I awoke just after four this morning, and squinting toward the windows in our bedroom, it looked incredibly bright out. I expected that, since snow had started falling before we went up to bed. And when it's snowing during the night, the snow crystals catch light and reflect it well enough so that it looks like daylight outside while we're immersed in night darkness in the house interior.

I decided to get up, amble down the hall toward the front of the house and there look out at the street to hazard an assessment of how much snow had fallen. Nothing spectacular. The road in front of the house, in fact, because of the mild temperature just a tad over freezing, had bare spots where days before even milder temperature and bright sun had melted some of the snowpack on the road.

My husband got up from bed around seven. I was asleep, when he dressed and went out to the back of the house to shovel the deck, its stairs, and the walkways in the backyard. That's so Jackie and Jillie wouldn't have to do the breaststroke in the backyard. The snow was still falling, it would continue most of the day, we knew. It was wet snow and therefore heavy, tending to clump and compress.

Finished, my husband trekked back upstairs and woke me to get up. Now it was our puppies' turn to get outside and when they came back indoors they needed towelling. They were well slathered with snow from ears and muzzles to footpads. A minor dilemma faced us. The snow, though not terribly deep yet, had been falling for hours overnight, and by mid-afternoon it would be considerably deeper. We had the choice of cancelling out a walk through the forest trails today, or decide to get out into the ravine with the puppies then and there.

So that's what we did. It would have been a shame, after all, to miss a tramp through the woods -- all the more so that it would be during a lovely snowstorm at a fairly mild temperature and before the expected wind gusts had arrived. As we descended into the ravine to access a main trail, it was more than evident that others had been out before us. The snow was deep and required quite a bit of determined slogging to proceed. Jillie was careful to walk into footsteps in the snow, to make her progress a little easier. Just as we all had, walking up the road to access the ravine entrance, using the tracks of cars that had gone by and avoiding the deep layers of snow.  Jackie opted to do some snow-swimming.

But things got better soon enough, where a faint track through the new snow had been started, though it was also filling up fairly swiftly with new falling snow. It was a scene of incomparable beauty, the new snow scintillating with subdued light, an ephemeral landscape of winter perfection. All was still. But for the occasional plop of snow dropping on our hooded heads from the trees above. In the distance crows called.

Ascending a height to a ridge to access a major trail we saw two familiar looking dogs and a woman rapidly closing the gap between  us. We've become familiar with her and her husband and their two dogs over the past few years. Their house abuts the forest at its street level height, backing onto the ravine at one of the entrances at a street about a 20 minute walk from our own.

She told us that last night her two dogs had been awakened by the coyotes howling and they ran about through the house, making a commotion of their own, before settling back down again. They've all become accustomed to hearing the coyotes at night, just as they now take it for granted that they'll occasionally see them in the ravine just outside their back fence, from an upstairs window.

As we resumed our hike in the opposite direction to hers, the wind began to pick up, enticing long, light veils of snow to fall from the trees onto the forest floor in a languid, opaque wave; a skein of snow temporarily blanking out sightlines. From time to time the snow picked up its volume and we encountered almost white-out conditions for brief periods. Beyond beautiful.

Because it was so mild and had been for the previous four or five days the creek was running free and swollen now with the effect of both snowmelt and falling snow. We congratulated ourselves for that decision to get out early in the day, to hold off on our morning shower and breakfast in favour of getting out with our two little dogs to enjoy that direct exposure to a forest ambience during a snowstorm.