Rain this morning ensured we woke to a dark day. Such things make a difference to mood. A gloomy exterior makes for a gloomy interior. Jackie and Jillie seemed quieter than usual. And then we came downstairs to start the day, and their mood picked up considerably. Jackie always makes a run for the front door and he's rarely disappointed. This morning it was Heckle and Jekyll that were present and accounted for; more often it's another, sole little black squirrel, occasionally a red squirrel. H&J always seem to hang out together, we surmise they may be siblings.

Eventually the rain stopped, but the grey clouds remained, so there was no brightening up of the landscape, although the day itself was balmy, with a high of 8C. We decided to get out for our ravine walk a little earlier in the afternoon since the weather forecast warned of a resumption of afternoon rain that would be heavy, not the light stuff that came down in the morning.

So, off we went, hoping that since the day was milder, albeit overcast, the icy conditions on the forest trails would have improved. They had, but minimally. Still, as we proceeded along -- sauntering, in fact, a newer type of locomotion that matched us to the conditions and the need to proceed with caution -- we could feel the metal spikes of our cleats now more securely biting into the melting ice.

Jackie and Jillie weren't doing too much slipping as they had the previous two days. So we decided, at a juncture where we usually decide whether to proceed and commit to a long, hour,  hour-and-a-half, even two-hour circuit, or to just go along on a shorter, half-hour to an hour trail hike. Like yesterday, despite slightly slipperier conditions, we chose a long circuit.

We had just reached the top of the first hill we ascend in a series of them, a forested promontory overlooking the ravine, the creek and the bridges fording it, when Jackie and Jillie burst into a frenzy of barks. And there, striding toward us, was the tiny, familiar figure of an old friend, a young local firefighter, with his two little terriers. When he finally reached our proximity and his true bulk revealed, Jillie broke away, my husband lost grip on her leash, and our friend picked it up and as he reached us, handed it back to my husband as we greeted one another.

And in the process got closer physically than I felt entirely comfortable with. This is such a pleasant young man, courtly in an old-school European manner, we feel comfortably at ease in his presence. But that, of course, begs the question of prudent caution in our new reality of trying to evade infection. Our friend must be just as aware as we are of the dangers inherent in potential transmission of the novel coronavirus. As a first-responder, we know his profession tries to keep ahead of such matters. None of which relieved my anxiety.

The older and smaller of his two little dogs had had two bouts of cancer over the years, both successfully operated on. Now the younger of the two, a calico-coated little terrier, has a more aggressive cancer which she was diagnosed with about six months earlier. She has regular trips to a clinic in Montreal, just over an hour's drive away from Ottawa, for chemotherapy. We haven't seen them in several months. And she was excited to see us, looked as happy as she always does, and her enthusiasm and energy has returned to normal, according to our friend. When my husband began digging about in his pockets, she new instantly that treats were coming, and duly distributed.

When two other hikers with two large dog breeds appeared in the distance, we bid our friend adieu, asked him to give our regards to his mother, and continued our separate way. Those two women and their gentle, large dogs seemed to take many of the same interlocking trails we did today. And each time we came within sight of one another, they would opt to take a route that would leave them and us in avoidance of one another.

There were areas, we found, in an ever-changing landscape, where the ice had spread conspicuously, leaving no alternative of adjacent, approachable snow-covered side portions on the trails, and where meltwater from the areas that sloped onto the trails ran across the ice, making it more dicey to negotiate. Requiring the exercise of more care in proceeding. But we managed.

Again, like yesterday, out of an excess of caution we made decisions to side-track certain areas, or not return to them on the homeward circuit, choosing instead other, less-travelled pathways to avoid downhill trudges on the ice where uphill experience had informed us that we'd best avoid a return.
We had dressed Jackie and Jillie in waterproof winter coats in the likelihood of rain starting up again while we were out in the forest. But unlike yesterday, not even light episodes of freezing rain descended on us.

A half-hour after we returned home, however, we heard an outburst familiar to all of us booming through the low-ceiling of grey in the sky. A surprise, a prolonged, familiar alert that we were about to be inundated. And then the rain fell, heavily and continuously, doing its part to help wash away a winter's worth of detritus and the accumulated snowpack surrounding us. And we were grateful not to have been caught out in it.