Although it's early season-transition days yet in this part of the globe's geological and atmospheric realities, we now begin to see a glimmer of change. Nature's inestimable talent in altering the stage from which we regard her wonders is once again transforming the natural world around us. Yet this has been an unusual spring even by the usual standards of spring's eternal struggle to convince winter its tardiness is not appreciated.

The general consensus among those whom we usually pass light banter with on the weather is that yes, this is a hugely unusual spring even for Ottawa. Night-time temperatures, for one thing continue to plunge below freezing, including the occasional day-time high that barely manages to reach the above-freezing mark. Not to mention ongoing snow flurries and icy sleet.

All of which retard the usual and gradual freeing up of the frozen ground, let alone the melt of the accumulated snowpack. There are growing areas on the forest floor that have managed to free themselves; depending where and when the warmth of the spring sun happens to glance day-by-day when it manages to grace us with its presence.

In other portions of the forest the snow has decreased in volume, and the ice interspersing it is no longer glassy-firm, but rotting. Trails are slower to lose their ice-and-snow compactness because they've been trodden throughout the winter months, so sometimes the trails remain packed with snow and ice while beside them the snowpack has finally melted away. Still, on the greater balance of the forest floor there are great swathes of still-deep snow accumulation.

Surely by now, we tell ourselves, it should all have melted? As much as we depend on memories dating back considerable years of observation, we're left with uncertainty when we assert that this has been the slowest snow-melt spring we've ever encountered.

As we plod along through the mushed-up trails through the forest we continue to come across trees damaged by the ice storm of last week. The ferocious winds wrought another kind of damage, hurtling its force against denuded trees awaiting the time of leafing-out, and sending clumps of pine needles onto the forest floor alongside a condor's-nest-worth of twigs, looking as though a giant has tossed down pick-up-sticks.