Our tame adventures. Venturing out into nature. There was a time when our ventures took us far and wide. We think about that, about what we've seen and experienced. Others do the same now. It's a great, wide world with much to see and do. A world that has suddenly collapsed, shrunk in comparison to the immensity it once offered. Countries have closed their borders. Even regions within countries have done that, anxious to ensure that other areas more plagued than they are with the novel coronavirus and its threats to human longevity remain as far distant as possible.

On the other hand, that needn't necessarily condition people whose love affair with nature beckons them to ignore that call. While public parks, playgrounds and social centres have all been closed for months, only recently beginning to relax exclusion, there have always remained natural areas that could be accessed by anyone wanting to take the trouble. We know how fortunate we are living in close proximity to a natural forest whose geology is such that it was simply too impractical to 'develop' into commercial and housing sites.

Instead, the ravine and its forested enclave were simply absorbed by the city, left intact for posterity. Much the way the gravitational force of a celestial black hole attracts whatever approaches close enough to the irresistible force of its pull and becomes absorbed into the unknowable centre of a force whose magnitude can only be guessed. The magnetic appeal of the woodlands is what attracts us irresistibly to the ravined forest nestled within the community in which we have the good fortune to live.

The wary trepidation of contracting COVID-19 ensures that those people who seek out the serenity and beauty of the forest trails, maintain social distancing. With good humour and grace. Ensuring also our confidence and comfort in visiting it daily, as we do, as many others do. This morning our ramble through the ravine was particularly invested in solitude for no one else was around and we roamed the trails with Jackie and Jillie in perfect peace and harmony with our surroundings.

Once again it rained last night. Once again we awoke to a dark morning, leaden skies overhead leaving us speculating whether we might be able to manage our usual circuit without the skies opening up and drenching us all. It was cool, and it was humid and the air shifted about in a light-to-medium wind. We stopped briefly to pick some berries for Jackie and Jillie before moving on and down into the ravine.

There is colour beyond the brilliant greens of a thoroughly-rain-washed forest. The beautiful bright pink of thistles blooming. The vibrant yellows of pilotweed growing with gay abandon. The deeper, darker pink of the Himalayan orchids embroidering a patch of the forest floor. And something that resembled spilled cream splashed generously over old pine needles alongside the trail. Not cream, but an odd fungal growth that appeared suddenly as fungi tends to do.

Yesterday we also had evening rain and morning rain and we wore raincoats to catch the light drizzle we hiked through roaming on the trails. But yesterday the sun emerged when we were halfway through our circuit, so we tramped the trails half in dusky overcast and half in partially sunlit trails. Not so this morning. While the rain held off for the period that we were out, when we returned to street level and were approaching our house, drops began to fall.

Soon those drops were a growing deluge. Rain had begun in earnest, and there was only the occasional very brief lifting of its ferocity before it returned again to full-on spigot like a partially controlled waterfall. The day was destined to be dark and wet. Conditions that intensify exterior colour, making it brilliant and beyond beautiful.