We never cease to be surprised in our daily forays into the wooded ravine we access adjacent the street where our house stands. There now are infrequent times when we enter the forest trails and fail to come across anyone else out for a stroll through the woods, with or without companion dogs. Only a few years back we would be the only people out there for days on end.

How things have changed. When one of the tallest of the heights in the ravine succumbed after heavy rains and began to slump down into the valley below, filling up the creek running through it with detritus and trees that slid down the slopes, the municipality reached the decision to invest millions in remediation.

To that end, most of that hillside was deforested, professional tree fellers came in to take down most of the trees and to haul off those that had fallen into the ravine or cracked with the stress of the slump and there was a regular ferrying of timber out of the ravine, with huge trucks hauling out the felled trees that had served us so well as forest inhabitants for so many years.

That denuding of the hillside was followed by heavy construction that worked to pound long, sturdy iron masts into bedrock to stabilize the  hill and prevent it from crumbling any further into the ravine. The waterway at the bottom of the ravine is used by the municipality as a storm run-off to prevent streets and houses above from flooding during heavy rains. So what we lost in a small portion of the natural surroundings we so much value was transformed into a heavy-duty local storm run-off system.

Using the ravine and its creek for that purpose, of course, pre-dated the slump which threatened to take down some of the houses across the street from ours which had been built too close to the slopes, and the slump most certainly took with it a small proportion of some peoples' backyards. The concern was that the ground might have been so destabilized that it threatened the stability of the house foundations. People were ordered to evacuate their homes and weren't able to return until almost six months later when the work was finally close to completion.

And when it was, the newly contoured slope of the hillside was reforested. It takes a lot to become accustomed to the new, open look of the slope while the new trees slowly grow. It will take many years for them to reach maturity. We still haven't become accustomed to the vacuum left by the absence of that part of the forest. But it's only a brief space, until we plunge into the ravine and the trails take us off much further to other areas that remained untouched by the unusual number of downpours we had experienced the spring that the hillside gave way, several years ago.

In the reconfiguring of the hill, however, a new trail was placed through and alongside, and it stretches the distance to a major road. So there is a new entrance to the ravine and the forested area of a quite large suburban area of this capital city. People who live further afield began increasingly venturing into the forest out of curiosity, using the new trail, and many unfamiliar faces began to pop up from that time forward.

On our ravine hike yesterday on a beautiful, mild winter day we came across a number of people whom we'd never before seen, to add to those that we see on occasion, sometimes never to see them again, and on occasion to recognize them as new, regular trail hikers. Most often they're people like ourselves, who value these excursions for the opportunity they present to expose our companion dogs to the outdoors without having to walk them on noisy, busy streets.

Good for their appreciation for exposure to a wonderful natural resource, and our own peace of mind, strolling through such a (usually) tranquil and beautiful landscape.

Jackie and Jillie playing follow-the-leader, leaving us behind....