One of those days. Memorable only because it so darkly overcast, threatening rain. Gloomy, moody, glum-inducing. The kind of day that is so affecting you muse what's the point of getting out of bed? But you do, as  you must. And feel lethargic all day. A day when to escape the all-encompassing gloom, you feel impelled to eat, not because you must, not in reaction to hunger, but as a way to appease the unease. It's a day for napping. Not that you mean to, but if you sit somewhere with the intention of reading or just contemplating life -- a dangerous occupation these days -- you will fall asleep. Weather.

It took us no time this morning to decide after we'd showered that the glowering aspect of the sky meant business. So it might be a good idea to dress up for rain and hie ourselves out for an early morning walk because by all indications there would be no usual afternoon hike through the forest trails for Jackie and Jillie and us today otherwise. On with their raincoats, on with their boots.

And we, of course, needed cleats firmly strapped over our boots for traction, knowing full well how slippery the hills in the ravine have become. And because it was cold enough overnight, just at the freezing point, we found the initial trails to be still in a state of stiff icy conditions. The slushy mush that had begun to dominate the trails as we discovered yesterday afternoon through this spate of milder weather that has melted most of the snowpack left after two snowstorms last week had hardened overnight.

But as we proceeded onward the weather did too, upward -- until the temperature rose to 2C degrees and began again melting what was left of the snow. Unlike most morning hikes we encountered just one person with one dog. Most people unaccustomed to what happens in a natural setting like a forest assume that when it's mild -- just a tad over freezing -- all will be pleasant and easy-going, so yesterday when the temperature rose to 6C, there were quite a few people about; we encountered at least a dozen. And they were slipping and sliding, unprepared for the mess the trails become under such conditions.

And so, lesson learned. The 'wanderers' as my husband has taken to calling them, the occasional hikers who've heard of the ravine's forest trails and desperately need to get out of social confinement for a few hours, don't tend to return. The result was for us a quiet, pleasant hike through the forest trails, undisturbed by anyone else's presence which means that Jackie and Jillie behaved since they had no reason not to.

It wasn't until we were back home and starting breakfast that the rain began. And it rained, and it rained. The wind drove the rain straight toward the house from every direction. I couldn't open the side door without risking the storm door being torn from its hinges. When I shook out my dusters later on at the front door while doing the house-cleaning, the wind drove the rain directly onto the porch and from there into my face. The trees were bending this way and that, and it felt colder.

One of those days.

We've a long history together. About 70 years-worth. Although we live in different cities now, we were once high school friends. Still living in Toronto are other friends we had in common and until recently she kept in fairly close touch with them. She hasn't had an easy life. In her first marriage that resulted in three children, her husband, a man I had never liked, chose to leave her in favour of the baby sitter they employed, a 'mature' teen.

Her second husband was, she said, a good man. I'd never met him, never knew him. In her later years, when she was in her late 70s, she had a third male companion, though they never lived together; he in his own apartment she in hers. But they did accompany one another every winter to Florida to escape Canada's cruelly cold winter. He was in his early 90s years ago, a concentration-camp survivor who experienced the Holocaust first-hand. A man of exceptional vigour for his age.

 

She hasn't mentioned him lately and I haven't asked. Too painful. It reminds me of my late mother's late-in-life romance with a man when she was in her 70s, too. They shared social outings together, each of them owned a cottage at a popular 'resort', but they too wouldn't live together because my mother wouldn't have it. He was older than she was, and she recalled what it was like looking after my father decades earlier when he was suffering end-stage cancer.

 

My friend has just been informed by a heart specialist that she needs angioplasty. That was a month ago. She was informed she would be given a date for surgery. At least now the procedure isn't what it was just a few years ago. Now it can be done through micro-surgery; less invasive, so less bleeding, faster recovery. Which is what I told her, hoping to hearten her. But given the situation in Toronto right now with soaring COVID cases and hospitals barely coping, it's not likely surgery will be scheduled for her for quite some time.

 

She emails me that she hasn't been out of her apartment really for the past nine months. I had been telling her that this is really unhealthy for her, to get out and get some fresh air and exercise, and she did venture out in the summer months on occasion to walk around her building. And lately she informed me she has graduated to a walker. She had sold her car a few years ago, and isn't very mobile now. I saw her last about six years ago, and at that time she was moving pretty carefully. 

She sees one of her daughters only briefly, when she drops groceries off for her mother. I had suggested that she go shopping with her daughter and son-in-law, just to get out and about, see other people, engage in some measure of normal life. But she took her own advice and her daughter still does her grocery shopping, as she does as well for her mother-in-law. How her daughter cannot see that this is an unhealthy situation for her elderly mother to be left alone and lonely is beyond me.

 

 

Today she wrote she has asthma and mask-wearing impedes her breathing, and she hasn't been outside in months. Her only human contact is local telephone conversations. Her entertainment is going on the Internet, looking at social media sites, sending emails. And I feel so badly for the poor woman. How many more are there like her? Legions.

And knowing that I know how fortunate I am. Though I hardly need that to remind me. Married for the past 65 years to an intelligent, warm, amusing, talented man whom I knew as a boy at a time when we were both 14 years old and had already become fast companions. We share everything, care about one another, look after the welfare of two little dogs, embark on mutually pleasing adventures. And now when COVID has closed down normalcy for everyone we cope together. Our daily forays into the forest nearby our home with our little dogs has been a life-saver.

 

 

 

Fearfully frightening realities. The coronavirus making huge strides. Everywhere. Precautions not to be taken lightly, yet confoundingly there are groups of people convinced that the current health crisis gripping the world community is nothing but a conspiracy to bring us all into a massive dictatorship plot. How people arrive at such delusional convictions is beyond knowing other than their minds are twisted, unable or incapable of facing reality.

But those twisted minds who rail against social distancing, facial masks and avoidance of large gatherings because they insist they will not abide having their freedoms eroded, and lend themselves to the state conniving to victimize them, place everyone at risk. There is just so much that health and government authorities can do to apprise the public and ask for their cooperation.

It would, of course, help enormously if those same authorities stopped sending contradictory and confusing messages; at first denying the usefulness of masks, then supporting their use. Shutting down small businesses while permitting large corporate interests to continue opening their premises to the public.

Having each of the provinces and territories enact processes at variance with others. Above all, the federal government delaying vital decisions until they fall into the category of 'too little, too late'. And the examples of senior leaders in government preaching to the public best practices for safeguarding themselves and their communities, while themselves breaking the very regulations they impose on others.

Suffice it to say that people are well and truly fed up with the confusion and lack of good sense. We empathize at an emotional remove with health professionals who are on the front lines, seeing and attempting to treat people in deep distress burdened with COVID-inspired organ failure, as they watch those stricken, both the elderly and health-compromised and younger people in seemingly good health, lose their battle for life.

Canadians look to the United States' figures for COVID infection cases and consequent deaths and shudder in the belief that the situation is nowhere near as dramatically awful in Canada. But in very fact, it is just that. We underestimate the effect the coronavirus has had in Canada at our own peril. Globally, Canada has the third-highest case fatality rate (3.4) to date among medium-large, high-income peer countries: "higher even than Spain France, the U.S.A. and Germany", according to University of Toronto infectious disease researcher Dr.Tara Moriarty.

We personally are beyond fortunate that we are able to isolate ourselves because we live in a single, detached home in a community that is only moderately dense in numbers of residents, with easy access to outdoor recreation to relieve the tedium of boredom, to enable us to obtain physical exercise, to continue to be healthy and well-adjusted. Restraining our shopping expeditions to the absolute necessities and taking reasonable precautions.

And hoping that we will somehow manage to evade the ghastly spectre of community infection that is sweeping the country. 

 This morning it rained again, but not heavily. And when it stopped out came the sun. Only the sun can guarantee a positive outlook on a day; exposure to it  is useful in other ways, building our daily vitamin D intake, yet another measure that helps to fortify the immune system and aid in avoiding contracting the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Through all of these contradictory and confusing issues we are beyond fortunate, with much to be appreciative of. Indications are that by early spring at least, one at least of the emerging vaccines will be rolled out in Canada and a giant effort to organize mass inoculation will be set to take place. A hoped-for event that will answer our wishes to return to the kind of life we lived before we became aware that a strange new virus was entering our lives, one whose particulars and impact puzzled science, and still continues to.

We'll be enjoying a warm apple pie for tonight's dessert. That's because we decided to get out earlier to the ravine with Jackie and Jillie than we normally would, after I've finished baking and dinner preparations. And that is because rain was forecasted again for today, after the all-day rain we had yesterday and the gloomy realization that it was too cold to also contend with pouring rain so a hike through the winter woods was out for us yesterday.

Not wanting to risk a repeat, and because after breakfast it hadn't yet begun to rain, off we went. Which meant that on our return I would turn my attention to doing all the baking and cooking. I had, as it happened, already prepared the pie filling; five apples sliced into chunks, 1/2 c.sugar, 2 tbsp.cornstarch, 1/4 cup cranberry juice, cooked and thickened to which I added a half-cup raisins and a tsp. cinnamon and finally slivers of crystallized ginger.

We decided the puppies would need their boots again, since we figured that what was left of the snowpack after the rain would be thoroughly mushed and the high for the day was 2C. But the snow was not the least bit degraded, and nor was that much of it yet melted. The atmosphere was damp but the snowpack was fairly intact. The cleats over our boots sank deep into the snow however as they're meant to do, and the constant sucking effect made for extra labour in hiking along. All the more so in climbing and descent the hills.

Ascending one of the hills to the forest flats above the ravine we came cross an older couple and their two dogs we hadn't before seen in the ravine. The dogs were Portuguese water dogs, one five, the other two years old. The couple was friendly, their dogs were calm, unlike our own. The five year-old had an awkward gait and it was evident what caused it, a huge, wrap-around lipoma that spread from its belly to its right haunch.

It wasn't difficult for us to recognize the condition, since we'd been through it with Riley, our toy apricot poodle, an agonizing affair. Although the lipomas are neutral, harmless fat deposits, not cancerous, they have a tendency to grow, and to keep growing. The first one tiny Riley had was on his side, bulging and disfiguring, and we had it surgically removed when it was the size of a baseball. The second one that followed twisted his gait eventually, growing as did the one we noticed on this young dog's body. It too was removed, and we hated having to put him in surgery. Eventually it too grew back.

This couple told us they'd had a lipoma removed from their dog's belly and this is the second one, that grew back with amazing speed. They hesitated to submit the dog to another surgery and we knew exactly why. Other than the expense, that is; the pain the dog goes through, its recovery and the eventual repeat. They had a sense of humour. We discussed an animal hospital we'd both had experience with, the Alta Vista Animal Hospital, which they had renamed the Alta Visa Animal Hospital. 

We recommended they consider any further surgery they might feel is required for this poor animal to be done at a clinic just over the border into the U.S. at Ogdensburg, New York. The Town & Country Veterinary Clinic where we had Jackie and Jillie's laser neutering surgery done. The personnel are kind and devoted to the animals they serve, the clinic is efficient and clean and well-equipped. And their charges are reasonable, a fraction of the cost of the same surgery done in our own area. They'd heard of the clinic and the quality of the work they do, so we've managed to do one good thing today.

We were out for quite a while; not only does it take longer to forge through the trails in winter snow conditions but coming across the occasional acquaintance means there are times when socializing takes its toll on time, but that's part of the allure of getting out at a time when most people see themselves confined to the indoors as a result of the global pandemic. 

And it was actually wondrously beautiful today in the forest. A mist rose from the creek rushing through the ravine, creating the illusion of a colour-soft landscape. And it wasn't only along the creek where that mist rose, but elsewhere on the trail system, including the  upper spine of the forest, an atmospheric effect beyond romantic.  

Because we hadn't gone out with the puppies yesterday; a break in routine, Jackie was eager to get out today. The sentence containing the word 'out' galvanized him, his mood picked up, he began cavorting about, he communicated his intention to make the most of the opportunity once out on the trails, and so that kind of validation that our daily woodland jaunts enhance the quality of life for all of us simply is the icing on the cake of enjoying life.

And warm apple pie.

Rained out today. It's cold, just hovering around freezing, but instead of snow it's been raining all day. Which will really mess up the accumulation of snow that has started our winter snowpack thanks to the recent two snowstorms we've just been through. Jackie and Jillie had to content themselves with sticking around the house. Not that they mind, particularly. They're always game to get out with us to the forest trails for an afternoon jaunt, but they're just as content to stay at home, and that's just what we've all done, today.

Rain and cold don't mix particularly well with incentivizing people to get out into nature. It reminds me of the last time we went canoe camping at Ontario's great northern wilderness preserve with our younger son, an inveterate outdoorsman. We had often gone camping with him, sometimes for a week at a time. So we have in the past encountered all kinds of weather at various points of the seasons. 

Our son is always prepared for all contingencies, and though he packs light, he packs determinedly with all the absolutely necessary items for such expeditions. Among the necessities is tarps. For wind and rain protection, to enable one to take shelter, find comfort, make food preparation efficient, that kind of thing. Toilet paper is a necessity, so are ropes. 

Other necessities can be found at camping spots, like a rock heavy enough to be thrown at the end of a stout rope to balance a backpack heavy with food and toiletries slung high over a thick tree branch for the night. Fuel for the cooking stove, flashlights, or camping candles and holders to sling under the top of the tent interior to read by at night.

Oh, and food, a few plates, cups, pans and pots. You can fit a lot into a capacious 18-ft. canoe with three paddlers. Not to forget a water purifier, waterproof jackets and maybe an extra pair of socks, and you're set. The food, of course, is carefully considered; nothing too perishable if you're staying for long, but there are exceptions if it's only a weekend camping trip.

And if you've got your little dog accompanying you, don't forget a waterproof coat for him/her too. Oops, and food suitable for a little canine appetite. Consider yourself fortunate if the lake you decide on isn't too deeply set in the interior, because it's a vast wilderness area, one that we explored well and truly over the years. On this occasion, however, we stayed close to the perimeter and more readily accessible, at Sec Lake.

Weather, did I mention weather yet? You've hit the jackpot if it rains and never stops, and that's happened to us often enough, as it did this last camping expedition of ours. The rain and ferocious wind that never gave quarter at any time during our three-day stay. Canoeing from the mainland to the island we headed for was a battle against the wind and penetrating rain. But we set out for a camping experience and that's what we had.

Our son and my husband, both experienced in such settings, quickly set up tarps to protect both against the wind and the rain. Even a 'shelf' placed between two trees was made to act as a meal preparation stage to hold all the necessities. The loo was set well back from the campsite and we were grateful it had a roof; many don't. Primitive, but all we needed; a board with a hole over a smelly chasm, sides and a roof. Trekking over to it at night in the dark and rain and wind isn't pleasant, but necessary.

The morning following our arrival the rain lightened and we paddled over to another area marked on our map as a long, very long portage to another lake. This was our recreational hike, through a greenery-enclosed trail that was pleasant and quite beautiful as a landscape, the trail following the edge of the lake until it linked with another lake. We stopped for awhile there to brew some tea and enjoy a snack before carrying on.

A tough paddle back to our campsite with the wind once more challenging our direction and a new storm brewing. Once back at the campsite we watched in fascination as a thick curtain of rain approached -- and then drenched us -- again. Even so, in the late afternoon we were able to enjoy a campfire and begin to dry out a bit. There was a really cool bite to the atmosphere that never relented, necessitating that we wear rainproof jackets throughout our stay.

That night, the sky miraculously cleared. We saw stars. We saw shooting stars. We watched a satellite in its trajectory overhead. And we heard wolves howling. Our elderly little dog was a trooper throughout. We were careful to try to keep him as dry as possible. And warm. And fed and hydrated. The situation reminded us of the time we spent on the Bowron Lakes Circuit in British Columbia's Cariboo Mountain range, when for the entire week-plus we were there rain never stopped, it was unfailingly cool, and we wore winter gear.

But despite it all, the coping with the elements, we were in a wonderful natural landscape and we made the most of it, all of it. Like all such adventures the memories remain clear and distinct and recall is beyond pleasant. On day two, when the rain was coming down in buckets, two canoes approached looking for empty campsites, viewed ours and paddled on. 

 When we finally left, a day later, it was still raining, but by then the weekend was approaching and there were canoes arriving on the lake, just as we were leaving. They would find at least one campsite available. 

It's at this time of year when the setting sun appears most spectacular in its effects on the landscape and in the heavens as it rises and sets. Yesterday we had decided we'd take a drive up the eastern parkway into downtown (or uptown, depending on your perspective) Ottawa, then take the western parkway over to the little shop located in a nondescript strip mall that appears to be the remaining stained glass supply shop in the area.

All the way we drive alongside the Ottawa River; both parkways faithfully follow the river's trajectory. We pass familiar landmarks including the RCMP musical ride horse stables, and the national aeronautical museum. Yesterday was a cold and sunny day; little wind to speak of and just perfect for a drive after we'd taken Jackie and Jillie out for their usual afternoon turn on the forest trails in the ravine.

They knew they'd be coming with us. We had left their collars on and they only wear them when they're outside the house. We had exchanged their fluffy little winter coats for snug little woolly sweaters. I was prepared to sit in the truck with them while my husband selected coloured glass to supplement what he has in his home inventory, along with the lead and other items he needs to complete another set of windows. So they napped while I read the papers and my husband took his time in the shop he's been going to for decades.

Driving along on this spectacularly beautiful day it's a leisurely treat with the conditions that prevailed. The sun was blinding through the windshield of the vehicle -- appearing on the right, then the left, then back again, as the roads we were driving on turned and straightened, turned again -- but also strikingly exquisite as it glowed over the landscape, the river and the snow that covered everything in a virginal white glow. Traffic is always light along the parkways, most commuters use the express highways for a more 'efficient' drive. 

Looking across the wide river where the first signs of ice forming can be detected close to the shoreline, you see the separation between Ontario and Quebec, with the Quebec shoreline dotted by the presence of small early 20th Century houses. When freeze-up occurs in a month or so, and the river is securely tucked into winter mode, nearby residents, mostly on the Quebec side, drive onto the river, erect little huts and drill fishing holes in the ice. It's a time-honoured, favoured winter tradition.

We pass the National Gallery with its huge glassed-in atrium, the large piazza in front of the gallery dedicated to a huge sculpture of a spider, "Maman", with its cache of 'eggs' under its body. Its immense size and subject matter are fascinating, and far preferable to the usual non-objective art that usually graces public spaces in this era of modern abstract art.

When we come to Parliament Hill, we see that the East Block of the Parliament buildings is being renovated, with scaffolding towering high above, workers busy with the labour it takes to refurbish and strengthen the old masonry work. The entire campus is being worked on, bit by bit, before the Gothic-inspired buildings that so typify the era in which they were built to reflect a far earlier era's style of public buildings deteriorate beyond repair.

In the Centre Block, also under renovation, the House of Commons has been temporarily moved to the old Railway Station building long since transformed into a huge Conference Centre which now hosts parliamentary affairs temporarily, and in an entirely new mode, given the physical distancing between people required during this time of the global pandemic causing chaos all over the world, no less and far more than in Canada.

Before long we pass the Holocaust Memorial, a stark, cold, grey, sharply angled structure reflecting a horror in world history that was stark, cold and grey with shame for the world community that failed to act in any meaningful way that would put a stop to the annihilation of six million Jews. Ironically, as we pass, a traffic sign is lit up with the warning: 'Stop'. In a fitting tribute to that miserable failure, when the memorial was dedicated, the memorial plaque made no mention of the fact that the victims were Jews. And nor did Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in his sanctimonious address make reference to that inconvenient bit of reality.

 Further along the river, ducks and geese were floating on its steel-grey surface, perhaps soaking up the last warmth of the near-setting sun. Other waterbirds were nestled in flocks alongside pathways running along the grassy, now-snow-covered river banks, seemingly comfortable and not given to moving as the odd passerby strolled along the paths. They will likely very soon complete their migratory trip south for the winter months.

 It took a while before my husband finished his business in the glass shop where he was the sole customer. During that time the light began to visibly fade as dusk slowly set in. On our way driving back along first the western then the eastern parkways, the sun had set and the moon had risen. We drove home in the dark, the heavens having turned from pale blue to a deep velvety purple, the half-moon floating wan and lovely above the trees silhouetting the landscape.

 

Our early morning food shopping done with, we returned to our anxiety-ridden little dogs for all of us to enjoy breakfast together. And then it was quick work to clean up and get out into the ravine to enjoy this beautiful day we were presented with, as a kindly gesture from nature. A crisp, cold day, the sky a veritable ocean of blue stretching as far as the eye can see, and floating across it the good ship that illuminates our days and is the source of life on Planet Earth.

Barely any wind, so the -4C temperature was beyond pleasant as we set off, Jackie and Jillie geared in winter coats and boots. The ice that glazed the street in front of the house yesterday has melted, under the irresistible influence of the sun. In the ravine, the trails are thick with ice and snow. Despite yesterday's wind much of the snow that fell overnight the night before remains on the trees, well plastered in elegant white.

Without our boots well cleated for the ice it would be quite the trick to manoeuvre without slipping and ultimately falling, but that wasn't our concern since from this time forward we'll be wearing cleats while tramping through the trails. And we don't have to be concerned over our puppies' discomfort when the temperature is this low and the ground is ice-and-snow covered. They're perfectly happy wearing the boots tripping along nicely, and we're spared the necessity to pick them up to warm icy little paws.

Never is snow blanketing the woods more welcome than in late November when the landscape looks dull and sere. Everything is completely changed, from visual perspective to gratification with the exquisite beauty of our familiar landscape which familiar though it may be, offers various facets and aesthetic nuances for appreciation reflecting every type of weather condition and measure of the seasons.

The sun at its approaching-winter angle is blindingly magnificent. Yesterday had been overcast, but when we were wending our way back up the last long hill to street level, just before setting the sun broke clear of the clouds for a few minutes and set the forest canopy where it illuminated the trees, sparked in fabulous red tones of glimmering fire.

This afternoon the sun's rays reflected directly on the trees. Networks of bare branches, still holding a portion of the snow they had been bedecked with, but beginning to melt under the intense light and heat of the sun, looked as though they were being decorated with a myriad of stars; droplets from melted snow crystallizing, catching the sun and sparkling like priceless jewels.

Soon after returning home we left again for a drive downtown to stop in at a shop that supplies my husband with stained glass, lead and all the other materials he requires when putting together a window. The sun owned the sky completely. And it dominated the landscape both above and below, as it glimmered and glanced off the Ottawa River.