For this part of Canada at the very least it's shaping up to be an early and prolonged winter season for 2018./19. We've had more than ample intimations, apart from the fact that Environment Canada and the old Farmer's Catalogue have been suggesting the same. It's going to be one of those memorable winters, one suspects.

When we came down for breakfast yesterday morning we were greeted with a white world, and snow falling. Which it continued to do for the remainder of the day, albeit in light measure. The wind didn't pick up until late in the afternoon. And the temperature wasn't yet too cold with a high of 2C, which changed overnight rather dramatically; both the wind emphatically picking up velocity and the cold descending further into the frigid zone.

So this morning, although not all that much snow was left on the ground, we had a -10C temperature, so that's fairly cold for mid-November. We've had snow falling and remaining on the ground in previous Novembers, and we do have a tendency to forget previous winters' unusual activities, so perhaps we're mentally shrinking from oncoming winter, attributing to it unusual circumstances that aren't really there....

It's too early for winter boots yet. So we wore our hiking boots as usual as we traipsed the trails in the woods. And that was a challenge in descending and ascending the many and varied hills in the ravine; it is a ravine geology, after all. We found ourselves slipping and sliding, no firm hold on the thawed soil we had encountered the day before, complicated by a layer of snow that obligingly gave way under our boots when our footing really wanted firmness.

No problem for Jackie and Jillie, needless to say. Not yet cold enough to bother their little paws. Mind, they went to the groomer's right after our late morning hike in the ravine, so their hair while very attractive in appearance is now a little shorter and today's high is -6C, considerably colder than yesterday's 2C. Out with their warmer winter jackets.

It's easy to spot them now wandering off into the forest interior, off the beaten trail, so to speak. They're black against an increasingly white landscape. It's not Jillie who has this tendency to wander off, following scents and the actions of fall-frantic squirrels, but Jackie. We can usually see him with the improved sight-lines given the late fall absence of bracken on the forest floor, absorbed now though ready to reappear at the first signs of spring. But that's a long way off....

Surprisingly yesterday we saw few people we knew out on the trails; those we did come across were new to us, as were their dogs. Giving Jackie and Jillie the opportunity to make new friends, like the smartly-coated hound that came racing up one of the hills in a gambol of sheer unadulterated joy at the freedom of movement along forest trails.