Following two days of hard, steady rain, we were finally relieved yesterday afternoon to find that despite overcast skies the rain finally came to a halt. Enabling us to put on raingear just in case rain recommenced, and take ourselves out to the ravine for a trailwalk in the forest.

Jackie and Jillie in their own raincoats were free to roam about, while in some stretches of the trails we had to exercise two-legged caution on the icy trails remaining, the rain making them slipperier still. The forest floor was well and truly drenched. Rain and melting snow make their way down the hillsides into the creek below and it was running fairly high.

But in the flatter areas up above, rain accumulated in great, deep puddles that will take some time for the overtaxed forest floor to absorb. We heard, for the first time this spring, the sweet melody of the chickadees' spring song. And saw a brown creeper making its way up a poplar trunk. The pileated woodpeckers are hard at work, their rhythmic, regular pecking can be heard at quite a distance, as can their call, almost as lunatic as that of a loon's.

Because the forest was so drenched, dark, quiet colours that one scarcely notices otherwise became vibrant, as bright as when the forest is in the throes of preparation for winter when fall hosts colourful foliage falling from trees and littering the ground below.

It's a mess underfoot, to be sure, and that is likely the foremost reason that few people venture into the woods right now. Truth is, it hardly matters when and in which conditions you're in a forest, there is always so much to see and notice that changes day by day. It's an absolute delight to be there, and what's more our bodies appreciate the opportunity to stride along breathing the fresh air, exercising our limbs and muscles, while appreciating spring breezes, and the sight of tiny green bits of emerging plants popping up here and there on the forest floor.