People have their private lives, their regrets, their sorrows, their need to find temporary ease, and some of them seek out the comfort of our natural surroundings to drown themselves in solitude, fleeting peace, and the visual pleasure of nature's indifferent beauty. Yesterday was the first time we'd ever encountered the strange reality of one of our ravine friends leaning against a tree, his breath reeking of alcohol.

Who might have guessed that this man who waxes poetic about his memories of growing up happy in rural New Brunswick where he would happily move back if it were not for his wife's disinterest, has such a burden to bear that immersing himself daily in nature is just not enough relief. He adores his sloppy, shaggy dog for whom he would do just about anything. Were it not for that dog, he tells us time and again he would miss the comfort and loveliness of ambling along in the ravine.

He never speaks of his children, only occasionally of his wife, sometimes of his brother still living on the family plot that he himself is part owner of, back 'home'. But we do know that one of his children, an adult, will never leave his own 'home' because he was born with Down Syndrome and remains a beloved burden on his parents. We know that not because he has told us himself, but because another friend informed us.

And likely this was disclosed to the other friend because he too -- a perennially cheerful personality dedicated to ravine hiking as a health measure as he has no dog -- must cope on a 24-hour basis with the infirmities of a wife who can do little physically for herself, completely debilitated by rheumatoid arthritis. This second friend, a wisp of a man physically, underwent knee replacement surgery rather than plant himself in a wheelchair as his wife did years earlier, rather than living with the pain of constant movement, vowing to himself that he would never deteriorate as he had witnessed his wife doing.

On the other hand, there is the ravine friend with three high-physical-need dogs who himself is motivated by personality type to be constantly on the move and active, finding himself a perfect fit for his dependents requiring three-times-daily romps in the ravine but who has suffered great physical handicap in a dislocated shoulder when he fell from his racing bicycle, but a far more grave condition when he was diagnosed with water on the brain.

Bouts with excruciating headaches, dizzy spells, memory loss were all explained with that diagnosis. The solution for which was to implant a pump from the base of his brain to drip off the water through a hose that draws it away internally through the length of his body into a bag collecting it constantly. The pump must be carefully calibrated and that in itself proved yet another dreadful hurdle, but finally the headaches have left, the dizziness greatly abated, and his short-term memory has returned. Another surgical procedure removed the plate in his shoulder that was causing him additional pain.

This is how people endure the trials and tribulations that life has given them.