On Thanksgiving Monday, the Bilberry Creek ravine -- a large protected forested ravine area in the midst of a large urban area, with entry adjacent the street we live on, but also connecting to a wide range of other entry points -- was rife with visitors. Visitors in the sense of people living nearby who enter the forested ravine on annual occasions like Thanksgiving Day, coinciding with full autumnal colour display.

We encountered so many people, they passed singly, in couples, in family units, in extended family and friends visiting for the holiday, that Jack and Jill were lulled out of their complacent fantasy of innocence that the ravine was their particular precinct which others may enter only with their consent. Jillie in particular kept barking at the continual meetings, confused and a trifle upset, while Jackie was more concerned about the prospect of meeting people who might possibly want to admire and pet him. In all our decades of hiking those ravine trails we have never seen so many people.

At one juncture, a sea of human legs so confused Jillie that she stopped, uncertain how to proceed until I swooped her up and continued onward with her. People were understandably in a good, seasonal mood and many conversations ensued briefly and convivially. It wasn't an outing, however, in which communing with nature could be undertaken as a silent appreciation of our surroundings.

A day later, all the difference in the world, when the only person we came across was a familiar young woman, a dedicated runner with her two miniature Shelties. The Shelties tend to be standoffish but since we're familiar to them they tolerated our puppies making a fuss over them. And from there on in, we had the woodland setting to ourselves.

The morning's heavy rain had swollen the creek to a muddy run-off. The colours of the changing deciduous trees were intensified by a low, watery cloud cover resembling nothing so much as the interior of an aquarium, with its pewter-look colouration. It turned out to be a benign weather afternoon, surprising us by the moderation of the temperature, yet with an insistent wind. The wind ensured that as we perambulated along, there was a continual confetti of falling leaves.

There is peace and restfulness in such settings. Stirring quiet emotions of gratefulness for our proximity to such natural beauty, and the health that good fortune gives us to enable us to explore it daily and appreciate our need to surround ourselves with all the symbols of a natural setting. At such times we remind ourselves of how fortunate we are to live in a free country with all its opportunities extended to enable us and everyone else to live as well as our industry gives us liberty, to enjoy all the pleasures and good things of life.