For some people -- and I am certainly among them -- fall is a pensive and also often a particularly sentimental time of year. Somehow the introduction of the season that leaves behind the spontaneity, warmth, casual impetus to leisure activities that is summer for the transition to cold, urgent winds, more frequent rain sessions, inspires memories of previous falls. Mostly nostalgic and pleasant memories of walking deep in fallen leaves, hearing the shushuring of the leaves, watching wind pick foliage off colourful trees and distribute them hither and yon, reading before a fireplace, pulling on warm and cozy sweaters while enjoying hot chocolate drinks.

And for me there is also the emotional reluctance I felt as a young mother when our children returned to school. I loved having them at home. Mine was a generation where few mothers of young children were in the workforce. We weren't financially well off, another salary would have been useful, but neither my husband nor I could imagine the children coming home to a house void of someone to look after them, or farming them out so someone else could be a proxy for an absent parent. Ours was a different world.

And because of our impecunious financial situation, just managing to pay the bills, our entertainment consisted mostly of being out together in natural surroundings. Living in Toronto at the time, the municipality was opening up what they called conservation areas where people were invited to take their family and enjoy the opportunity close to the city of experiencing natural settings. It was when our youngest was not yet a year old and I carried him, that we discovered the pleasure of hiking along forest trails.

It isn't too far a stretch to think of our having adopted two little dogs once our three children had left our home which was their home, so that we could continue to have dependents with us and enjoy the pleasure of sharing life with them. Yesterday we set out for the ravine with Jackie and Jillie, with the knowledge that the forest, under heavy clouds threatening rain, and a stiff wind, would seem more like November than early October, at 6C. There was a frost warning out for overnight low temperatures.

Now, the forest is quickly turning to colour. On our way up the street walking toward the ravine, one of our neighbours has a mature maple that turns the brightest carmine long before any of the maples in the forest does. The trails have taken on the confetti look of bright colours as though the forest is celebrating the introduction of fall, and the wind stirs the trees, loosening leaves from the branches, so that at times the amount of detritus falling around us, appears as though a fountain is spewing and spilling a continuous fall of woody matter.

Finally, we noted, the partridgeberry ground cover on the forest floor has put out its berries and they're assuming a bright red colour against the dark green of the evergreen foliage. Their colours are reminiscent of the Christmas season that features bright greens and reds. Nature imitating human
adaptation to the seasons in their panoply of celebratory events.

Sometimes, when we're walking through the trails we come across really delightful little tableaus, and today it was a young couple, guiding their two-year-old little girl uphill, a weeks-old baby fast asleep in a carrier held against the mother's chest. At the top of the hill they stopped to catch their breath and so did we, giving us the opportunity to talk awhile. The little girl was language-precocious, with a wonderful vocabulary, and a curiosity to match. The forest adventure was new to the parents, a truly engaging and happy pair. They were delighted when we showed them the apples on nearby wild apple trees and soon took to munching.

Much later, as we crossed the last of the three bridges that ford the creek in the ravine, we came across two young men, perhaps of adolescent age, watching the creek as its waters swept past. They informed us that this was the first time they'd ever ventured into the ravine, and wanted to know if we could tell them anything about the forest. And we did, and they listened, and they commented, and it was clear they were intrigued. They would return often, they said, as we parted.

Today, though the temperature failed to rise about 6C again, and the wind continues its brisk authority, the sun has been out. Yesterday, as we walked down the street once we left the ravine and the forest behind, we suddenly became aware as we turned toward the driveway of our house that rain was pinging on our heads. And then we realized it wasn't really rain, but small freezing pellets of ice.