Partly perhaps it's a time-of-year series of occurrences in the transition from winter to spring bringing the elements of change into conflict with landscapes, that tend to wreak havoc. It's now a year since the devastating wildfire that consumed much of Fort McMurray and which saw tens of thousands of residents in a panic to drive the sole highway in and out of the remote Athabaska oilsands town of 80,000 people. Before the wildfire, named "The Beast" moved off, shoved more by prevailing winds than the valiant efforts of firefighters both local and from other regions, an estimated ten percent of the town had been destroyed.

Now, in our very own personal location within the perimeter of the nation's capital, we are witness to an infinitesimally smaller, but fractionally less frightening natural phenomenon threatening the homes of a few neighbours on our street. We have the vast good fortune, in our location, to have homes built alongside a large natural forested reserve, a woodland ravine whose geology has kept it safe from property development and which compromises for us personally, a profound boost to the quality of our lives.

But the fact that the entire locality sits upon a vast reserve of land whose foundation is a mix of Leda clay and sand, means that the area is prone to slippage when enough rain falls, to inundate and suffuse the ground to an extent that changes the nature of the Leda clay. When it is saturated and when there is no cease of ongoing saturation, Leda clay tends to dissolve and great instability ensues. The hillside along which the street where our homes were built has been slumping disastrously over the past few weeks. So for those homeowners the good fortune aspect of living alongside the ravine may at this juncture seem elusive.

And where houses were built adjacent the ravine contiguous with it and beyond the high point where the land dips precipitously, the recent rains have devastated the hillsides. Slides taking away the hills in great scoops of descending arcs and pouring the dissolved Leda clay along with the forest that sits atop it, have slumped into the ravine proper, barricading in part the stream that runs below.

Three homes down the street from where ours is located, and across from where we live, have been declared unsafe and in danger. On the weekend, an industrial construction-type of blue-coloured chain-link fencing, about 7 feet in height with no entry point, was installed around the front of three of the homes, to ensure that no one can gain entry to them. The homes have been evacuated. A private security firm has been contracted to have a presence on site.

We've seen trucks belonging to the municipality and to a large engineering firm whose employees, with the help of theodolites have been surveying the horizontal and vertical angles of the areas directly being impacted. The hope being that something can be done to ameliorate the situation. However, given the composition of the soil at its very basic level, the very idea that remedial action can be taken seems a leap too far. Nature appears to have us stumped us on this one, as is her inevitable way.