As though out of the blue -- although today there was no blue in today's sky, rather it is uncompromisingly overcast, a steely-grey sky threatening at any moment to open up to yet another rain event -- a little Cairn terrier came dashing over the bridge, past a surprised Jackie and Jillie, up the sloping hill, then back down again with both our twins in hot pursuit.

They are a little lighter this morning; earlier in the day I disposed of a hefty bagful of soft black fluffy hair and it wasn't mine. I'd have to go back a whole whack of years for my hair at this point in life presenting as black. In theirs, at age three, it's expected, even with Jillie's white blaze and Jackie's little white chin hairs. It didn't take all that long to trim their hair, and it won't take all that long for it to grow back again as undisciplined and bush-like as it was before the trim.

Age three is just how old the little terrier was, though he was a robust little fellow. Later, as we stood about talking with a young couple with their two young children whose family the terrier was an integral part of, I was standing on that same bridge when the terrier in a burst of exhilarated energy romped across it, and the bridge shook under my feet.

So robust, yes, muscular for a little fellow and weighing easily twice what Jackie and Jillie do, he was just on the end of over-sized for his breed, an outgoing and happy little fellow, whom our two were more than happy to oblige. The little girl, just started school, and her older brother were fascinated with the interplay between the three dogs, matched in enthusiasm if not quite in size.

Their mother had a hearty, infectious laugh that rang out easily and often, a young woman happy with her life and her family, since they were quite obviously her life. Her husband, a bespectacled young man who evinced a keen interest in everything my husband said was either extremely polite or genuinely interested, an unusual phenomenon inter-generationally outside family ties.

But then, being out in the woods, even on such an overcast, threatening day, cool and damp from last night's copious rainfall, would mellow anyone's mood. It is a tranquilizing experience, all sound muffled by the foliage gradually turning earthy tones of golds, browns, orange and red and smelling swooningly of tannin, the landscape rushing to invade one's aesthetic senses, filling the orbs of one's eyesight, satisfying the ingrained need to be with and in nature.