Although we're accustomed to having the ravine 'to ourselves' -- in that when we go out into the forest byways following the trails hither and yon, we mostly don't see anyone else out and about, though we're always pleased to see our hiking friends -- it seemed odd to find the forest so quiet and peaceful yesterday. After the hullabaloo of the day before, when it was crowded with young people dashing about, calling out to one another, appearing suddenly at junctions of various trails.

All that activity activated Jackie and Jillie's possessive streak, that they would be so challenged for command of the trails by a horde of strangers claiming equal possession. Yesterday, even they seemed subdued, perhaps even pensive. Puzzled at the sudden change. As though affirming that yes, indeed, this forest is their private preserve.

Serenity, after all, is what we look for when we take to the forest trails. And that is precisely what greeted us yesterday afternoon. Yet, in a sense, it was as if something was missing. I suppose the uninhibited presence of young people and their enthusiasm and curiosity represents another kind of assurance of life's values.

Their presence throughout the forest trails on Saturday was a surprise of course, but with that surprise was also a kind of appreciation of their presence, even if it did interfere with our own enjoyment of our surroundings. A temporary interruption, hardly to be mentioned at all, since it is quite irrelevant to our daily outings. One day out of thousands when a younger generation flocked to the forest to take part in an exciting game of orientation. And perhaps out of that exposure to some among them might have arisen a wider interest and understanding of nature.

In any event, yesterday wasn't the weather-day of the day before when the youth invasion took place, and it was quite a lovely day; sun, light wind, and a moderating temperature. Yesterday turned out so heavily overcast with threat of rain so that by 4:30 in the afternoon dusk was already creeping into the forest. But not before we came across some interesting little miniature landscapes.

Colour, of course emerging colour here and there as the deciduous trees steadily move toward the loss of their foliage, but in the process the leaves turn such magnificent shades and pastel variations of red, orange, yellow and green. We took a longer circuit yesterday and passed the venerable old giant of a willow ensconced deeply within one of the valleys, with ridges above on either side.

We passed an immature fir, standing in the understory atop one of the forest ridges whose slender boughs and needles were catching all the leaves that were tumbling around it from above. It was as though the young fir was dressing itself for a Hallowe'en competition, pretending that an ambitious little evergreen was really (temporarily) a deciduous tree.

And at one point offside one of the trails that made up our circuit yesterday, there was the sight of a very small maple sapling, its scant foliage turned bright crimson, the sapling itself growing at the extreme edge of a large old pine, tiny, slender trunk touching the girth of the old pine's trunk, together in a comradely embrace on the forest floor.

And the sight of a fair-sized spruce that had begun life on a slope and over time had gradually begun to grow not upright as it should, but at a lean. And that lean became ever more accentuated over time, to the present, where its considerable growth and girth had produced a mature tree whose posture is now almost perpendicular to the ground. Its roots firmly entrenched in the mass of the forest soil, its mast firmly upheld by another mature tree on an opposite hill, a tiny bit of a valley between them.

On our return from our forest gambol-about, the sight of the garden, still doing its best to ignore the frost that had touched it several nights before, still delighting us with its architecture and colour.