Dogs -- at least most dogs -- seem to love a snowy landscape. They enjoy digging their muzzles into the snow, lapping up the snow, leaping into piles of snow and snuggling into soft, newfallen snow, as well as rolling on their backs and sides in a doggy-bliss of happiness and comfort in the snow. That has been our observation over years of exposure to companion dogs' exploits in a forested landscape.

It makes you wonder about them. Do they just accept that suddenly snow appears where there wasn't any before? Of course they must. Do they remember the winter before when the snow gradually accumulated? Did they, like us, finally get tired and fed up in late winter with the cold and the snow making its inroads into daily lives that got structured around snow- and ice-storms?

Yesterday Jackie and Jillie once again casually familiarized themselves with the first inklings of winter appearance in an all-day light snowfall. By this morning there was still snow on the ground. Late last night the snow had continued falling and a modest accumulation had resulted.

Early yesterday afternoon it seemed strange to be walking up the street, snow steadily drizzling down all about us, as we strolled over to the ingress of the ravine, to descend the first long hill into the forest that bisects this community. The very singular fact that it is a ravine environment and thus not a geology amenable to urban 'development' has saved its presence and gifted us with the large bit of wilderness that nature set down in our midst where her other creatures could live in a relatively narrow corridor that we have fortunate close and convenient access to.

When we dipped into the ravine we left the boisterous wind behind up at street level, though it was amply evidenced in the recently leaf-depleted canopy of the forest as wind roared through now-naked boughs and shuffled the aggregated masts of trees back and forth.

There was that dusky appearance throughout the forest in full display yesterday, since leaden skies overhead mute light and pervade the forest with that ineffable atmosphere that seems inviting yet mysterious. Showers of snow, light but persistent, accompanied us throughout our woodland ramble as indeed it did continue to snow throughout the entire day. Beautiful, and a reminder of what will become this coming winter a constant phenomenon.

It seems we will be enjoying -- or not -- a colder than usual and snowier than usual winter this oncoming one of 2018-19. We're prepared for it, I think. Aren't we always?