it was pleasurable, and on many occasions somewhat frightening. Trails that were steeply demanding of all our strength and determination to ascend to achieve that goal of reaching the top, looking out all around at a never-ending march of other mountains, some whose summits were lower, some higher, the scope of the sky and the prevailing winds, the penetrating sun and the incoming clouds bringing in rain, or as sometimes happens, sleet, and sometimes a fearful thunderstorm. Not much fixates the mind as keenly as thunder and lightning hissing and clapping as you stand poised to look for cover or descend into the forest below the treeline for cover.

So there is some of the allure that I can relate to in the physical and mental endurance trial that becomes ascending a mountain as formidable as Mount Everest. But my imagination reaches a plateau when I read descriptions of climbers' extremities becoming frostbitten to the extent that gangrene will set in and they must face surgery, losing fingers, toes, feet, hands. And nor do I quite understand the kind of furious mindset that locks into achieving a summit where an almost perpendicular ascent with crampons takes place, where ladders and ropes are used to crawl over yawning chasms below which thousands of feet of a cold, dark, icy void beckons. And nor could I ever place myself in a situation where raging winds threaten to blow a tiny tent off a narrow mountain shelf, with the occupants praying they will survive the icy blasts. Let alone having to wade through waist-high snow accumulations.

That kind of physical adversity is a stretch too far for me. Never mind the fear-shuddering dangers inherent in clambering up a mountain to heights known as the "death zone", where oxygen is sparse, and the brain begins to react to its starvation, and people's ability to make logical decisions become compromised, threatening their existence. Yes, of course, for those who manage to achieve that impossible height and look down upon the world below them from the Earth's highest point, a euphoria that I will never experience is their reward.

I'm grateful for the opportunities that love of nature and a moderate sense of adventure did permit me to experience some truly wonderful adventures that live in my mind as times and places of great value to me. Just as well I'd experienced what I did; venturing abroad on such an ambitious scale as the Himalaya, or almost equally demanding mountain ranges in other places of the world where the mountain scenery is vastly beyond the human scale of perception and comfort is meant to be savoured by those who feel the experience has value that may transcend their potentially shortened lifespan.

Yesterday, finally, Jackie seemed almost normal. Almost, not quite. It's been a week, a trying week at best. The little tyke certainly hasn't been well. And although Jillie took some time figuring out that her buddy wasn't up to racketing around the house with her, she finally appeared to. And then, yesterday it all changed. Jackie was finally responding to her constant invitations to romp about and have puppy-fun.

It seems evident that he had taken up something last Saturday that abraded his throat at the very least. We theorize that it must have been a tempting bit of spruce needles that had been encased in ice. They have been 'eating' woody detritus falling from our trees, and doing the same with snow and with bits of ice. This time Jackie bit off more than he would chew, in a manner of speaking. He had tried desperately to eject whatever it was that had caught in his throat with retching paroxysms, that gradually became less fierce, but continued throughout the day.

Our emergency trip with him that late afternoon to the veterinary hospital ended with a physical exam that revealed nothing amiss and the advice that his throat was likely quite sore as a result of his mishap and he might be thinking still he had to eject something. Three days later we took him to the veterinarian nearby for another assessment because he was still coughing and we didn't like the sounds coming from his chest cavity. That ended with a prescription for antibiotics in case he had an infection as a result of the injury.

And then it became evident that he might very well have an infection but he also had a cold. His nose was runny and his breathing laboured, and first thing in the morning he was extremely rheumy. On 'good' weather days we took them out for ravine walks. Yesterday's weather saw a return to winter with night-time temperatures last night and the night before dipping to minus-20-degrees.

But now, finally, Jackie seems on the mend, more his old self, and we're rejoicing. Tellingly, his appetite never failed him throughout his little ordeal with illness.

So nice it's finally spring. It's been a tough winter, to say the least. A miserably cold winter, to tell the truth, and the truth should be told. There were all too often days too windy and icy-cold and snowy to venture out for regular walks. Too many nights dipping well below minus-20 degrees, with day-tine highs struggling to get above minus-12, and with the wild wind chill factored in, much too inclement for nice leisurely ravine walks.

Particularly with very young puppies. But they're getting their ravine walk credits fairly regularly now.

So, I repeat; finally it's spring and it's so lovely to anticipate its full arrival. What is certain is that it has been delayed. For the last two nights we've had minus-20 degree temperatures with winds raging in the 50 mph range. So, not nice.

When it's horribly cold we often see more birds coming to the feeders at the front of the house. And the squirrels. We've noted that the ravine squirrels appear to be at the very least semi-hibernating. Those times when I do put peanuts out in scattered caches in the forest they aren't always taken up, as swiftly as usual, signalling few squirrels about to take advantage of them. But around the house, they're fully awake and ravenous. We see some squirrels spending literally hours at a time at the squirrel feeder.

Last evening, before we sat down for our pizzas, we watched a small flock of doves seated comfortably on the porch, evidently having satiated their appetites beforehand. They're usually around very early in the morning and tend to return in the afternoon, when dusk is about to fall, as they did yesterday.

When squirrels are about, the doves pay little mind to them, and it isn't unusual for us to see both in close proximity; the doves quietly resting and the squirrels bustling about. Goldfinches, cardinals, juncos are often to be seen as well. And yesterday we heard the unmistakable spring song of a robin.

So spring is coming, merely delayed, most anguishingly.

"In the days after the May [1996] tragedy, teachings about death crowded my mind -- how death should be prepared for and faced, and what it means. Buddhists view death as a critical turning point on the Wheel of Life, the endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Death is part of a continuum, one that Buddhists hope will result, after not too many millions of cycles, in enlightenment and liberation from the Wheel -- for individuals and eventually for all sentient beings.
"What determines all of this? The lamas say that the key factors in our rebirth are the merit and karma that we accumulate during our lifetime, our final thoughts at the moment of death, and our ability to navigate the frightening distractions of the after-death transition period of bardo. Buddhist practice trains us to remain aware during this disturbing and disorienting state and to recognize bardo's frightening visions and sounds as no more than illusory manifestations of our own untamed negative emotions.
"I've noticed that Sherpas and other Nepalese and Indians tend to take life less seriously than Westerners do, perhaps because they recognize that this is only one of many lives. One might conclude that we are merely fatalistic -- lightheartedly resigned to the inevitability that we will be reborn. But it is self-defeating to resign ourselves to being reborn into the samsaric existence to which we've become so attached. For one thing, if we have not accumulated an immense reserve of merit, we may not even be reborn as humans. 'Precious human life' describes our mortal human rebirth, which is granted to only the most genuine and devoted of practitioners and believers, and those with good karma amassed from previous lives. It is either inspiring or depressing to think that, as the lamas say, a human rebirth is as unlikely as a turtle swimming somewhere int he world's oceans happening to surface into a single, randomly cast net.
"This is why it is a shame to squander one's precious human rebirth. In the mountains [Himalayas] I've seen Westerners take unusual risks. And in Kathmandu it is common to see the city youth racing their motorcycles or driving cars like maniacs at night with the headlights off. These people are either unaware of the risks or choose to flaunt [flout?] them."
Jamling Tenzing Norgay, Touching My Father's Soul

Hillary and Norgay were part of a Royal Geographic Society (RGS) expedition. Though many mountaineers had preceded them in the attempt, none had succeeded in reaching the top and many had died in the process.

Many people, myself among them, have a fascination with what impels, compels and propels people to take huge risks in pursuing an adventure of their lifetimes. To climb a mountain takes curiosity, a love of nature, energy and persistence in achieving a laboriously glorious but transitory goal. To climb an imperious mountain in the Himalaya takes determination, perseverance, and no little amount of courage, for there, as few other places on Earth, climate, logistics and circumstances play an even larger role in determining who among those adventurers will achieve their aspiration, and who among them will die in the attempt.

My personal interest in mountain climbing stems as well from the relatively tame adventures my family has undertaken over the decades when we ascended the summits of many of the mountains in the U.S. Great Smokies range, and the more familiar and more-often climbed (by us) White Mountains of New Hampshire. We were given the good fortune as well to climb mountains in Japan. And our experience in the coastal and inland mountains of British Columbia, limited as they were, gave us an appreciation of the vastness and imperviousness of nature at close range.

I've read accounts of climbing in the Himalaya, particularly K2 and Mount Everest by various people who undertook that formidable challenge. Well-written and -documented accounts of early attempts written by Wade Davis in his Into The Silence chronicling early expedition attempts and the George Mallory/Andrew Irvine disappearance speculatively descending from the summit, gave me a grounding in the early years of summit attempts by Westerners who lauded the challenge and the British resolve to meet it. And then there is the inimitable account of the 1996 tragedy when too many lives were lost by Jon Krakauer: Into Thin Air.

An accounting that led to the further reading of Everest-climb client Beck Weathers' Left for Dead; My Journey Home from Everest, and the Russian mountaineer Anatoli Boukreev's own personal account of that time in Everest history, The Climb; Tragic Ambitions on Everest. It was only fitting, then, that I also read the first accounting of that tragedy, what led up to it and its impact on those whose ambition it was to reach the summit, written by the son of Tenzing Norgay -- whose own father's completion of the summit with New Zealander Edmund Hillary made history -- to gain yet another perspective, that of a son of the Himalaya, whose Buddhist belief is inextricably interwound with veneration of Everest/Chomolungma, and the goddess whose spirit resides on the mountain, Miyolangsangma.

After a late start to winter in eastern Canada in 2014, the new year caught up with a vengeance, and it has been slopping into spring for people living in the Maritimes. My brother yesterday shovelled two and a half feet of snow out of his driveway, taking his time in spurts of shovel-and-rest, repeated four times before he and his wife were able to clear away the snowfall.

The Canadian Press / Andrew Vaughan

It may be unusually cold in Ontario, but we've had a deficit of snow this winter, while Canada's West coast is basking in warm spring weather, fruit trees long since bloomed, and the East Coast struggles to clear away the excess of snow it has received.

He has just started his sixth round of eight chemotherapy bouts, and he says his strength remains, but his endurance has diminished markedly. He's a robust, strong man of 65, still occasionally playing a game of squash and winning, still writing, still active in his avocations, newly retired as a biology professor at Dalhousie University.

He had planned on driving to Pelee Point in the spring, but that has to be extended into the summer months, so as not to interfere with his later rounds of chemotherapy. When they're all done, another evaluation of his condition will take place; and he will be advised what his near future will likely comprise.

He hasn't lost any weight, and is holding his own. He plans to stay over with us when he and his wife begin their journey to the furthermost southern point of Ontario jutting out over Lake Ontario, which is a famous flyway for migrating birds returning to this part of the country and beyond.

Early yesterday afternoon, on a cold, blustery but sunny day when you might least expect to see a road accident, we came across one that had just occurred. We were on our way, along Innes Road, a main local highway, heading to Richie Feed & Seed to pick up a few 25-lb bags of bird seed and peanuts when we saw a dump truck sitting stationery on the left-hand lane of the road before us as we pulled alongside, and noted that scattered on the road was evidence of a crash.

Further ahead, crossing the red light in the left lane was the vehicle that the dump truck had hit. Its back end crushed beyond repair. Because it had just occurred, there was no police presence, nor were there any other first-responders, although we could see someone standing nearby the grey vehicle with its crushed back, speaking on a cellphone. In fact, there were quite a few people milling about.

Further on, another vehicle was parked, a municipal truck, and two men had obviously emerged from it, both wearing fluorescent jackets, one of whom had applied his muscle to opening a back passenger door of the hit vehicle. A woman standing beside him reached into the vehicle and extracted a child. By the size of the child the woman was clutching, about four to five years of age.

And then someone else was vigorously yanking at the door on the opposite side. Hard to imagine that anyone sitting in the back of that vehicle that looked, even its state, like a SUV as we drove quickly by, surviving intact, with no injuries.

Traffic continued flowing, most people taking the signals from those who were on the scene that to stop and mill about without purpose if one wasn't a health professional, a doctor or nurse or paramedic would be to no one's advantage. As we pulled into the parking lot at Richie's just beyond the accident site, we could hear in the distance the high-pitched sirens signalling the arrival of those responders everyone's hopes must have been focused on.

And then they arrived, within minutes of our having first sighted the accident. First, an ambulance, then a fire truck, and presumably from the opposite direction, police cars.

It's one of our longstanding traditions in this house. On Saturday night I roll out the pizza dough I've prepared the day before and which has been awaiting use until then, in the refrigerator. While I do that, sprinkling cornmeal lightly over the surface of the pizza pan, then smoothing tomato paste over the rolled-out dough and sprinkling it with mixed herbs and a light dusting of hot pepper flakes, my husband is busy chopping vegetables; bell pepper, mushrooms, tomatoes and a few sticks of pepperoni. We use a combination of Parmesan, provolone and mozzarella in the preparation of our pizza, and enjoy it at leisure, finishing off the meal with red seedless grapes.

That night I soak the beans or peas I'll be using the day after, Sunday, in preparation of a hearty soup for dinner. Last Sunday it was whole yellow-pea soup and accompanying it my husband had smoked salmon on rye while I had a grilled cheese sandwich, then we had strawberries for dessert.

The following day we had dinner consisting of a fresh vegetable salad with lots of balled avocado and blue cheese, alongside a cheese-onion omelette, with (leftover) apple pie for dessert.

And then on Wednesday I decided to bake almond (ground almonds) sugar cookies to complement the strawberry-grape-Mandarin fruit cup we'd have for dessert that day. And I did a small roast beef, Yorkshire pudding (which my husband loves), and green beans for dinner.

Tonight the menu has us eating another fresh salad, similar to the one we enjoyed on Monday. And the main course will be traditional Jewish potato latkes which I'll complement with freshly-made applesauce and thick sour cream. For dessert, mandarin oranges.

Tomorrow we'll have breaded baked haddock and oven-baked yam and yellow potato chips, alongside an acorn squash. With balled melon for dessert.

Which leaves Friday with its conventional (for us) chicken-soup-and-rice starter for dinner, followed by baked chicken glazed with ginger, chopped onion, sliced tomatoes, soy sauce and olive oil accompanied by a potato pudding and baked cauliflower. The dessert for Friday has yet to be considered; likely blueberry pie.

A week's menu...!

There was a time -- and it must be at least a dozen years ago now -- when one of our neighbours who lives down the street as a regular daily trail-walker in the ravine used to take a break halfway through his ramble, sitting on a bench overlooking one of the bridges we cross to get from one point to another over Cardinal Creek. We'd often walk with him, talk with him on the trails as much as on the street, though we seldom see him out and about now. He's into his late-80s.

He had a bout with cancer, with heart disease, has a bad back and no longer gets about as he once did. He was one of the most familiar faces on the street, acquainted with everyone, knowing everyone's background, prepared to talk up a storm of impressions and ideas with anyone who was willing. He also had a companion dog at one time, a shambling female golden retriever, and lost her to cancer just before his own health began seriously wavering. His wife, quite a bit younger than him in a second marriage, balked at having another dog, knowing he was in no shape to look after another one, and she had other plans for herself. She's given to taking at least several trips a year to exotic places, and he never accompanies her.

We were accustomed at one time to seeing him walking with others as well, when we were newer to the area and he had experienced several years' residence before us. He also knew everyone who used the trails at that time. And their dogs. It seemed odd at first when he no longer ventured out into the ravine, because he was so given to the beauty of the place and had volunteered as someone who would keep the municipality informed with respect to the state of the ravine, reporting trees that had fallen across the trails, or that someone had been in with an ax and partially chopped down a tree, or that neighbourhood children appeared to have attempted a fire.

Today, a windy, cool and beautifully bright day, that bench beckoned us. So, as he had done so long ago, we sat on "Barry's bench", because I needed a break and it seemed a pleasant enough thing to do. We sat until I 'caught my second wind' and we chatted together, and our two little dogs sat with us. The sun glinted off the ice limning branches and conifer needles. We'd had freezing rain this morning, and then the temperature dropped. Creating a landscape of ice-covered surfaces. Which also made parts of the trails icy and slippery as a result.

And then, on we went to complete the circuit that takes us roughly an hour to complete daily.We had the ravine to ourselves, today. No one else was out and about, and that's fairly unusual.

It's an old relationship of well over forty years' duration when two young men in university made a fast bond of friendship. I met him sporadically over the years. Of course since I am thirteen years older than my youngest brother, the age-gap meant that we didn't socialize, so it was at odd times we might come across one another and certainly not frequently. The last time was at my mother's funeral. And that itself was almost twenty years ago.

My brother's nearest and closest friend and my brother didn't share university classes. My brother became a scientist and his friend a lawyer. He was a flamboyant young man, tall and slender, and cut a dashing figure particularly when he affected a cape. He shares, to some degree, my brother's overt and always-a-quip-at-the-ready humour, I believe.

So when our granddaughter expressed more than passing interest in this friend of one of her grand-uncles and wistfully imagined meeting him, I thought it interesting. And then in a conversation yesterday she went so far as to mention the man again with the thought that it might be helpful to her in a guidance-mentoring way if she were to be actually introduced to him.

I said I would speak with my brother about it. Instead, I wrote an email directly to this friend of my brother's, introducing the idea of a possible connection. I informed him of her age, that she is a university student and planning to achieve a law degree. Her interest just happens to be the practise of criminal law. And he is a lawyer specializing in criminal law.

And he responded swiftly in the affirmative. And now the rest is up to my granddaughter.

In a sense our trepidatious fears over the potential of one or the other of our two puppies swallowing something that might be harmful to them became a reality yesterday.

In concern that they continue to pluck away at anything they see at ground level with the intention of eating whatever it is, my husband even took the leaf blower out of the garden shed, using it to blow the detritus falling from cedars and spruces onto the walkways of the backyard and away from easy pickings for our two little devils.

Despite which, and despite a layer of newfallen snow, Jackie managed to grasp at something which had an immediate reaction. We think it might have been an ice-encrusted clump of cedar. Suddenly he began violently retching, as though desperately attempting to clear his air passages. We could see nothing peering down his little throat, and a finger trying to dislodge anything that might be obstructing his throat resulted in nothing but more of that violent retching. Eventually it subsided, and what remained was a dry hacking cough repeated continually.

We hoped it would pass, that whatever he had swallowed would finally go down successfully. In the next few hours he slept peacefully, but when he awoke that dry rasping, pained cough repeated and repeated. We decided to take him to the emergency veterinarian hospital downtown for a veterinarian to check him physically, trained in the profession as we are not.

Having a veterinarian check him over did give us a measure of reassurance. Although what had occurred to elicit such a violent reaction can only be hypothesized. We decided against an X-ray, decided against having him take any drugs. I'd given him some coconut oil to help soothe his throat before we'd left home. The vet agreed that might be useful. Our daughter later recommended that the properties inherent in emu oil would be useful, to administer it three times daily.

Jackie had a good night, but unusually for him, he snored throughout, indicating some obstructions yet in his airways, if only the result of an injury in there, that has to heal. Despite his paroxysms of repeated retching, he still looked about on the ground for additional bits of detritus to pick up and eat.

At the age of five months one wouldn't expect a human infant to know what is good and what is bad for it, and we don't anticipate much from the dawning intelligence of a puppy, either.

Friday 13th? Well, not yesterday. In the sense that everything seemed to go just right. We can always find small irritations throughout the course of any day, but yesterday seemed like quite a nice day. Perhaps for some it wasn't, but nothing to particularly set that day apart for nasty events. Jack and Jill behaved perfectly, for the most part.

In the morning I took a deep middling-sized pot, poured in 2/3 cup of granulated sugar, sprinkled two large tablespoons of cornstarch over, mixed that with about 1/4 cup of cranberry juice. Then I took five large Empire apples, crisp and juicy, and washed them but didn't peel them, and cut them into chunks into the pot. Then I set the pot on the kitchen stove to slowly stir occasionally until the apples were partly cooked and the sugar/cranberry juice combination created a nice glaze over the apples. Turning the heat off under the pot I dropped two tablespoons of butter over it all, to melt as the apples cooled.

And then we had our breakfast leaving ample time for the pie filling to cool. After cleaning up from breakfast I prepared the pie crust, with all-purpose flour, pinch of salt, Crisco shortening, lemon juice and cold water, taking care not to add more water than required for a resulting dough on the dry side still amenably pliable, and given to rolling out for a top and bottom pie crust.

I sprinkled cinnamon and cloves, and instead of raisins, sprinkled dried cranberries into the apples instead. The resulting pie was perfect; the interior sweet enough but not too sweet, the apples chunky but well cooked, the complementary spices and cranberry a perfect companion for the apples, and the crust flaky and light. My husband had Oka cheese alongside his serving of pie for dessert.

Using my favourite pie dish, one that our youngest son made for us many years ago, pies bake to a perfect consistency.

We're at that point in the season where we're poinging from spring back to winter again, and today has been one of those winter days. Not anything, mind, like the numbingly frigid days we had in February, but in the same token not much like the mild temperature and full sun we experienced yesterday and the past few days before, when walking up the snow-cleared street to the ravine entrance was a pleasure, clear blue sky above.

It was a pleasure today too, but the road is once again thick with snow and the temperature is decidedly colder, thanks to a cold weather system that trekked in last night greeting us then when we ventured out last thing before turning in for the night, with snow-pebbles. On the other hand, the cold isn't more than we can stand, and the fresh-fallen snow creates its own brightness despite the lack of sun today.

Better still, we had a delightful walk with Jack and Jill since all the detritus has been nicely buried in the swiftly accumulating thick blanket of new snow so they weren't given to continually leaping forward to swiftly take possession every few seconds of some new gustatory challenge we'd prefer they not ingest. And I believe they appreciated the quality of the walk as well, where we weren't constantly chiding them and gently pulling back on the leash in frustrated efforts to keep them from eating the kind of roughage they don't really need.

We came across one of our ravine friends walking his dog, and Jack and Jilly were beyond delighted to meet up with Jasper again. Jasper is a part pitbull, part retriever, part German Shepherd and he's a sweetheart of a dog. He's five years old, patient and good-tempered, always happy to see us, and prepared to cut our two little imps plenty of slack.

So yes, the walk today in the ravine, with snow piling on, was gorgeous beyond description.

They're both still lean and lanky little mites. This, despite their astonishingly prodigious appetites. When Button and Riley were puppies it took desperate wile to encourage them to eat their meals. And even then they ate sparingly, though with infinitely more gusto when treats were added to their diet. They loved vegetables and for the most part little salads comprised their evening desserts once the main portion of their meal was consumed. In the morning, tiny bits of shredded cheese sprinkled over their meal encouraged their appetites.

With these two puppies, Jack and Jill of excitable temperament, albeit calm interludes, no amount of food offered them commensurate with their stage in life and breed seems enough to satisfy them; they appear never satiated. Their portions are far larger than anything we ever attempted to feed Button and Riley with their picky attitudes to food. Jack and Jill will eat just about anything. And they do indeed eat just about anything.

Their rapacious appetite leads to utter distraction. When they're taken out to the backyard at regular intervals the need to evacuate takes second place to foraging. Even dead spruce needles that the wind sprinkles all over the backyard -- and inclusive of small pieces of living spruce with the needles still intact on the minuscule branches that hold them -- are fodder for their appetite.

Jack has the slight edge on Jill as far as height goes, but she has the advantage in weight, and it's more than slight, although she is still lean enough so that her spine feels sharp under our fingers as do her ribs. She's better adjusted than he is when we're on the ravine trails, looking about her with interest, while he is absorbed with scoping out any potential bits of edible detritus. And to him any detritus is edible with the exception of long pine needles, long dead.

We just wonder whether the habit of the breeder to leave bowls of kibble out continually rather than use any particular feeding schedule, added to the fierce competition that exists between the twins, represents the core of the problem, as we see it. When we first brought them home they were utterly frantic to get at their food bowls at meal time. And they still are, but not to the same degree.

And the incredible rate at which they whoosh down their food has marginally decreased as our relationship progresses. Since they're still very much in their puppy learning stages we hope that the assurances related to the discipline of on-time meals of ample dimensions will gradually wean them off their immediacy of consumption, leading them to a calmer state of expectation.

Finally, spring has placed a tentative toe into the door that winter has left ajar. Two weeks left before the Spring Equinox is upon us, but the ferocious winter that clamped down so icily upon us in February has gracefully permitted March to welcome milder temperatures. Snow is melting off our roof, and the centre of the road of the street our house is located on is finally free of snow and ice; we can walk on the bare paving.

Snowmelt is running down the street into catchbasins, and crows are circling overhead. The backyard now actually has winter-suffering grass appearing where the snow has melted. Jack and Jill hardly know what to make of it all; suddenly where everything was a monochromatic blanket of white, there is now colour and texture and intriguing smells, along with inviting bits and pieces of shrubs they can now reach to chew on to their hearts' delight.

We've got an absolutely clear ocean of blue above, and the sun is plugging away melting the icy atmosphere into a welcome blessing of warmth kissing our cheeks. As glorious a day was yesterday today is even more so. My husband is out in the driveway, washing his truck. Earlier he had washed layers of grime off the car; everything looks sparking-clean.

In the ravine it's tough going, with boots sinking into the melting snow. All the snow has fallen off the trees, and the snow melting on the ground is revealing rather un-polite detritus. Plenty of smells being released to intrigue the powerful capacities of little dogs' noses. We thought it was warm yesterday, so warm that a quite insistent wind felt like a caressing breeze. Today, however, it seems even warmer, the wind more gentle. Yesterday's high was an astounding plus-8, and today's a degree cooler yet it seems balmier.

We heard a pileated woodpecker calling from far-off within the ravine. Saw no other people rambling about in there, nor their companion dogs; we were earlier than usual, and most people tend to go out in the afternoons. Yesterday on our ramble we came across many of our acquaintances, stopped to talk interminably, as Jack and Jill made the acquaintance of other dogs, delighted at the opportunity.

Today, though, the ravine was our private preserve.

They're a pair of mischievous imps and it is useful to keep an alert eye and ear on their silences. Immediate absence from view and surrounding quiet usually spells some kind of mischief. But not always. They're swift and stealthy, and sometimes sneak past us when we're absorbed in doing something, so we aren't aware of their immediate presence, where they shouldn't necessarily be. But their unending curiosity about everything we do and their impulse to be right there as direct witnesses ensures their impulses.

We keep the door to the laundry room closed during the winter months. The laundry room has one door at the side of the house leading to the outside. And the other door leads to the garage. Two doors in a fairly limited space means that the room can get cooler than the rest of the house, and we prefer to keep that cool atmosphere limited to the laundry room itself; the difference in ambient temperature is marked when we do open the door for access to the laundry machines or when we're preparing to exit the house into the garage.

The thing of it is, the ceramic floor there, in the passageway from the kitchen to the laundry room is, like the kitchen and the laundry room, dark blue with black markings. And since our two little rascals are black, and small and quick, we don't always see when they slide past us on our heels into the laundry room as we enter it briefly for any reason. If we are aware they're there, we usher them out and they know what "out!" means. The reason they love going in there is that by leaping about strategically they're able to access mittens, woolly socks and headgear which they love to swift out of the laundry room and into the family room to play with.

As soon as we see what they're energetically trying to pull apart between them in a game of gnaw-and-destroy, we retrieve the item, depriving them of that particular game, briefly. But other opportunities always present themselves sooner or later. The thing of it is, we don't always notice when they've been in the laundry room after us, particularly at night, and often when we're absorbed in other things, we simply exit, closing the door behind us. Leaving one or another of the little mites locked into the room.

Some time afterward we will hear a short, sharp bark. They often emit those barks when they're taunting one another to come and play, and it will take a little while before we realize that one of them is sitting calmly beside us while the other is nowhere to be seen, intermittently barking, until the bark takes on a frantic-puppy tenor, and we realize where the absent puppy happens to be, and take steps to liberate him/her.

At which point the released puppy's gratitude is expressed in wildly ecstatic kissable form.