We're steadily progressing into winter. By the calendar winter is till a month away, but that's a human construction, pinning winter's arrival to December 21; nature ignores all such artifices and knows that when she wants her cold season to arrive, she'll move her elements to the task. And they obey, never questioning what it is that the conditions they represent in wind, atmospheric temperature and moisture are meant to accomplish. They're far more intimately acquainted with the seasons that we who are just passing through.

So now instead of kicking up masses of fallen foliage as we make our way along forest trails in the ravine, it's freshly fallen snow that rises in white puffs before us, as we sink our boots into their plushy heights.  Jackie and Jillie are beside themselves with joy over the new conditions that have arisen in their natural environment.

The 'wet' feeling on their little paws excites them to run about hither and yon in an excess of exuberant happiness. Jillie champs at the bit as it were to go faster and further than ever before and has to be recalled constantly. Jackie is more attuned to how we feel about their going too far out of sight and tends, when we call Jillie back to us to race like the wind to be at our side. And as long as there is nothing of interest ahead to monopolize Jillie's attention she too after a second or third urgent call to return zips along the traiL back to us.

Our younger son, with us for too-short a time, accompanied us on our walk yesterday afternoon. He'll be flying back to Vancouver all too soon. Whenever he has a conference in Ontario or Quebec he plans to use his location as a springboard to stay with us awhile before returning home to Vancouver. A chance for us to catch up in person next to one another with whatever's happening with the family. He stopped over a day in Toronto to visit with his older brother. He's yet to see his sister and that's scheduled for tomorrow.

Snowy weather, unusual for this early season just happened to coincide with this visit. Usually he's here for a week or so in late December or early January. So we had all-night snow the night he arrived, and it continued snowing all day yesterday and lo and behold, more snow today, falling in thick clusters, though it's considerably milder today than the previous few days.

On our trailwalk yesterday we saw none of our usual friends, coming across a man and his dog neither of whom we'd ever before seen in our decades of woodland hiking. At one juncture there was a man and a woman on snowshoes along one of the trails, and the woman, seeing and hearing Jackie and Jillie became petrified with fear. Our little dogs have breed-specific habits that are truly annoying, one of which is to bark when they see someone they don't know.

And this is just what they did yesterday when we came across the snowshoeing pair. I apologized to them both for the ruckus our two were raising, but the women was frozen in fear at the two little jackasses swirling around, barking. I certainly hope she's spared the experience of coming across large dogs should she return to the ravine, some of which may appear threatening in their size and proximity if you don't know them, and some of which do leap up at people, their weight in so doing in slippery conditions threatening to topple the unwary.

That they mean no harm but are enthused over seeing people would certainly fail to impress this poor woman in any positive way.