It never fails to surprise me that so many people who appreciate nature and enjoy taking their leisure walking through woodland trails, take so little notice of the details around them in the forest. They cannot identify the kind of trees or shrubs they look at, they fail to see what the forest offers from season to season on a micro-scale when seasonal wildflowers bloom and the presence of various types of birds and other wildlife is but of passing interest to them.

In the close to thirty years we've been making the ravined forest close to our home our daily target for exercise and relaxation and entertainment, we have long since become familiar with its various and numerous landscapes and the growing organisms -- bracken, mosses, fungi -- that make up those landscapes. There are natural signposts everywhere that we can readily describe to one another to identify position and areas that we discuss relating to events occurring there.

So I wasn't surprised three days ago when Dan -- who walks Charlie, his goofy, affectionate, large and shambolic female dog, taking pains to keep her out of the creek because she returns home full of detritus that Dan's wife doesn't appreciate -- informed me that the high winds of the day before had blown down part of a tree. What kind of tree, where it was, he couldn't explain. But I knew we'd come across it sooner or later.

Later, as it happened, since I'd been shortening our circuit lately for a number of reasons. Yesterday, though, I decided since the footing had improved vastly from the days previous, and the sun was full out, the temperature risen to 2C, that despite the icy wind, we'd venture much further and embark on a really long ravine ramble. Our two little dogs Jackie and Jillie were amenable. They, like me, were well dressed to withstand that icy, probing wind, and off we set.

There are now areas being freed from the grip of the winter snowpack, growing day by day as the warmth of the spring sun and relenting temperatures help the process along. On the other hand, for the most part, the forest seems intent on retaining the snow and ice layered firmly over the forest floor. Eventually we'll have, temporarily, areas quite free of snow and ice and others that will have encouraged it all to linger yet awhile.

I wasn't really thinking of my conversation with Dan as we loped along the trails. Still it came as a shock to see that the tree he had been talking about was a lovely old spruce with a double trunk, a tree much older than me and which had the appearance of being really sturdy and in good health despite that a decade ago a pileated woodpecker had taken the notion it would penetrate the tree's bark and leave great gaping holes. Obviously it was seeking out grubs and possibly that part of the tree had been failing for years. It was at the point where the two main divisions parted way on the main trunk that those furious gusts of wind had cracked off one of the trunks, a sad and sorry sight.

But in the many years we've been making this forest our daily destination for an hour or so, we've seen the results of micro-tornadoes ripping through the forest taking down majestic old pines, and lesser winds ripping less stable firs out of the ground. We've seen the results of ignorantly disrespectful area teens setting fire to the hollow split of one of the oldest, largest pines in the forest. And we've seen the ravages that occur to tree species like elm and ash when disease and the grubs of beetles create their carnage.

Every time a mature and dignified specimen yields to stern adversity it is sad, a loss, but one that time and the fecundity of the Earth replenishes in endless renewal.