Cold and sunny, with a modest sprinkling of new snow on the ground, but fast disappearing even at -6C at the warmest part of the day, thanks to the wind and the warming of the sun where it manages to penetrate the denseness of the forest canopy. throughout the course of the day. Cold temperatures invariably accompany a sunny day.

And sunny it has been for days. The winter sun blazes through the front of our house facing east, early mornings. In those rooms the brightness is startling, particularly in one room whose windows facing forward form an el-shape, overlooking the gardens at the front of the house.

Photographs taken in the winter woods with a blue sky overhead and the afternoon sun streaking through the collective trunks of the forest are captivating to me. The juxtaposition of dark trunks, the light background of the sky, the accumulated snowpack on the forest floor and the brilliant sun winking through the trees absolutely mesmerizes me.

When we were last out several days ago for our daily afternoon walk, my husband became acutely aware that one of his knees was awkwardly uncomfortable. The challenge of ascent and descent of the ravine's hilly landscape made walking particularly difficult. In the days that followed his injured kneecap became even more of a problem, to the point where he walked and rose from a seated position with considerable pain.

He wanted to carry on, to continue our hikes through forest trails nonetheless, but sensibly he agreed we'd wait until his knee recovered. Two days later, he was installing a new dishwasher in our kitchen, man-handling the appliance, drilling a hole in a cupboard wall because in our kitchen the cubby for the dishwasher is not next to the sink but adjacent a rank of pull-out kitchen drawers, so to connect the appliance the tubes and electrical had to snake through the back of it to get to the area under the sink to connect to the plumbing.

That didn't much help his knee's recovery. So, we're still waiting. Playing with Jackie and Jillie inside the house. Taking them out more frequently to the backyard where they romp about in the snow and forever sniff about everywhere, detecting and curious about the passage of their wild cousins.

In the ravine we have lately come across new faces of both people and their companion animals. Most of whom are willing to pass a friendly acknowledgement, and some of whom ask for directions through the trails to eventually access a particular neighbouring street they had entered from. It's easy enough to lose yourself and your sense of direction once embarked on the trails, particularly if someone new to them decides to take offshoot trails, out of a sense of curiosity.

Of a certainty, this wonderful natural resource of ours is now receiving more appreciative attention than it ever has before. The encroaching presence of more housing has in a sense closed off wildlife corridors, but the truth is, because the geology is that of a ravine it remains protected itself from any possible inroads by the housing market with construction firms eager to use any landscape they can.

How ironic it is that the dwindling of wildlife from what we had taken for granted decades ago, is now less attributable to the nearby presence of human dwellings, than it is to the newer presence of coyotes making the ravine and its forests their home. The proximity to human dwellings draws some wildlife out of the ravine at night and into peoples' backyards to search for easy pickings. We leave seeds at the front of the house and bread cubes and nuts at the side of the house regularly.

And we assume that the presence of carnivorous predators has made our wildlife scavengers a little more aware of the more present dangers to their continued existence in their forest habitat; those that practise due care will be the survivors more or less, cultivating an existential culture of aware/beware/survive.