Max seems to skim the trails in the ravine. There are occasional runners we come across in the ravine on lovely days like yesterday and in fact there were two that passed us, singly one after the other. Max's speed can easily match theirs. He doesn't run, but he certainly moves along at top speed. We wouldn't make the attempt to match his pace. We simply couldn't. He uses two walking sticks to great advantage and covers a lot of ground.

Jackie and and Jillie are always glad to see Max barrelling along, they run toward him, tails going like miniature metronomes, quietly bookending him and matching his pace. But they don't go far because Max, always-in-a-hurry-Max, never fails to stop and have a long confab with us. We talk about anything at all. He has wide-ranging interests and so do we.

He has his opinions and we, of course, do as well. Just as my opinions don't always align with my husband's, nor do they necessarily with Max, but the requisite respect is there for one another's intellectual integrity, so we can discuss disparate matters without ire growing out of the conversation. And as we speak together, Jackie and Jillie remain close by, doing their best not to be noticed while they pick up detritus and gnaw away.

Max is a Swiss-Canadian, he's likely in his mid-60s, most of his extended family remain in Switzerland but he and his wife, their son and their daughter-in-law live in Canada, occasionally hosting family members from abroad. Max is about 5' 9", built fairly spare, and he owns a civilized mop of curly grey hair. He had the house his wife and he now occupy built on a lot he bought years ago in the community.

It was later that he had conveniences installed to help him care for his wheelchair-bound wife; he had the bathroom reconfigured, and had hydraulic lifts installed there and elsewhere in the house. So it makes sense that in covering as much territory as he challenges himself with in the ravine to ensure his mobility remains intact, he does it at a speedy rate. That's to ensure that he gets his physical recreational activity done in the time that a daily visiting nurse remains in his home to spell him off, caring for his wife.

So he's busy with a fairly circumscribed lifestyle. We run across him occasionally at the supermarket. It's odd when  you're accustomed to seeing a very familiar place in just one setting and one alone. When, on occasion that familiar face suddenly pops up elsewhere it seems incongruous and for a moment leaves you puzzled as in 'what's he doing here?'. Even on occasion thinking you know the face but can't place it in the context of from where.

Health, activity, well-being consumes Max; he wants to ensure as much as he can, that he can remain active and mobile and interested in life. He is all three. Despite that he's had open-heart surgery, and two hip replacement surgeries, the second one just this last summer. He, just as we do, relies heavily on the woodland trails for a particular type of life enjoyment. And that to access that enjoyable aspect of life, we approach nature and are exposed to all the fluctuations in nature's itinerary, makes us grateful for what we have.