By the look of things so far, it doesn't appear as though we'll have much of a chance to get out into the woods, perhaps for the balance of the week. Certainly today doesn't look promising, yet. A little bit of drizzle is no hindrance to a walk in the woods, but what's coming down is nothing like light; it is, instead, a constant deluge.

Of course to us it represents a bit of a nuisance. But to our neighbours living on the opposite side of the street, with houses backing onto the ravine it's another matter entirely. I cannot even begin to imagine the concerns they're living with. It's the kind of thing that makes for sleepless nights and frantically nervous days, wondering whether the landslide that began over a month ago resulting in the hillside collapsing behind them reaching toward their backyard lots, and occasioning the directive that three of the houses be immediately vacated, will target them next.

Some of our neighbours living adjacent those that had to temporarily vacate their homes have been advised that if conditions once again deteriorate as they did to the extent that the hillside slumped so dangerously a month earlier, they might indeed be the next to go. We could even, when we were out yesterday going through the ravine and seeing no one else out, hear workers over at our section of the ravine, cutting down trees, and loading the logs onto waiting trucks.

The engineering company hired to do the work of shoring up the hillside brought in a huge drilling machine, truck-mounted, to get a core sample for the purpose of determining where bedrock begins. The idea is that a hugely deep corrugated-steel 'wall' will be dug into the side of the hill where the slumps have stopped, leaving huge craters behind, in an effort to stabilize what is left of the hill. Meanwhile, down below it, a large road is being constructed where once that portion of the ravine was heavily wooded.

Over the decades that we've been hiking through these woods that have given such value to our lives, there have been many natural changes, but none as profound as what has occurred this wet, wet spring. And now, on top of today's constant heavy rainfall, the weather forecast for the week is for rain, every single day. How the already saturated Leda clay and sand will react to this fresh onslaught is anyone's guess.