The startlingly ephemeral beauty that is fall at its colourful height passes so swiftly, we're anxious to capture its brilliant likeness before it all fades. The bright yellow foliage blanketing the forest floor fallen from the poplars, all too soon naked to the wind and the cold, no longer shielding the sky from view when the mass of the woodland canopy succumbs to the assaults of sequential night-time frosts and shortened daylight hours quickly turn charcoal grey and begin to crumble.

The confetti-likeness of the red and the gold of maples and birch, the orange of beech leaves are breathtaking in their breadth of coverage, a generously wide and thick coverlet, their shapes and shades warming the trails even as the atmosphere bites, with cold creeping through our jackets as we amble along our daily ravine walk in Bilberry Creek ravine.

The enrapturing sight of a world transformed to bright yellows, picked out with greens and reds, dazzles our eyes. The fragrance of fall is a prod to reminiscences of countless other similar events which memory extracts from the depths of our experiences, from childhood to adulthood to maturity.

It is all new to our little dogs, they would have no memory of the year before when they were freshly born to life and largely unaware of what transpired in the world outside while they were kept in a kennel before they migrated to our world of household and daily ravine walks.

With the allure of the autumn landscape urging many people in the community to venture into a natural surrounding most ignore for much of the year, we come across people walking dogs we've never seen before, or see only on the rare occasion.

On the other  hand, we also come across people we're well aware of, since we see them fairly frequently enjoying nature in the company of their canine companions, and each time we meet it is a reunion of sorts, for us and for the dogs. Jack and Jill are overcome with enthusiasm each time they see dogs they've had the pleasure of acquaintanceship with. And each time they anticipate a great fuss will be made of their presence, by the dogs' accompanying humans.

Their 'enthusiasms' are so prevalent and absorbing we cannot yet imagine allowing them to be off-leash in the ravine. So they stand and they patiently wait while we stop briefly at various intervals to speak with acquaintances, and they watch without too much curiosity as they see Ruby down in the creek, barking to  her heart's content, that she can enjoy the now-frigid water passing by her robust little frame.