Nothing quite like the unpleasant prospect of being inundated through the swift approach of an oncoming thunder storm when you find yourself in the middle of a forest to add a little drama to one's life.

Yesterday started out depressingly cool and wet, yet again. This summer has seemed like anything but the traditional Ottawa Valley summer.  So much so that our air conditioning has rarely been called upon. Heat from the searing summer sun has eluded us for the most part, while rain events have been fairly constant. Judging from the number of times we've had to water our garden urns and pots lest the flowers we so much enjoy suffer -- which have been so scant we could count them on the fingers of one hand -- the rains have been unrelenting. And with them have come breeding grounds for mosquitoes.

Parts of the ravine adjacent our house have begun to resemble swamps, and those are the areas that we cannot evade by skirting them, since they encompass the entire width of the trail in too many places, necessitating that we take other evasive action like bushwhacking offtrail. In the ravine that means clambering up and down raised areas to avoid other areas unwelcome to our presence.

Yesterday when we started out for our ravine walk the skies had partially cleared and blue was popping up here and there, the sun sharing time with the shade. My husband, who felt overheated from work he had been doing in light drizzle up to that point shovelling mulched ash detritus onto our gardens was confident the rain was over for the day. For my part, though the sun was shining, I felt it better to take along a rain jacket into whose pockets I shoved little raincoats for Jack and Jill.

We entered the sodden ravine and the trails were slippery in places but everything looked glorious as it always does after a rain, greens vibrant and birds calling melodiously. Almost a third of the way through our regular circuit there was the faint but discernible sound of far-off thunder. The speed with which the sound began growing increased exponentially as we proceeded along the trail, until not ten minutes had passed and thunder was reverberating too close by for comfort.

We decided to turn around and head back rather than continue on the circuit, and we came across Suzanne, one of the rare neighbours who ever comes into the ravine. She was proceeding in the direction we had just abandoned, and wanted to stop and talk awhile, and so we did, although I felt under the circumstances we would all do better to just speedily continue on our way to make it to the street before we were inundated.

When we finally did part, she chose to continue her circuit while we doubled back and doubled the speed at which we proceeded, thunder ominously moving closer and clapping louder as we did. Finally we broke out into the street and made our way efficiently down the street and into our house. We hardly had time to divest ourselves of our boots and clean off Jackie and Jill's little footpads when the storm struck with ferocious fury. How's that for luck?