News on the COVID front not very encouraging. That, despite the longed-for revelation that Pfizer and Moderna -- and now Astra-Zeneca as well -- pharmaceuticals' Third-Phase Trials have been rated so positively. The world is on literal tenterhooks waiting for some medical miracle to rescue us all from the grip of this SARS-CoV-2  virus that has wrought such untold misery and damage globally. But we will have to continue waiting, as difficult as that is, before those three and following vaccines are approved for emergency use to shield the world population as best as can be done, from the predatory virus.

Case numbers skyrocket in the U.S., in Russia, in France, Italy, the Middle East, in India, Mexico. The one area of the world that appears to have succeeded in dampening the dread effects of the pandemic seems primarily to be China, if news coming out of their state-sponsored agencies are to be believed. What is hardly to be believed is that the source of the infection which has gone on to destroy countless lives across the globe and has done so much harm to the world economy, sinking employment and leaving families triple-marooned on an island of fear, illness and lost income has hardly made a dent in China.

Here in Canada, the news is sobering, with the nation's top public health experts warning that with this second storm of infections the subsiding rates that were seen in the wake of the first wave, has reversed to alarming proportions. Once again acute-care institutions and retirement residences have become hot-spots for infections and deaths. 

We are warned by health authorities and by those whom we routinely elect to govern us for the greater good of society that we, the public, have let down our cautionary measures resulting in community infection rates increasing alarmingly. In Toronto and Peel region, Ontario's premier has ordered another lockdown; all non-essential services and businesses are to close for a designated period. Yet day-cares and schools will remain open.

In Ottawa, where we live, we are rated to be in the 'orange zone', not quite reaching the point where Toronto has gained the distinction of 'red', but getting there. Grim, grim, grim. But we've a life to  live and to get on with, and there is no use moping and succumbing to numbing fear. Hope does spring eternal in the human psyche, and never more so than when matters turn as seemingly hopeless as they are now deemed to be. 

We gathered ourselves for a tramp through the forest early this afternoon. After yesterday's balmy, quite unexpected 15C, when it wasn't hard to imagine that summer had forgotten its date down under and simply wandered back to this hemisphere it suddenly recalled where it should be and abandoned us again. So it's a cold day, with a high of 3 degrees, lots of wind, and occasional sun. Although the sun came and went as it would, for the duration of our hour and more rambling through the forest trails it gleamed brightly.

The trails are beginning to firm up again, leaving less muck to trail through derived from the transition from night-time icy temperatures to milder and sunny day-time conditions. The birds appear to be laying low; nowhere in evidence these cold days and blasting wind conditions, though the squirrels are still hard at it, continuing to gather cones.

The forest landscape seems as colour-deprived and bleak as the news. Until finally those thoughts and concerns clear out as we venture deeper into the woods and wander through the trails, watching Jackie and Jillie rambling about as they tend to do, finding intriguing odours everywhere we go. Their interest in and fascination with those odours are somewhat like our fixation on the news updates.

There's no antidote to mild depression from any source as a cause of dire concern, quite like being out in nature and letting your thoughts run as free as the wind, looking about in all directions, noticing little things like needles couching themselves in tree depressions, foliage remaining in sparse little clusters on saplings and ground vegetation, expressing little flags of colour caught by the probing fingers of the sun to stand out from the prevailing black, brown and greys.