Our youngest son had a conference in Granada a few weeks ago. While he was in Spain he decided he'd extend his stay for another several weeks, rent a car, and toot around Andalusia. On an earlier occasion years back, it was the opposite end of Spain he had explored in the same way. Mostly he's interested in the national parks, and hiking in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. He sent along a few photos he's taken, forwarded with his emails, and they show pretty rugged terrain, but extremely old shepherd's huts, he tells us, can be seen here and there, where shepherds have pastured their sheep since ancient times.

Iberian wild sheep: JSR

While it's been an extraordinarily cold spring here, with endless rain events, there he says, it's 30 and 35 degrees, though with sundown the atmosphere cools off somewhat. And up in the mountains it's cooler. He can understand, he tells us, why it's so sensible for everything to shut down for an afternoon siesta, in the heat of the day.

Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, Spain   JSR

Modern technology is astounding. To think that my son, rambling about in Spain, can send his parents emails describing what he's seeing and experiencing, and we can read it within moments of his sending it, while he continues on with his adventure, and sends us photographs so we can get a 'picture' of what he sees, is downright astonishing. As for us, we get on with our own daily adventures in our natural surroundings, in a far more prosaic way.

We daily explore our own very private forest preserve (or so it seems at times) with our two little dogs and look out for wildlife and uncultivated vegetation whose habitation it is, finding huge satisfaction in having these opportunities so readily accessed.

We're not, needless to say, the only nearby residents who believe that the presence of this natural forested preserve adds immensely to the quality of our lives. A very small percentage of the nearby urban dwellers feel as we do; privileged to have such access. Most people never venture into the ravine.

And yesterday was no exception. we came across only one other hiker and dog. So Jackie and Jillie made the new acquaintance of a very large, exceptionally happy and friendly Labradoodle, and enjoyed a brief bit of entertainment with the dog, a distant member of their own family tribe, before we all moved on.

Quite a day it was yesterday, about as far from the weather system our son is enjoying where he is, as could be possible. We'd gone out in late morning to try to avoid the afternoon rain that was forecasted by Environment Canada. A kind of extension of the freakily insane weather that had swept through our region the day before, with a tornado touching down on several streets nearby.

Its sudden appearance was quite the surprise. So much a surprise that a tornado warning went out to alert residents, but it was received moments after the tornado had struck. Those whose properties were damaged now have the unexpected job of arranging for roof repairs, car repairs from falling trees, and other unfortunate and unforeseen property damage.

Because we set out in a drizzle, and the temperature was 8C, and the wind was penetratingly cold, we all wore rain jackets, including Jackie and Jillie. It was cold, but we were well prepared for it, and found our hike through the forest trails more than pleasant. At one point the rain stopped and to our surprise there was a bit of a clearing, and out popped the sun, illuminating the trail in the usual pattern that emerges through the leafed-out forest canopy.

It was only several weeks ago that the forest looked bare and desiccated. What a difference from how it looks now. True, the forest floor itself remains a swamp of unabsorbed rainwater, but the vegetation that has erupted unceasingly for the past few weeks has transitioned into the landscape of late summer, not mid-spring. The green mass of vegetation has well and truly overtaken the naked look of early spring; the verdant trees and forest understory seems to throb with energetic enthusiasm.

This may turn out to be one of the wettest springs in recorded memory, and the coolest. And if it continues into summer, another record could be broken. So do we mind? Actually, not at all. It's refreshing, still a monumental change from what the past winter was like where other records were broken for cold and amount of snowfall, and length of the interminable days of unrelenting cold, late to depart.

However, the people whose homes are built nearby on floodplain terrain adjacent the Ottawa, the Lievre and the Rideau rivers will most certainly feel quite differently about this weather. The late melt of the snowpack and the ongoing rain all contributed to major flooding events in the area, with residents desperately sand-bagging to try to protect their homes. The military was called in to help with the sandbagging efforts. And now that threat of flooding has receded, those millions of sandbags have to be removed and their polluted contents safely disposed of.