Dusk sends down its grey lighting absent shadows on our landscape earlier now that we're in December, awaiting the Winter Solstice in several weeks' time. Having turned the clocks 'back' to save daylight, we lose it earlier in the evening hours. It doesn't seem like a reasonable trade-off, actually. And in fact, we are now being introduced to twilight hours at either end of the day, in the early morning hours and the early evening hours.

It represents an effort to think of 'early evening' just after four o'clock in the afternoon. But this is when dusk begins to inexorably and rapidly descend, inviting darkness to overtake the day. Now, when we venture on occasion late in the afternoon into the ravine for a perambulation in the woods the light is dim and rapidly becomes dimmer. It's a far cry from summer when we have long days of sunlight and warmth.

Now approaching winter, November did its utmost to abuse us of the notion that we really did not have to prepare for cold weather; it would take its time arriving and we could take our time preparing for that arrival. We have a natural reluctance to acknowledge that for the next four to five months our prevailing temperatures will be below freezing, and weather episodes of all dimensions, from calm and reassuring to violently threatening -- and everything in between -- will be imposed upon us.

During yesterday's ravine walk, late in the day comparatively speaking, after all of Monday's chores were looked after, the ground frost level was obvious from how it felt underfoot; hard and firmly unyielding. Not much of a wind, but it was cutting, given how icy the temperature was, so we trotted along at a fairly rapid pace to build upon the warmth that energy expenditure results in.

When, shortly after four dusk began descending, the light level noticeably declined. But in fact, even when we entered to begin our trail walk the atmosphere was light-gloomy because of the heavily overcast sky. As we traversed the trails the light edged increasingly into ever dimmer conditions, almost as though a light grey fog had descended.