Sublimely sunny it was yesterday afternoon, mitigating the -6C ambient temperature. The forest trails were well and truly tamped down almost a week after an early winter's latest contribution to our growing snowpack. It was cold enough, with a light wind -- 10 to 15 kmh -- for Jackie and Jillie to need ice-protective their little rubber boots, so on they came and then we set out for our daily romp through the ravine.

With us was the most appreciated of company. Our younger son left his home in Vancouver temporarily for an annual multi-day workshop on Species at Risk, taking place close to Toronto. He and one of his students had put together a talk on their research funded by an environmental-centric arms of the federal government, after which our son visited with his older brother in Toronto and with a close friend, for several days, then he came along to visit with us.

Whenever we're with him on the occasions when he stays with us for brief visits -- irrespective of the season -- he invariably points out to us from a biologist's keen perspective, natural phenomenon we would rarely have noticed, much less identified on our own. This time it was the presence, half-way up a tree, of a dangling paper-wasp nest, brightly coned with a build-up of snow. We're always fascinated by the presence of other creatures that escape our attention until we're brought to noticing them.

Comments on the changing landscape constantly pass back and forth between us. And because it was a Sunday we ran into others enjoying a crisp and beautiful winter outing in the ravine. Giving us the opportunity to introduce our son to those of our acquaintances who hadn't previously met us hiking along with him over the years. One of our friends allowed to the fact that they'd been aware long before we had come abreast of each other, that we were out on the trails.

From the opposite side of the ravine where they had started out their afternoon excursion with their dog closer to where they live, they had heard the characteristic yips that Jillie emits in her constantly excited state over meeting up with others and that Jackie usually emulates; a choir of two. They may be small dogs but the chords of their melodies vibrate through the cold air, no longer muffled by forest foliage.

Each of our daily forays into the ravine and onto the forest trails reveals different visual elements of the landscape and often viewed from various angles, depending on how we've chosen to tramp along on any particular day to link trails along a circuit. So there's no end of little surprises and encounters of birds and squirrels and dogs whose energetic spirit of excitability over seeing challenges to the chase motivates them to leap and bound through the forest interior, no longer shielded from view by vegetation crowding the forest floor, the view clear and revealing.