After breakfast this morning when my husband was out at the front of the house taking in the paper recycling boxes and the green compost bin after Tuesday morning trash pick-up, he took a little jog up the street to see what was happening with the drilling machinery. Gone. Tracked vehicles and trucks, gone. And either they or someone else pulled back the plastic fencing meant to keep people out. Where the drilling machine had sat the past week the ice and snow was gone and in its place a great, wide pool of muck remained; ostensibly where the drilling took place.

So we were clear to go directly down into the ravine, raising our expectations for an even more pleasurable hike through the ravine than has been the case for the last week. We lifted Jackie and Jillie over the area of muck, oil and other dark and nasty looking material littering the ravine entrance and then proceeded as usual, down the hill after our puppies zipping ahead lickety-split. We were approaching the first bridge fording the creek at the bottom of the ravine when Jackie and Jillie began excitedly barking.

Not unusual for them; they bark with great excitement any time they smell or hear people or other dogs nearby. And it's quite possible that their canine friends are able to interpret the messages in their barks, we certainly cannot. But we did think that it could be that their friend Nova was about since we were out earlier than is our norm and Nova and Rod tend to get out into the ravine earlier than we do. For some peculiar reason Nova often greets us at that very spot. And we had mentioned to one another not much earlier that we hadn't seen them in a while.

Sure enough, Nova came barrelling down the hill we were about to ascend ourselves, parking himself briefly beside Jackie, then Jillie in turn, sharing confidences with them, no doubt of the quality of news sharing that we speak of as neighbourhood gossip, then off he went back up the hill to join Rod, wherever he happened to be on the   networked trails. Nova tends to wander about quite far in his daily explorations. As a large (white) German Shepherd, he covers a lot of ground, fast.

By the time we arrived at the second of the bridges we cross on one of our regular circuits, Nova was nowhere in sight, but there was a large black Italian mastiff we'd never seen before. A friendly fellow who couldn't quite make out why Jackie and Jillie were so hysterical. And then along came Jasper, whom we've known since  he was a puppy, and we realized the mastiff was the companion of the daughter of woman we know well because she had mentioned to us last time we'd seen her months ago that her daughter had a dog now of her own.

As Jasper communed with Jackie and Jillie and introduced his new friend to them, the young woman caught up with them, and our guess was confirmed. She and her brother are both the loveliest young people, a credit to their mother who raised them with the values she brought with her when she emigrated from Europe to Canada. And as we stood talking to one another, who came racing by but Nova, back to see what all the fuss was about. The three large dogs were calm and quiet, and appreciative of snacks my husband was doling out. Their demeanour in sharp contrast to that of Jackie and Jillie whose barking is truly annoyingly distracting, and politely ignored by the other dogs.

Long conversations ensued all around, and finally we parted, to carry on our separate ways through the forest trails. Looking up at the sky through the forest canopy the same kind of silvery skyscape met our eyes as what we had seen yesterday. Tree branches remain thickly slathered with snow and ice because of an intersection of freezing rain, rain, and snow and temperatures inversions that combined to leave the snow festooning branches resistant to being windswept, and we're happy about that since it makes for a magical winter landscape.