Yesterday was one of those strange, hybrid weather days, neither winter nor fall. After unending days of crisp, clear-skied freezing days that wouldn't rise above -10C and nighttime lows plunging to -17C alternating will almost-as-cold but moisture-laden days that brought seemingly unending snow events we thought we had landed securely into an earlier-than-normal winter.

Nature did a back-flip, though, to take us by surprise. Not that this type of thing isn't what she usually indulges in to keep us guessing. We were suddenly accosted with milder temperatures, both nighttime and daytime, and precipitation that fell first as freezing rain, then just cold rain, and plenty of it. Which made for some pretty interesting displays in the atmosphere.

Ice fog is one of those things and yesterday we had an all-day fog event, a grey cloud hanging densely on the landscape, limiting sightlines and softening everything you looked at. The prevailing fog was not as evident in the forest as it was out at street level. Yet the forest was securely steeped in the gloom of dusk throughout the day.

It's a condition that once one enters the forest confines, your eyesight quickly accustoms itself to and a different quality of light-and-colour emerges. One that enhances colour shades so that though everything appears in shades of black, grey and white, wherever green still remains it tends to glow. And the foliage that still stubbornly clings to beech trees for example takes on a different, deeper hue punctuating the overall grey cast of the fog, the green of the conifers, the black of tree trunks and the glaring white of the snowpack.

It was mid-afternoon by the time we got out to the ravine. We hardly expected to see anyone else, but we did come across some trail hikers that we know, and another whom we'd never before seen, walking a Newfoundland breed. Many years ago there was a woman who lived on an adjoining street to ours who had two Newfies; big lumbering beasts, benign of temperament. We hadn't seen any in years. This one was friendly as the breed is wont to be, ambling about, comfortable in the forest atmosphere.

Much larger and heftier than Jackie and Jillie after an initial barking session that the large dog ignored, all three seemed comfortable in one another's presence. Then along came a year-old Yellow Lab and a companion only three months old, and if any dogs are laid back and friendly, this is the breed. The younger one was incredibly appealing in its antic invitations to Jackie and Jillie to be friends and do a few laps around the trails together.

On our daily meanderings in the ravine on the forest trails, that's the thing; we never know what we might come across.