We dressed somewhat lighter for our foray into the ravine yesterday when the temperature was a balmy 5C. Even so, by the time we had completed our circuit we felt a bit too warm, quite unusual for a winter day, the second one of January 2020.

Down at the bottom of the ravine the creek was swollen and swift. It was also so turbulent that it resembled a ribbon of mud. Impossible to see anything in it, including the fish we had seen every day for the past several weeks mostly in a small, deep and protected pool close to one of the bridges fording the waterway.

The dim interior of the forest yesterday reflected just how low the cloud ceiling was, though no snow or rain fell throughout the day. No longer did the forest resemble a winter wonderland with everything lavishly slathered with light, bright snow crystals so that even the overcast hue of the day had a sparkle to it. Dull and drab once again, dark and light expressed in the dark of the tree trunks etched against the white of what remained of the snowpack.

But the footing was excellent, not yet any patches of ice developing, despite the steadily melting snowpack. Five degrees after all, is warm for a winter day and the melting snowpack is the reason that the creek was furiously creating little whirlpools and rapids as it ran over the many impediments of detritus caused by fallen twigs and branches, rocks and leaf mass that had gathered over the years, let alone the clay that had slid into its roiling waters when the hillsides collapsed.

A forest in winter deprived of deep layers of accumulated snow just doesn't look right; it lacks the winter authority of a forest on the Canadian shield with its winter-magic appearance of a landscape favoured by nature. This unusual 2019-2020 winter is shaping up to be fairly unusual, ricocheting from late fall extreme cold and snow accumulation to early winter warming periods and snowmelt.

We usually do experience a January thaw around mid-month when huge piles of snow that had resulted from constant and heavy snow events up to that point are reduced and underfoot ice becomes a problem for a short while until winter-cold returns along with those frequent snowfalls. This year the thaws have been frequent and puzzlingly out of character of a usual Canadian winter.

However, this is something Jackie and Jillie pay no mind to. Because of the high temperature and melted snow, they ran about yesterday without their boots. Hard to say whether that increases their sense of freedom in a natural setting since they're always inclined toward leaping with a kind of wild abandon all over the trails, zipping into the interior, then out again, on the lookout for 'intruders' to their very personal forest playground.

As for us, we miss the aesthetic of a snow-laden landscape. There's just something mystical and eye-appealingly satisfying in a landscape of that type, unrivalled for beauty by any other seasonal phenomenon with the exception of florid fall landscapes, equally dazzling, that fills us with the appreciative pleasure of nature's picturesque endowments in her varied landscapes.