It's a truth beyond denial; we are inveterate, congenital complainers. About the vagaries of the weather, that is. We complain incessantly, to the point where we no longer realize that's what we're doing. But it would seem that our complaints do not go unnoticed, after all. Some entity, some powerful force, it seems, overhears us. And so, we swoop unexpectedly from bitterly cold, unseasonable temperatures and scads of snow, to the reverse.

We're in a surprising spate of suddenly-temperate weather conditions. With or without the sun, with and without wind, the cold has turned in on itself, scolded by some source, and has decided to return next month, which is a mere five days into the near, very near future. Suddenly, we've got 6C days, and instead of snow, rain is falling.

Mind, it's making an awful mess of the snow that had fallen previously when we were complaining the loudest, while at the same time enjoying the look of a frozen, white landscape, and disporting ourselves through the forest paths with glee at the presence of the snow -- particularly area dogs fortunate enough to be walked through the forest transformed into a thing of absolute eye-popping beauty.

Those mild days and the warming sun filtering through a foliage-absent forest canopy, interspersed with rain events have done a fairly thorough job on that sparkling, fluffy white snow. What hasn't melted has been turned to ice. Slippery as all-get-out, requiring cleats firmly strapped over boots as a guarantee of stability on a treacherous surface. And the ground that had established a good, deep freeze, has begun to thaw, turning the now-absent-snow portions of the trails into gloppy dark messes.

But the milder weather has also brought out hikers whom we haven't seen for awhile, tantalized by more moderate weather. Most have remembered to strap on their icers or cleats. Most are somewhat aged like us, and cannot afford a fall for the wreckage it guarantees on stiffer aged bodies. And so we met up with an old hiking friend and his somewhat more limber canine companion, a Rottweiler of very temperate disposition.

While he ambled along companionably with Jackie and Jillie, we and our friend walked alongside one another and discussed all manner of items from the stresses some of our friends are under, the complications of aging and how it affects one's (resigned) mood and ability to do things physically never given a second thought to when we were young, to the desirability of getting another set of tire rims for the ice tires you'd be foolish not to manage to afford, driving in this place where we live, during the cold and icy winter months.

When we finally parted company, he going off in one direction, and we in another, both headed for home, we were surprised to see a young girl negotiating her way down through the rock-strewn shoulders of the creek as we descended a hill. Soon we came abreast of the girl, to note that she was accompanied by three other children, around eight or nine years of age, we guessed. She appeared to be their leader, a few years or so older than they.

They were all equipped with buckets and pails, scooping up creek water and dabbling about in it, sometimes pouring what they had scooped up into their pails. One of the little boys left the scooping to his companions. He was busy himself under the archway of the giant pipe that now funnels the creek along the bottom of the ravine floor, merrily shouting incomprehensible phrases, for the gleeful pleasure of hearing the sound boom and return like an echo chamber.

They were looking for fish, they informed us. And no, they didn't find the water too cold to dabble in at all, they assured us, though two of the little boys had taken off their boots and their socks, rolled up their pant legs and were ensconced in the stream itself, giving serious attention to the task at hand, filling their pails with little minnows.