How blue is the sky today? Well, in my experience when winter brings us a sunny day it will also invariably be an icy-cold day. A clear blue sky seems to pair with chilling cold. Not today. The sky is a vast ocean of baby blue and the source of heat and light on this planet dangles bright and warming like a brilliant chandelier on a banquet-hall ceiling, quite unlike what usually occurs. Complaints? None.

However, it is winter and mild temperatures added to the beaming warmth of the sun on whatever snow we now have left in our landscape makes for quite a mess. Alternately it makes for conditions that render a ramble through our wooded ravine a bit hazardous. Yesterday's fiasco with my strapped-on cleats over winter boots failed to give me the comfort of firm footing on what  has become an icy raceway on the forest trails, ending our circuit precipitously, but not before I had to stoop over dozens of times to replace one of the flexible rubber cleat platforms that kept irritatingly falling off the boot it was stretched over.

That set has been put aside, and another has replaced it, over different winter boots. They worked very well this afternoon to my great relief, since the challenge of yesterday's traverse over icy trails has been much intensified today. Yesterday we had fog and deep overcast conditions plus a high of -0.4C for the day.
Today the high is 2C along with sun.

And today our son accompanied us on a protracted hiking circuit through the woods. As long as we were out and about trekking through the forest we came across no one else on the trails. And the trails themselves, and their condition appears to be the obvious answer. People were simply avoiding the potential for a slip and a fall. Sometimes, even with the use of cleats piercing the ice to stabilize footing, the ascents and descents can be perilous; no one likes to experience a thumping fall.

With each step we took we could hear the distinct sharp crunch of our metal-pointed cleats crisply biting through the ice. Had the ice been even a tad more firm, that bite would have been quite a bit shallower, leading to that dreaded slide. Slides can be easily managed when we're walking on a level trail. Downhill and uphill, icy trails are infinitely more of a challenge.

Jackie and Jillie pay little mind to their own slipping about on the ice; they quickly and naturally readjust for the circumstances and carry on, seldom splaying. When it's truly overcast and the forest interior has that dusky quality, a bit of a visual gloom is cast over the landscape. When it's sunny and bright as it was today, the quality of light permeating the forest illuminates whatever green there is, turning the white bark of birch into a glowing silvery shade, beeches look elephant-grey and poplar trunks look either creamy-white or pale green.

If the sun is shining directly onto the bark of an old pine, it looks as though it's on fire. Needles bristle with bright green. The sun blazes through the canopy, and where the ice covering on the forest floor is smooth, the beams of sunlight hitting it shimmer and glow back, just as they do when on a summer day sun glances off the peaceful calm of a woodland lake.