It's inevitable, tied firmly to the season. Each winter day is an adventure in weather. Despite daily weather forecasts we never quite know how the coming day will shape up. Overcast or sunny? Windy or calm? Cold or extremely icy? And the snow -- there are so many different types of snow, from light and airy-fluffy, coming down in bunches of lofty flakes, or minuscule beads of pearly snow; wet snow, heavy and tending to clump, heavy to shovel and clinging to boots.

Yesterday began with light flurries turning to heavier snowfall, then clumps and finally tiny pearls of firm snow, then pinging freezing rain and finally snow so light and airy it was difficult to see but presented as a kind of ice fog when we were moving through the ravine on the forest trails. Our winter jackets always let us know what kind of frozen precipitation we're experiencing at any given time since it tends to cling to the fabric.

Heavily overcast for the entire day, with a brisk wind making the -8C high for the day seem even colder, we could feel the wind lashing the light snow against our faces. Jackie and Jillie returned home with icy clumps of snow pellets sticking to their hairy little legs. Today, the sun was wide open and robin's egg blue, the sun fiercely bright, illuminating a landscape that is steeped deep in a season's-worth of snow.

And though it is still -6C, the wind is so brisk and chill -- mean is how we describe it when it lashes against our faces and seems to penetrate the layers we wear to protect against its probing fingers -- that it seems much colder than yesterday, despite the presence of the sun. All the snow that had accumulated on the trees yesterday has been whipped down off branches, leaving them bare and dark against the snow blanketing the landscape of the forest floor.

At one time it was Jillie who was constantly on the hunt for tiny twigs appearing on the snow from the trees above, wind-dislodged from their high perches to tempt little dogs. It seems that Jackie has now adopted his sister's previous fascination with twigs, so much so that he cannot walk a few yards without pouncing on yet another appealing looking twig to scoop it up and munch it as he trots along the trail.

Both though, instantly react any time they sense, hear, smell or see another dog in their near vicinity, all the more so when that dog is approaching along the trail, coming ever nearer. Sometimes familiar with our two incessant little barkers, and paying the ruckus little mind, and occasionally happening to be a dog not yet introduced to these perpetual barking machines, puzzled and hesitatingly uncertain whether to proceed or to turn back. Most large dogs don't tend to bark at all.

It's as though there's a decorum polarization between small dogs and large. The large breeds restrained but friendly, and rarely making a sound of any kind, while the smaller breeds -- and the smaller the more prone to noise-making -- seem to fail to recognize that their unrestrained noise-
making is unmannerly and uncouth. In the end, everyone makes friends with everyone else, with rare exceptions, and the stranger tends to become a familiar.

The forest landscape is at its best, presenting the finest views of a late-winter landscape when the snow season is at its  height, a fresh snowfall has topped up the lofty snowpack and the sun radiates both light and warmth as it begins its slow move toward the spring equinox, exactly a month ahead, to the day -- March 19, 2020.