Well then, it appears that Winter 2015 feels it has procrastinated satisfactorily, compelled at last to lay down the initial snow blanket to accommodate Winter 2016 and we face a landscape transformed. My previous attitude that November is dark, bleak and unappealing also underwent a transformation during this unprecedented display of winter-as-laggard, and my eye began appreciating the brooding darkness of an early winter woods.

Still, it represents an aesthetic change to see the forest covered now with snow, etching its lovely quality of brightness on the landscape, seeing everything contrasting with its fresh appeal and placing an entirely different perspective on what we view. It was notably colder yesterday, less wind and ample sun to throw long beams of light onto the snow covering and it is transcendentally lovely.

We came across Max whom we haven't seen in weeks. Max is the kind of person who appreciates nature mostly for the opportunities his relative proximity to it offers for exercise and he hurries himself along the trails, engrossed on progress, his speed in covering a good distance with the help of two walking sticks his reason for being out there, propelling him along. He's always amenable to stopping and talking, greeting Jillie who always tries to leap on his legs to be noticed, while Jackie brings up the rear.

Max is forever full of the latest news and inside stories, and grievances about something or other. He has the precise nature of an accountant. He is a pleasant man, and we don't mind hearing him out; he politely, on the other hand, hears my husband out who sometimes agrees with him, occasionally rebuts him, but casually, and sparingly.

Yesterday it was exchanges over the crisis in the Middle East, the floods in Britain, wildfires in Australia, and tornadoes in the U.S. Midwest, and how fortunate we are to be able to complain about the inequities involved in being charged 30% more for electricity in our part of the city as compared to the major proportion of city residents. This, the most we can complain about, when other parts of the world are so dreadfully challenged by the nature of humankind and that of nature itself, certainly marks us as fortunate.