Plenty of our semi-committed dog-walking friends who frequent the forest trails in the ravine have told us they'll be missing in action for the next month or so. Many people prefer to bypass the transitional mess the ravine will become on its way from a winter landscape to a spring one.

It's started, and it will be more prolonged and likely worse this year than it has been for the last several. Each year it's different. We can readily recall some years when the mud has been impossible, when despite areas that had released their burden of snow into the creek below the hills, other areas persisted in holding onto their icy surfaces making trail walking there beyond difficult.

We had the option of taking alternate routes to bypass those areas where ice remained thick on trails that aren't situated in places where the ice can be bypassed, and it's a nuisance but it can be done. Clearly, the avoidance has begun, for yesterday afternoon we saw no one out walking the trails, much less anyone with a companion dog.

So it was a quiet stroll along the trails for us, and a pleasant one, since the temperature was a modest 8C, with a slight wind albeit also overcast. And though some parts of the trails were broad and deep in ice, with that kind of temperature the ice loses its firm glassy finish and there's little chance of slipping as long as we're geared with cleats over our boots, and we were.

Moreover, there are now growing areas on the hillsides where the forest floor is finally revealing itself. We complain that it's taking forever for the snow to depart, but when it does what's under it is sheer, unadulterated ice so that when it's below freezing, the ice presents a slight hazard, but when above freezing, the ice can be slippery to those without cleats, but for us it was easily manageable, soft enough at the surface for the cleats to bite well into the  ice, allowing us to stride along with complete confidence.

Jackie and Jillie take each day as it comes, their philosophy is they can't do anything about it, so just live with it. Or at least that's what they tell me....

Signs of buds appearing on shrubs and trees still evade us, but it won't be long. Striding along yesterday conjured up memories of sighting the first of the wildflowers to bloom in the spring ravine; coltsfoot, trout lilies and trilliums and then Jack-in-the-Pulpits, lilies-of-the-valley and foamflower, violets and dogwood, and the trees bursting into leaf.