The last day of September 2020 was going out in style. Everything was on offer. Rain, sunshine, wind, cool temperatures, and a glorious landscape. By the time mid-afternoon rolled around, rain that had begun in the wee hours of the night had petered out. But just to make sure ... we put on our rain gear for ourselves and for Jackie and Jillie. And then, when we exited the house wondered why we bothered.

Gone, the streaked dark grey sky, and hello! wide blue spaces. The sun was blinding, and I'd forgotten to wear sunglasses. It was in a word, lovely. So that little ear-whispering second-thought prattled on about how senseless it was to proceed, wearing rain jackets. But we were comfortable enough against the cold, and so were Jackie and Jillie.

The forest wept as it prepared to welcome October. The colours even more intense because all its vegetation was utterly sodden. And the wind! Howling through the trees, bringing down even more leaves, though they have a long way to go yet. The wind burst through the forest canopy in fits; we would hear its build-up and at the crescendo, falling leaves swept the landscape.

Those that had come down the night before in the driving rain were splotched like confetti on the forest floor. The creek was so swollen with rainwater, it churned and bubbled along, taking with it the leafy detritus that had fallen into it from leaves drifting in spirals weighted down with a slick of rain to begin drifting along with the downstream.

Fragrances and aromas seemed to beckon Jackie's and Jillie's attention  unendngly as we traversed one trail, looped over one bridge after another. Jillie still manages to walk in a straight line as she casually sniffs one area after another. Her brother seems electrified with the excitement of his olfactory senses on overload, lurching in fits and starts right, then left, then right again, continuing his crosswork of trail snooping as though reading the latest edition of the neighbourhood canine news.

Soon we became aware of dwindling light as daylight dusk arrived and the sun and clear skies hurriedly departed under the connivance of wind and cloud. This last day of September was simply wedded to rain and to rain it would remain faithful. The further we progressed from a stage halfway through our regular circuit, the darker it became.

And then the inevitable; a few drops of rain led to a rain squall. In its favour, the lacquering of the landscape to intense colours. And the still robust coverage of the forest canopy. But the rain was full and it was steady and before long everything was rain-varnished anew. Jackie and Jillie picked up their pace and we did our best to accommodate them. Still, we were dressed for rain and there was no need to hurry along.

We heard the deep baying of a large dog nearby, and soon ran into an old acquaintance walking his own part-Bernese mountain dog, and a neighbour's, both females and both predominantly black, good-natured and female. They certainly didn't mind the rain. They were already well drenched. For these dogs a ramble through the woods isn't complete unless and until they've had a thorough soaking in the creek. Dishevelled, sopping and in total bliss.

Street level entrance to the ravine...

Growing numbers of COVID cases in the province and in particular three regions of the province, including Ottawa, have made people acutely aware of the fragility of personal circumstances. The greater the community transmission rate, the more vulnerable everyone in the community becomes, irrespective of personal protective measures. 

Usually when we go out early in the morning to do our weekly grocery shopping, the supermarket is fairly empty of shoppers. That wasn't the case today. As we parked, we noticed the parking lot appeared even emptier than usual. And so, we had no idea when we entered the supermarket that there would be so many other shoppers present. It happened to be a cooler morning, very heavily overcast, after all-night heavy rain events. And usually that kind of weather combination has the effect of keeping people indoors. Not this time.

Then we noticed that so many of the other shoppers were younger people, not the usual older crowd we're accustomed to seeing. Perhaps the message is finally penetrating the general consciousness that health and government authorities have been preaching -- that it is the younger demographic that appears to have become careless in abandoning common sense in favour of social gatherings which have become the tinder lighting the fire of increased infection rates.

There was light drizzle when we left to embark on our grocery trip . But later, when we had returned home, cleaned up from breakfast -- and I'd taken down a few of the window screens to scrub them of accumulated detritus -- despite the presence of angry-looking clouds the rain seemed determined to hold off. When we left the house the sky was truly morose, with darker clouds sailing along to the rhythm of the wind, and we felt that it would be unlikely for us to complete our usual circuit without some measure of rainfall.

Well, that didn't happen, after all. And we were able to enjoy a long and leisurely traipse through the forest trails. Last night's rain had succeeded to a surprising degree in bullying a cascade of foliage to decorate the forest floor. The process has in fact, hardly begun, but already a sizeable buildup of colourful foliage has descended. And it isn't only the deciduous trees; pine needles too have tumbled copiously to the ground, the pale yellow of the needles merging with the more colourful pinks, reds and golds of the fallen leaves.

Leaf litter everywhere. Chickadees, robins and nuthatches popping in and out of the conifers in little flocks. The robins spend as much time in the litter of the forest floor and 'running' along the trails as they do in the trees at this time of year. The nuthatches, always accompanying chickadees, crawl up tree trunks, chattering as they go.

The population of forest squirrels manifest themselves at this time of year as at no other time, gathering endlessly, and there's ample cones, seeds and berries for them to gather. We watch as squirrels chase one another frantically, either mischievously playing or territorially competitive. Jackie and Jillie no longer make the effort to chase them, content with watching. On occasion Jackie will assume the 'wannaplay?' stance, facing a squirrel.

The tiny red squirrels are far more belligerent about what they conceive of as their personal territory than the larger black and even greater-sized grey squirrels. Invariably, there will be a red squirrel angrily in chase after a black squirrel four times its size; the black one clearly intimidated by the little red's raging attitude. At one point, Jackie poised, fascinated, watching one black squirrel as it poked its head forward from its perch low down on a tree trunk, peering right back at Jackie.

We watched as one particularly adventuresome squirrel performed a high-wire act at the very top of a maple, on branches obviously not stout enough to endure even its slight weight. Its activity up there as it seemed determined to secure something was quite entertaining. In a manner of speaking, the forest itself is entertaining in the sense that though we're out there on the trails every day whether morning or afternoon, nothing ever seems the same. There's no element of having seen it all before; everything, every bit of landscape presents itself anew, reflecting changes that go on forever.

Swift, determined action was taken by government and its agencies to persuade the public to hunker down and practise self-defence at the introduction of a new virus that threatened to decimate populations. And for the most part people heeded that advice; they willingly sacrificed seeing family and friends on a regular basis as they were accustomed to doing, practised social isolation, took more care with basic personal sanitary customs, avoided touching surfaces when out in public, began wearing face masks, and the feared inundation of seriously ill hospital patients that might overwhelm local hospitals, staff and equipment, failed to materialize.

A few months of self-discipline wore heavily on people's patience and loyalty to the concept of personal responsibility, but there was a reward when it became clear that the dominating numbers of infections would be handled with relative ease by hospitals and medical staff, after all. And though infection numbers had risen rapidly at first, they began to diminish under societal lockdown which mandated workplace closures, along with those who could, working remotely, from home. People patiently waited out the first threatening wave of COVID.

And then, as March gave way to April and April to May and summer weather entered the landscape, slight loosening of guidelines were recommended, which increased in number as time wore on and fewer cases were reported, even while the public was also cautioned not to overdo their relaxation of the rules to an unreasonable degree. Shops re-opened, restaurants, bars, hairdressers, and other indices of consumer elementals, alongside the supermarkets and pharmacies that had always been available, while practising hygienic measures and mask-wearing.

Along came weddings and funerals, family gatherings, group barbecues, beach parties, and finally school re-openings. Up went the cases, slowly but steadily. Until Ontario registered daily case counts nudging 300, then 400, finally 500 and 700. And the province's premier made the sobering judgement that phase two had been entered; his entreaties of care and caution  to those who had voted for him and those who had not, heeded by most, but not all. And once again the most vulnerable in society; the health-impaired, the elderly, those living in long-term care homes and retirement homes are at risk -- while 68 percent of the new cases are being identified among the 18 to 40 year-olds, those less likely to be infected, but most likely to infect others.

Gloomy news. Fearful news. Weighting down all other concerns. For us, the solution is, as always, to get out into nature, to feel the calming sensation of a life-vibrating natural landscape; green vegetation, birds, wildflowers, autumn colours. All in the presence of our little twin dogs who greeted the invitation pre-breakfast for an energetic romp through the woodland trails with great fanfare and a fireworks of happy barks.

And so, off we set, somberly perhaps, but appreciative of the lull in the cooler, windier and wet weather we'd been treated to for the past month, to the anomaly of a week where summer had returned, giving us days in the low- to-mid 20s, along with balmy breezes and sunny skies. This morning, the sky matched the news; heavily overcast, charcoal-grey skies. No matter, off we marched, confident there  would be no rain until perhaps afternoon or evening, and none developed, after all.

The changing landscape with its introduction of bright red foliage among the maples, soft yellow for the poplars, and yellow-bronze in the beech trees captured our attention the moment we turned from the entrance trail to face the plunge into the ravine from the first plateau at the level of the street, where the neighbourhood houses begin, including ours.

Talking together quietly, as we roamed the  trails, watching birds flutter in and out, around and through thickets of trees, we could feel another mood settling in; one of comfort and appreciation, helping to place into perspective the situation of our immediate surroundings as opposed to the disquieting news of the growing prevalence of COVID-19 cases and concomitant hospital admissions.

The atmosphere surrounding us of nature's clockwork progression from season to season, the responses of the forest trees, the wildflowers, the insects and the birds and small mammals rushing about on the forest floor in their ordained action of gathering up the food they need to sustain them over winter has its desired calming effect, the consternation over COVID receding, even as it gnaws its presence back  to a governable level as a potential threat that cannot be ignored or set aside in favour of living life as we normally do.

Fall colours are everywhere. And suddenly, whoops! it  isn't fall anymore. We've back-tracked to summer. Just like that. Our furnace has been set to 'on' for the past few weeks, the air conditioner packed away for another year and goodness gracious we no longer need heat pumped through the house. The past few days have been redolent of summer and that's that. No need for light jackets as we roam through the forest.

Last night around midnight we were out briefly in the backyard with Jackie and Jillie. Last minute preparations to go up to bed. Look up at the stars, we're urged, don't miss the displays of heavenly bodies. So, we often do just that, on clear evenings. Last night was one such evening. Our reward was to be surprised by the sight of an unusual moon. It shimmered and shone in the dark night sky and its colour was decidedly on the red spectrum.

A blood moon. So we conjectured why that should be. And realized that the intense, wide-spread wildfires burning through the forests of the U.S.Pacific Coast, in Oregon, Washington State and California have sent plumes of dense smoke into the atmosphere that rise and rise and keep rising. And they've occluded the atmosphere. Which accounts for that phenomenon of the moon shining through a red cast.

Blood moons are supposed to appear before an eclipse of the moon. But they can appear when there is sufficient dust and smoke in the atmosphere to create that same phenomenon. It is said by some who believe in Biblical prophecy that a blood moon signals the oncoming 'end of times'. And there's a certain strangeness to this; who might have imagined a year ago that the world would go into a social, physical lockdown in an effort to evade the potential of a deadly virus contaminating vast populations, resulting in the deaths of countless numbers of people?

Good thing most of us are not superstitious. That we can look about us and marvel at the vicissitudes of natural phenomena in a world where we are just a part of an interdependent whole. And on a more pragmatic, rational level understand that nature is sometimes at war with itself, and sometimes humanity is dragged into becoming a part of that war. We're affected by the presence of deadly bacteria and toxic moulds and viruses with which we learn to live in the sense of protecting ourselves from their excesses.

And then we go on to marvel at nature's other side, the one that provides us with spectacular visions of its capacity to bedazzle on the strength of its clockwork blueprint of existence. Where right now there are other colours, signifying nature's dedication to rest and renewal as our world makes its journey around the sun and we're gradually exposed to less warmth and weaker light, shorter daylight hours and the influx of new weather systems.

Today, as it happens, we have a 26C day, where last week we were experiencing night-time frosts when the thermometer flirted with -1C and our gardens were touched with frost. Today, a hefty wind blows warm, moist air throughout the atmosphere, the sun is blazing in a wide blue sky, and rain is nowhere in sight. The forest that we idyll through while remarking to one another how beautiful the new rainbow displays of vegetation are, feasting our eyes on nature's peerless palette is steadily moving toward mid-fall when even the last of the wildflowers will no longer bloom.

Already, fallen leaves and pine needles are littering the forest floor, and we're beginning to swish through the foliage, bright and crisp underfoot.  

 

Today is Saturday, a relaxed and relaxing day, no chores for me, though my husband is out at the back of the house on a strangely steamy day of unanticipated warmth and full sunlight, painting the sills of the house windows. Taking advantage, he tells me, of the warmth when it's best to tackle outdoor painting. I was busy yesterday in the kitchen primarily, baking and cooking. Decided to bake carrot cupcakes for a change, and they were spectacularly good. Funny thing, along with the grated carrot, raisins and walnuts I had snipped quite a bit of candied ginger into the batter, and its presence was not very noticeable.

As for dinner, early on in the day I started a chicken soup took cook, its aroma filling the house with promise, to be served with rice, as a preface to the main course. I'd breaded chicken breasts, mixed up a potato pudding and prepared cauliflower to be baked in the oven alongside the former two, and everything was nicely timed; the chicken moist and tender and flavourful, the potato pudding well baked and crusty (it had twice the baking time of the chicken, along with the cauliflower), and we quite enjoyed a robust dinner on a cool evening, that amazingly gave way to the summer-like day that was destined to follow.

And we were set to enjoy as much of this day as possible along with Jackie and Jillie, themselves more than ready to jaunt off into the ravine to see what another day would bring in discoveries in the forest enclave. Because it's Saturday we anticipated coming across a more-than-usual number of other hikers, but despite that this has been an extraordinarily warm day for the season, we weren't disappointed that scarce few others were out on the trails.

Yet, it's amazing how many people over the years you get to know and become familiar with, introduced to one another through exposure on the forest trails, regular hikers like yourselves. You may not see them for a long period of time, but when you do come across one another again, the greeting-old-friends syndrome kicks in and you find yourself standing about chatting for much longer than you would imagine possible, until your canine companions find it beyond irritating and communicate to the inattentive humans that it's time to be off...

The forest undergrowth has begun its fall retreat; bracken is beginning to shrivel and disappear, foliage is turning yellow to match what we're starting to see above in the leaf mass surrounding the trails winding through the forest. Every day now does bring a new edge of colour to the landscape, the march toward fall, weather aside, clearly visible in glowing colours of gold and red. It's mostly the effect of the maples and poplars, but birches and now beeches too are joining the colour brigade.

And while the underbrush is shrivelling, fall asters are in their glory. Even the more nondescript types with the uneven petal arrangements and pale colours of washed-out mauve and ivory have come into their own. Though they can't compare in size and colour to the large pink-blossoming asters, they still make an impressive show.

At one juncture as we reached the top of one of the hills we clamber up on our circuit, Jackie made a side-trip into a rarely-used side-trail and began barking. We soon discovered that he was nonplussed, absolutely perplexed by a peculiar aberration in the landscape. Two bicycles neatly parked together while, presumably, their riders went on afoot down the steep gradient below to do a little bit of adventuring. They'll certainly see more on foot than they ever would speeding through the trails on their bicycles.

Down below other trails lead off to further stretches of the forest and the creek that runs through it. It's where beaver from time to time establish their presence and begin industriously to fell some of the many poplars that grow in the forest. Occasionally wildlife authorities will respond to someone's complaint at their presence and take them off elsewhere, likely to nearby Gatineau Park's vast wilderness areas. We'd prefer they be left to the landscape they migrated to, there's ample fuel for their lodges, dams and appetites right here.

We meandered off to one of the trails latterly less travelled, a bit deeper into the ravine to stretch out our time out in the forest a bit longer. Like seeing old friends, re-acquainting ourselves with other areas of the ravine and forest is always pleasurable, and there's always something different to see. On this occasion it was a colony of tiny orange 'pills' of fungi on a decaying tree trunk long fallen over onto the forest floor.

Capricious as she is, in one of her kinder spurts of second-thoughts, nature has permitted the unseasonable frosty nights of late to recede, replacing them with early-fall temperatures. But it's too late, unfortunately, for the garden. It was already exhausted from summer efforts to maintain a perky, colourful front, and we experienced one or two frosty nights too far for total recovery.

Viewed from a distance, colours look bright and cheerful, lending the garden an overall appearance of late summer, a domestic landscape that makes me think every time I see it, how much different it will appear in another month hence, when I've completed putting it to sleep for another year, disassembling everything to bring some order to what is fast becoming a disheveled riot of vegetation long past its prime.

Not that this is anything different from one year to another, but these good-byes and au revoirs don't get any easier, while the winter months seem to get colder and longer. And, come to think of it, disassembling the garden too gets more difficult. More time-consuming and physically demanding, work that was onerous when I was 50 and all the more so now at 80-plus. But not yet completely daunting.

A perfect fall day, today. The sun dropped by briefly but had an appointment elsewhere, leaving us with heavily overcast skies, wind and an overall dark atmosphere. But reasonably mild at 16C, so no need to complain. As we approached the forest environs walking up the street with Jackie and Jillie, there's the little shock of realization that the inevitable occurs with amazing speed.

The colour changes that we had noted yesterday had definitely changed overnight; greater patches of colour and deeper shades of autumn are steadily appearing. The sight of the landscape in its transformative appearance can be breathtaking. Not only for the beauty it manifests, but the speed of the transition, since we're not quite yet prepared psychologically for winter's arrival. That plaintive inner voice asks of us "where did summer go?"

True, we'll have ample time left before it does arrive, and the transition leads to the intervening months of October and November when we go from the height of the display of brilliant foliage  falling to the forest floor, and the sight of leaves blown from their treetop heights by a demanding wind, appearing like early confetti-like snowfalls in October -- to the dismal cold and wet picture of bare branches in November and tree trunks reaching to the sky like black skeletal forms in mourning for the life they've lost, preparing to settle into the deep sleep of winter.

Today, though, we ambled along the forest trails with Jackie and Jillie, sharing the landscape with squirrels rushing about everywhere busy with the vast abundance of pine and spruce cones promising plenty of cache-food over the cold months to come. Little groups of robins fly around the trees close to the stilled creek, and overhead the occasional sound of migrating geese.

Maples have already turned brilliant red, a Christmas-colour contrast to the still-predominantly-green mass of the forest foliage, though poplars have begun to change to the bright, soft yellow they attain in full fall flush. Earlier, poplars discharge leaves that turn blush peach and pink. The forest's large pink fall asters, the last of the various types of asters to bloom, are now proudly displaying themselves;  unlike the appearance of the earlier-blooming asters, these are dazzling in colour, perfectly symmetrical and conceitedly showy.