We were so busy yesterday morning -- my husband downstairs in his workshop with his latest stained glass window at a particularly fussy juncture, and me upstairs routinely cleaning the bathrooms and other light housekeeping, that we hadn't noticed it was snowing.

That changed immediately we stepped outside the house, into a whirling, swirling fantasy wonderland already steeped deep in snow and now being refreshed with a fresh coverlet of swiftly descending, dense snow. We were surprised, hardly expecting yet another snowstorm, yet also delighted at the swiftly-occurring change in the landscape with trees heavily traced in new snow, a sight that never fails to impress us.

Such glorious visions bring out the awestruck child in all of us. As for Jackie and Jillie they couldn't have been more excited to bounce along the newly-fluffed forest trails and to romp about with renewed enthusiasm in familiar surroundings that add immensely to their quality of life. As the snow swirled about us it limited the range of our vision, adding a tinge of mystique to the experience of the trees newly-laden with snow crystals, the dense, opaque backdrop of buoyant snow drifting onto the forest floor lending the landscape an aura of magic.

Decreased visibility resulting from heavy snowfall is quite wonderful when you're trekking through a woodland arras, not so much when you're driving, but we were fortunate enough to be able to fully enjoy the snow falling while out on forest trails. There is one misgiving about the decreased sightline, however, in that Jillie has a habit of racing ahead of us. Sometimes she looks back to ensure we're in sight, sometimes she just keeps going.

And we keep calling her back. Mostly, she'll return if the call-back sounds urgent enough, but if she's on the track of something interesting her return is either delayed or non-existent until she hears an exasperated note in our imperative to return to us. Yesterday, we felt just slightly nervous over the possibility of her coming across for example, that hostile dog we met on the trails the day before.

And there's also the caution-quotient comprised of the fact that though we haven't seen any ourselves, others have told us that when they've been out very early morning and at dusk they've caught fleeting images of coyotes. One of our friends has been kind enough to show us photos he's taken of the coyotes that slip about behind his backyard fence, adjacent the ravine.

So for obvious reasons we feel more comfortable keeping Jackie and Jillie within close eyesight, without wanting to restrict their freedom too much. Jackie is seldom a problem that way. Though there are frequent times when he will rush madly ahead in pursuit of heaven-knows-what, he always races back to rejoin us. And if he is ahead and we want him closer, just speaking his name will impel him to return. Besides which, most often he is happiest trotting along beside us or between us.

It was a fabulous hour or so spent in the ravine yesterday. The muffling of sound, the constant, heavy snowfall, the exquisite landscape bathed in pure white, all conspired to please our aesthetic sense. The temperature had risen to a benevolent 2 degrees, yet it kept snowing, no freezing rain. Surprisingly, we saw no one else out enjoying this weather-and-landscape treat.

Later in the day, long after our return from our ravine ramble, the snow picked up even greater momentum and it didn't take very long before a sizeable accumulation resulted. Once more revelling in a world of sparkling white surrounding us.