Our incessant rain events may have come to a stop, but it will take quite a while for the landscape to fully return to normal. Everything is saturated. The hillside slumps in the ravine are continuing. Trees continue their slide into the ravine, along with the Leda clay-infused soil that has become so destabilized. That being the fact, it's difficult to see how further erosion, given the composition of the soil, can be avoided. The three houses that have been 'quarantined' by the presence of an eight-foot-high construction fence will never be declared safe from further deterioration. And it seems to me that the municipal authorities that gave license to the builder to construct on such friable ground will have little option but to offer those homeowners to buy their properties with a mind to destroying them and replacing them with a small park.

Elsewhere in the ravine everything seems normal, if one can use that word to describe the morass that the forest floor has become, completely suffused with the results of unceasing rain at a time when full absorption of the deluge left by the spring melt of snow and ice hadn't been fully accomplished.

Yesterday was cold and somewhat windy, but not compared to the mean, biting wind of the day before and the episodic snow flurries. As we made our initial descent into the forest through the main trail leading off the street we live on across from the ravine, we could see below to the right a crew of workers installing tall construction fences across both sides of one of the bridges we normally take when we return from our daily circuit.

But as we turn normally in the opposite direction to access a bridge on the left, when we embark on our daily forest walkabout, we were unperturbed and went on our way; obviously we would have to devise an alternate route for our return, at some point doubling back onto the trail that took us deeper into the forest, after near-completion of our circuit.

The trails and the forest floor will remain steeped in muck for awhile, but no further such temporary morasses should logically occur as the area dries out, as long as those furious rain events move on and out of our close neighbourhood. Finally, we saw some bright orange fungi thriving among the rich layers of moss, the orange and green a lively contrast to the dull aspect of fall's foliage covering the forest floor, turned a laundry-day-inspired insipid grey.

As we neared the completion of our circuit, we doubled back and Jackie knows immediately that we're on terrain we had previously passed over earlier in our walk, and he dislikes this enormously for some strange reason; he always has, attempting to resist and to go onward to the usual circuit. That's a bit of a nuisance, since for a little fellow he has an awful lot to say about our route, in his estimation.

We could see as we approached the entrance/exit to our street, that more slumps had brought the yawning crater closer to the high fencing beside the trail where once there had been an expanse of gently sloping hillside, soon becoming steeper by far.  A portion of the earlier, more temporary fencing had caved in along with the slump, and it didn't bode particularly well for that area we've become so familiar with and which represents a vital part of our natural recreational outings.

It wasn't until we turned the corner toward our street in the final few yards to exiting the ravine that we realized the crews had been busy during our perambulation in the woods, setting up a tall fencing apparatus separating the trail from the street, necessitating that we bushwhack beyond it, expending somewhat more energy and balance than we're accustomed to, in that portion of the trail where we access the street and return home.