It's the oddest visual phenomenon when we're out on the forest trails early in the morning. The sun sits at a different angle and height in the sky entirely and what results is a huge variant on what we're accustomed to seeing in the ravine. Not only must our eyes adjust to the difference, but my camera, taking photographs, reacts differently as well.

There is a pervasive gloom that lingers deep in any forest setting, when a darker shade is very evident in the landscape as you delve into the woods. Once within, the embrace of darkness tends to dissipate for the most part, though you remain aware that you are in deep shade. Colours are still vibrant but they take on a much darker hue. Just as they do when you approach the woods after a heavy rainfall.

Yesterday morning we launched ourselves even a little earlier in the morning than has become our resort on these very hot and humid days. Rain had burst into a frenzied downpour during the night and once again before dawn. So that when we were out in the woods the rain event was still fairly fresh. Enough so that wind gusts brought heavy droplets down on us, shaking them off the foliage above.

Foliage on the forest floor, like that of tiny oak saplings with their outsize leaves, and Engleman's ivy, were slick with rain, shining from the diffused light that came through the forest canopy from the overhead sun. Ah yes, that overhead sun, coming in at a morning slant, is bedazzling in its brilliance. It sends hard bright shafts of light through the tree tops filtering through foliage-covered branches to virtually blind us as we progress along the trails.

Photographs come out in stark contrasts of dark and light and they're often kind of fuzzy in between. These colour contrasts leave an impression of arcane mystery playing games with our vision and our emotions in their autonomic response to the primitive within us equating darkness with potential danger, and reprieve with the light that confronts the darkness.

All of which add a quotient of fascinated frisson to the experience of venturing out at that changeable time of day.

Years ago when we were still  in the workforce and used to come out often at night for a ravine walk, the really odd phenomenon of plunging into the ravine and immediately realizing that the atmosphere was suffused with a soft, bright pink light enabling us to see details of the woods perfectly, appeared as a peculiar opposite of what we are now experiencing. In winter, the snow-covered ground reflected the pink ambient light and it was as though we were traversing a fairyland.