Among other seasonal occurrences, we do expect fall to be wet and are rarely disappointed. This year of 2019, though, has been unusually wet, from winter to spring, summer to fall. We've had inundating rains so frequently we've become accustomed to their presence and don't really mind it, since we've always had ample sunshine to go along with the seemingly alternate-on-and-off clear-and-cloudy skies. We accumulated a near-record for snow last winter, and the way things are shaping up, it seems we'll be doing the same with the coming winter.

Already, Alberta has had really significant snowfall in the mountains, and the city of Calgary has had its first snow storm. When our younger son drove with a few of his graduate students to a research site of theirs in the Kootenays last week for a few days' stay, their eventual drive back to Vancouver through a few mountain passes was replete with snow.

Yesterday we thought the morning rain would never stop. It did, followed immediately by a thunderstorm. We headed out when the storm was finished, in the certainty that rain wasn't finished for the day, but hoping we'd be able to hike our usual circuit in the forest before it fell again. Needless to say, the forest was drenched and dripping. We wore rain jackets and tucked Jackie's and Jillie's into our pockets. But we had put little sweaters on our two little dogs, given the high of 10C and accompanying wind.

As we were setting off down the first hillside trail into the ravine, a man suddenly appeared from a side trail and Jackie and Jillie went off on a barking tizzy, not their usual greeting for people, only for strange dogs. This was a youngish tall, top-heavy man bordering on obese, who to our rain jackets wore a short-sleeved shirt and shorts as though the cool, windy temperature meant nothing to him. He marched down the hill in front of us, not bothering to acknowledge our greeting.

Near the bottom of the hill where the choice is left or right, he chose right, a newly-forged, temporary rather steep side trail which sent him not once, but twice, into a deep dive on his backside. This is a trail we avoid in wet weather, and we turned left as we usually do. The ravine's stream was in full, roiling turmoil, given the amount of overnight and morning rain we'd had.

Before long, Nova, the big white German Shepherd friend of our two puppies came around to say hello, and not long after him came Rod, taking care making his way down the hill we were preparing to ascend. While the three dogs communicated what was of interest to them, to one another, we engaged in our own updates. Rod informed us that there's some drilling going on around the perimeter of the ravine, to determine the stability of the landscape, given the amount of rain plus the Leda clay that is so susceptible to 'melting' when inundated, a propensity that saw one of the forested hillsides slide into the ravine a few years back.

As we continued our hike, we came across an American bittersweet vine that we've known for years to grow in that spot, only now it has grown beyond the puny vine it once was, into a robust, spreading vine that has enclosed a young tree to such an extent it appears as though the vine is the tree itself. Its dangling orange berries identify it for what it truly is. We've many other such vines elsewhere in the forest, but this one is the granddaddy of them all.

Further on we passed a few wild apple trees, whose quality of apples we're familiar with. They're ready to be plucked and eaten, and we've been doing just that for at least a month, sharing them with Jackie and Jillie. At this point, only the apples beyond our reach remain on the trees, and there's plenty of them. They look tantalizing, but remain out of reach. Knocking some down off their high perches is something we've also done, but at this point we've exhausted that possibility as well.

There's a light fog throughout the forest, and rain keeps dripping steadily from the saturated foliage. The asters are so wet they look pathetically shrivelled and miserable, but we know that as soon as the sun appears and dries everything, they'll perk right back up again. Good fortune with us, we were able to complete our circuit without another rain event dampening the occason. But as so frequently happens, it wasn't long after we returned home before rain once again descended, in appreciable volume.