Quite some summer this is turning out to be. Peoples' vacation plans disrupted, but what's far worse for many people, disruption is not merely the setting aside of holiday plans, but the complete upending of social/cultural life as we've long been accustomed to. Last January when we first read brief inconsequential news stories carried by the international press as casual items about a newly discovered virus in China, we would never have thought ahead to a time when our lives would be influenced in such a manner by that very same virus travelling with lightning speed as it infects millions of people globally.

Now, six months later we're living a strange reality of caution and concern, where spontaneity spells the possibility of unwanted contact and infection, mandating that we think carefully in a manner that contradicts human nature. The wearing of protective face masks is becoming universally mandated. Scientists are working overtime in a frantic effort to discover what has never before been created, a vaccine against a rampaging virus.

The other unusual, but relatively innocuous difference this summer is the ongoing, relentless heat where one day follows another heading to a high of 30C and beyond, a stifling oven of light-and-heat emitted by the sun impacting on our lives in a coincidental display of nature having sent us a life-threatening zoonotic and on the sidelines physical discomfort and a threat to the environment in drought and wildfires.

The temperature here has risen perilously close to the mid-30s and it will continue to do so throughout the rest of the week, following on a similar situation the week before. When we awaken after a heated night to a brightly re-heating day, we gather ourselves first off to take advantage of a cool, shaded landscape that the forest provides. As we did this morning. As we've done for much of mid-to-late spring and now summer. Deep shade can be guaranteed in the forest, enabling us to enjoy the landscape of green living vegetation, exercise our limbs, and breathe in air scrubbed of urban impurities.

With the recent proliferation of Elderberry trees alongside the creek at the bottom of the ravine, their bloom has added a sweet fragrance to the refreshing air as we navigate a trail that takes us past their serried order. Mosquitoes seem less invasive somehow in the earlier morning hours. And it's cool enough at that time of day that we can enter the forest trails with limbs covered against mosquito stings because we don't use insecticide and prefer to cover up instead, something we couldn't do in the heat buildup of the afternoon.

While we were out today, someone noticing my camera (which rarely leaves my hand for my pocket) stopped to talk about photography and the urge to take pictures of everything we see; as apt a description of me, as any. Just a few minutes earlier when we'd stopped briefly to have a conversation with a young woman walking her husky and her infant daughter, she had also mentioned my camera, inquisitively. Likely because I'm never seen there without it, though it never passes my mind that anyone might be curious, much less notice. And just as though we were on vacation when people sometimes spontaneously offer to take your camera and turn it on you -- which has happened to us before -- the man did just that.

Yesterday, when we exited the ravine my husband stopped at the group mailbox. We don't often check in on it; very little mail is sent and received these days. But within our little box was a kit sent out by a research group conducting a national study on the novel coronavirus and its impact on the Canadian population. Weeks earlier I had completed a national survey online for a polling/research group. At the conclusion of the poll there was information about the study with a request that anyone willing to take part in the survey indicate so. And so I did.

That kit was a response to my having agreed that I would lend myself to the study being carried out through the auspices of the University Health Network out of Toronto, linked with the University of Toronto and other allied groups. Called the Action to Beat Coronavirus (Ab-C) in Canada, it sets out to determine how many in the country have been exposed to COVID-19, through analyzing blood samples for traces of antibodies or other metrics.

The kit contained an explanation of the project, alcohol wipes, sterile gauze, bandages, lancets, and a return envelope, along with a blood-collection 'card' to receive blood samples. And a consent form, to be included in the study. The completed samples to be returned to the source, through a provided self-addressed, postage-paid envelope, with the intention of launching the research using an anticipated 10,000 to 14,000 returned and completed blood tests.