It's a puzzle to us how such a slender man of slight height as he can be out in cold, wet weather wearing a white shirt and over it only a light red unlined nylon windbreaker for warmth. His only concession to the cold during the really frigid days of winter is the addition of a toque and warm gloves. Perhaps on occasion a sweater under the jacket. He always uses two walking sticks to propel him along and he treks the forest trails at a speed we wouldn't want to emulate. Perhaps it's his Swiss origins.

He tells us that his brother in Switzerland last wrote about the drought causing strict bylaws to come into force against the excess use of water. Restraint, in fact, so severe that it impacts on daily life there; the use of water that we take for granted forbidden. Oddly enough, last week the very day that we were receiving snow flurries, so was Switzerland, early for both countries, he laughed as he regaled us as he often does, of what life in his village was like.

He once introduced us years ago, to a cousin who was visiting him from Switzerland. She was a relatively youthful-in-appearance and -bearing woman who obviously was comfortable hiking along in a forest setting with all the impediments of tree roots and rises and descents present, and at that time she was in her mid-80s. He himself is an exemplar of Swiss forbearance in embracing all weather that nature brings to try us and to delight us.

Yesterday we weren't tried, only delighted at the continuing mellow, golden prospect of the sun more easily penetrating a diminishing foliage-packed forest canopy to burnish the fallen leaves on the forest floor with illuminating sunshine. It doesn't in fact look real; more as though it has been staged, so theatrical does it look. And that is quite in character for much of what nature presents to us.

In the areas where the leaves first began falling weeks ago, mostly among the poplars, what was not so long ago scintillating with colour has embarked on its journey to becoming drab. Before long the richness of the piles of yellow leaves will become grey then black and the beauty will have disappeared until snow falls to cover it with its own blanket of virginal white.

In the early days when as puppies they encountered one another....

Halfway through our mostly sunny 4C, windy hike in the woods with Jackie and Jillie, a little excitement introduced itself when little impish Max turned up, a three-year-old miniature Apricot poodle. Max in his earlier days was a whirling dervish; as active, inquisitive and unrestrainedly reactive as Jackie and Jillie were in their puppy days, Max outdistanced them in manic activity. On the other hand, with our two it was precisely because there were two that their frantically acrobatic displays of discovery seemed so overwhelming; with Max you got a single whirlwind of action.

He has, however, like Jackie and Jillie slowed down somewhat. But his original spontaneous reaction to any kind of stimulation, like coming across other people and other dogs sprang into action yesterday as he scampered and raced about, while Jackie and Jillie reciprocated only to a degree. Enjoyable to watch them in their interaction.