We decided to stay out longer for our ravine ramble yesterday and to go a little further along, on a cool, windy semi-overcast day, perfect for a longer hike. We simply elongated our circuit, revisiting old familiar haunts, places we haven't been to in a year which decades ago we used to include daily in our quotidian hiking habit.

Jackie and Jillie were beyond pleased. Any time we take a new route or go somewhere unfamiliar to them they're intrigued beyond measure. They're curious about everything, eager to explore, happy to be introduced to another landscape, ready to meet up with new experiences. The lay of the land is different and unfamiliar to them, the smells are different, and sometimes they come across people and dogs they've never before met.

Yesterday though we were in a place they likely don't recall from a few brief visits in previous years, we didn't happen to come across anyone else, neither people nor strollers with their companion pets. This part of the forest has more open areas, places that could be construed as small meadows, and there are great sweeps of wildflowers because there is greater access to all-day sun.

So there was goldenrod, fall asters, and drying Queen Anne's Lace to spare. And there, where trees tend to be less crowded and more sunlight encourages them, trees like Hawthorns are ablaze with ripe red haws, whereas in our part of the ravine where tree growth is thicker and sun exposure more iffy, there are few. The trails we used to take so many years ago have disappeared -- almost fully overgrown with runaway vegetation -- from lack of use; others have disappeared because the slopes they meandered about on have collapsed in places.

We had a pretty fair idea what we would see in that portion of the ravine, but we remained on the bluff rather than delve down through the several wide trails still open for access to the forest and the stream below. We knew there were old wild grape vines overgrowing deciduous trees and sure enough we discovered quite a number of mature vines dripping with clusters of bittersweet, small grapes of vitis labrusca.

Further on from that point there were two huge old pines, one stood at the edge of a clearing just beyond the forest and the other stood nearby within the forest. Then one day we discovered, about twenty years ago, that during a fierce thunderstorm, lightning had hit the exposed tree, breaking through and downing half of it and charring the entire tree. It stood there, a grim reminder of nature's implacability for years, both the snag and the immense girth of the fallen half-trunk slowly rotting. No sign remains of them now. The forest reached out to embrace and creep over them.The other still stands, healthy and more magnificent than ever. It is without doubt the most venerable pine in the forest, a giant of a tree.

Then we doubled back and returned to the circuit we take daily, closer to where we live where the trails are intact and our route choices familiar. We took a slightly different route back to re-connect with our familiar main circuit. Jackie and Jillie, still excited over their new adventure wanted to return the very way we had accessed the old route, but we took them a little further; their sense of orientation is certainly far superior to our own.