Yesterday's typical-March sudden turn to cold weather below freezing accompanied by high winds kept a lot of people from roaming about through the forest trails in the ravine. The extreme cold had turned the trails icy-firm and made hiking along them that much easier than when the recent spate of mild weather with temperatures up to 4 degrees on occasion -- beginning to melt the snowpack and making mush of the newfallen snow -- made struggling uphill a bit of a nuisance which most people simply avoided, preferring to remain above, on the flatter areas rather than descend into the ravine itself.

We did come across Rob, who lives alongside one of the ravine entrances on a street quite removed from where ours is located -- but then the forest and the ravine run through a good swathe of land throughout the community. Of the tens of thousands of people who do have easy access to the ravine at one point or another in its land-stretch, relatively few are familiar with it and fewer still make it a constant destination. Rob goes out for his rambles through the trails at least twice, and on occasion three times daily.

He cuts a figure like few others do, given his amazing height, close to seven feet. We no longer ask him whether he plans on looking for another dog. It's been at least eight months since Lily, his white German Shepherd, suddenly died at age 11. Whenever we would come across him on the trails we would automatically look for her ghostly white figure to emerge from the woods as she always did, in the months immediately following her absence. So did out little dogs for whom Lily was such a familiar figure, tolerant of their livelier behaviour. Likely he hasn't yet convinced himself one way or the other.

Seeing no one beside Rob left us all four to shamble along the trails, taking our time, enjoying the still lovely atmosphere of a forest suffused with snow and newfallen snow, given the days of constant snowfall we'd had the week previous. We had taken care to dress for the cold and were comfortable enough, though the wind made it a requirement that our jacket hoods remain firmly over our heads. Jackie and Jillie were outfitted again with their warmer winter coats. They never seem to mind the cold and the wind except when the temperature drops below -7C.

For the first time since winter seriously arrived months back our street is now clear of snow and ice, and that's something. The house lawns now, that's another story. Although snow did recede and begin to melt in early March there remains an abundance of accumulated snow on people's lawns, their gardens deep in that cold, icy blanket that shelters them through the winter months from the worst excesses of the deep cold we're accustomed to receiving in January and February.