For a self-motivated, high-energy, competitive personality like our ravine-walking friend Barrie whose job as a crisis-response team member for our national police agency fit his action-oriented personality perfectly, the last several years of constraint, and restraint brought upon him by the mysterious onset of a medical condition, complicated by a variety of serious accidents, have been an absolute misery.

Witnessing the painful distress he attempted to work around was not pleasurable. Offering him our heartfelt best wishes as he went into one surgery after another, from the repair of a cracked collar bone to brain surgery was as empathetically concerned as might be conceivable. Each time he underwent one of the innumerable, sometimes-related, sometimes stand-alone surgeries and emerged in good spirits and feeling improved, he would be assaulted by yet another catastrophic body breakdown.

This once-robust, confident, muscular man eager to take part in marathons wherever they took place had simply worn out the body that nature gave him in trust. And he is now seeing the consequences and paying the dreadful price. His wife informed us yesterday that the latest surgery days earlier, to insert screws to fuse bones in his spinal area where several discs had given out was a success. He's up and walking about, gingerly, but his full recovery, he has been warned, would last between six and eight months. And Sheila, his wife, is determined to keep his enthusiasm in check.

At one time it was only Barrie we'd see walking their three Border Collies -- high-energy dogs to match the energy-orientation of their humans -- but Sheila shared the job of keeping them active and engaged. She would take them out for long ravine hikes in the forest in the morning, and Barrie took them out in the afternoons. Now keeping those three dogs active and unbored has been Sheila's job alone for the last few years.

On yesterday afternoon's ravine walk the temperature had dipped overnight and the daytime high had risen to 0-2C, with a sharp wind, under blue skies. The sun was great, but it was a nippy atmosphere we had forged out into when we brought our two little poodles out to the ravine. We came across a number of other trail walkers, since it was a Saturday. Sheila being among them. Taking their three dogs out for those walks in the forest gives Sheila a break in a sense, from her concerns over her husband's health.

The very fact that you're in a fresh-air, landscape-beautiful environment surrounded by trees, plentiful snow heaped on the forest floor, feeling refreshed and taken away from ordinary day-to-day concerns however briefly, is a cheerful and healthful alternative to whatever other occupations may beckon throughout the course of a day. It's restorative, a renewal of the senses, a boost to the immune system and a valuable adjunct to adding quality to one's day.