What a difference a day makes. At least, if you're thinking Sunday versus Monday. We'd encountered so many people out hiking through the ravine trails yesterday afternoon we were quite amazed. An unusually large number, not often come across. Today, on the other hand, people are back to work, their children at school. And there's couldn't be a more absolutely perfect day to be in the woods with Jackie and Jillie than today.

For one thing, though we missed the sun, it was a lot warmer, and what little wind there was was just fine. For another, we had a small overnight shower of light snow, about three cm altogether. Not much as snowfalls go, but a delicate, light and airy coverlet sitting atop the snow already accumulated, and beautiful to look at, covering the forest trees.

As we walked up the street toward the ravine entrance, walking down toward us was two of our long-time neighbours, a husband and wife now both retired, their two boys having left to forge out on their own long since. They like to keep active. In the summer they do a lot of bicycling. In the winter they take walks around the neighbourhood, visit local supermarkets to do a little shopping to carry back home.

He happens to be fixated on things we're far more casual about. He carefully shovels and scraps every last vestige of snow and ice off his driveway; the only one on the street minus a buildup of ice. In the summer he's endlessly washing their vehicles, manicuring their lawn. Different folks, different options. They're very pleasant people and that's important.

I believe we've seen them once in the ravine in all the years we've known them, though their house is closer to it than ours is. They made mention of how awkward it is to walk along the road now (in the absence of a sidewalk on our street), uneven, bumpy, piled firmly with compressed snow and ice, and we agreed, telling them how much more pleasant and easier it is to tramp along the forest trails in the ravine.

Off we went our separate ways, accommodating ourselves to our preferences. In the ravine, wind was whisking light skeins of newfallen snow off boughs, resulting in that mystical ectoplasmic look that always captures attention. Not Jackie and Jillie's attention; their noses are firmly pointed downward, sniffing and snuffling along at the forest floor steeped in snow, occasionally lifting their heads in response to anomalous sounds and smells lost to our less acute human faculties.

Snow has reached a good height. Yet we know there's more to come. In fact, the month of March can be expected annually to give us a good one-third of the season's total snowfall. The temperature rose today, so it's 0C, very pleasant indeed, albeit overcast, and the forecast is (gloom) for rain at some time later in the day. Which we'd prefer didn't occur just yet, though we'd gone early to the ravine to bypass just such a turn in the weather.

The height of the snow can be judged in looking at some old giant fallen pines that in their state of endless decomposition fall across chasms in the ravine that the bridges ford, elsewhere than the position of the creek. And there, the height of snow piled atop the old trunks look as though they give those old dead trees three times the circumference of their actual size.

It's also difficult not to notice that in the previous, quite wet snowfall that left 20cm of snow, a northeasterly wind had blown the snow westerly, the result being snow plastered firmly on the northeast facing trunks of trees. Look to your left and the trees have a broad stripe of snow slathered on them; look to the right and they're free of snow, unless you peer around at the other side.

So, we had a long and leisurely stroll through the forest trails earlier today, and came across no one else at all. Which isn't to say that others haven't been out and about. The condition of the trail after a new snowfall such as we had last night informs us that others have been out at times earlier than we were, the indentations of their boots on the once-pristine surface ample evidence.