Based on the forecasted several degrees of elevation i temperature, and absence of the cutting winds of the day before, we made the somewhat rash decision not to dress as snugly as we had previously, setting our for our daily ravine walk in fewer layers against the cold yesterday. That turned out not to have been a wise choice. True, the cold didn't have quite the icy depth as the day earlier, and nor was the wind as grating against our faces, but it didn't seem that way.

We felt extremely cold out on our daily ravine walk yesterday, quite surprising us, as experienced as we are. We hadn't put boots on Jackie and Jillie reasoning that the cold was just on the cusp of what they're comfortable with. They didn't appear to be having any difficulty romping about in the freshly-laid, fairly light new layer of snow, to our relief however.

Later, in the evening, we put together our Saturday night pizza, after spending close to an hour dancing lazily over the kitchen floor to music Radio Canada entertains us with regularly, dating to the era when we were young. After our pizza dinner, enlivened slightly with the addition of anchovies torn over the chopped mushrooms, bell pepper, tomato and cheeses covering the bread dough I'd prepared on Friday then refrigerated, we gathered ourselves, we and our two little dogs, to view a film.

This film, Dersu Uzala, took place in Siberia at the turn of the last century, a collaborative work between Russia and Japan, the screenplay written and the film directed by the incomparable Akira Kurosawa, whose films are the very essence of cerebrally haunting views of humanity.

This one was no exception, a quiet, body-language-expressive, deeply moving account of a small military mission dispatched in a mission to survey the mountainous and flat-vista areas representing the border between Russia and Mongolia. The hostile and starkly beautiful environment, the endless physical challenges encountered and the collegial link between the small military group and an elderly Mongolian hunter who serendipitously became their guide became the focus of the film, gripping in its portrayal of determined humankind versus raw nature.

We went up to bed a little later than usual for a Saturday night, feeling pensive about what we'd seen and appreciative of the talents of everyone involved with the film, filmed in the late 1970s. Kurosawa's directorial oeuvre is second to none other; the world lost a filmic genius on his death.