I found myself recently recalling the winter days when I took such pleasure with shovel-and-snow. For the past several years I've left it all to Irving, nursing a wrenched shoulder, arm, chest wall, from an unfortunate fall in the ravine. Time, the saying goes, heals all wounds, referring mostly to psychological trauma, but it also does so with physical hurt if left long enough for the body to repair itself. I decided, when I took Jackie and Jillie out after their breakfast, to shovel the walkways in the backyard and it felt really good. 

When Irving left shortly after breakfast to drive over to a nearby pharmacy to pick up our renewed prescriptions, I decided to slip out of the house in his absence. We'd earlier received an email from the snow removal company that clears out our driveway, so I knew they'd be by some time in the afternoon. I went out primarily to shovel the porch, and the walkways from driveway to backyard and driveway to front walk.

I just didn't feel like leaving things as they were. It felt so bracing to be out there. There was about 5-6 cm down, and the shovel moved so effortlessly, I decided I'd shovel out the driveway. That's just what I did, hoping to be able to finish before Irving returned. I left the bottom quadrant of the driveway at the street junction unshovelled, but the bulk of the driveway was done to my satisfaction, so back into the house I went, and was re-united with two concerned little pups.

An hour or so later, much after Irving had returned to admonish me about shovelling, the big snow tractor was in the driveway, clearing away snow at the bottom of the driveway. And when, soon afterward, we ventured out with Jackie and Jillie for our usual ravine hike, I assessed that the hand shovelling I had done was superior to the work done by that huge  tractor whose lugs bit deeply into the snow, the impressions of which remained evident on the snow it left behind on the driveway.

I felt pretty good about doing that shovelling. Considering I'm a week away from my 85th birthday. Mind, I don't like it when Irving is out shovelling, it really upsets me. I feel pretty strong and limber, have good energy for the most part, aside from the inevitable twitch and tear now and again. I attribute some of that to the simple, brief daily exercises I've done most of my life. I do them now in our bathroom, and it's become a signal for Jackie and Jillie that when I'm finished, we're about to go out for our daily tramp through the woods. They respond by leaping joyously about after one another.

On with their new snug winter jackets and harnesses and boots. Newfallen snow and freezing temperatures play havoc with little dogs' feet. Aside from which the municipality has begun using salt on the roads to melt the build-up of ice. When dogs' paws pick up the salt then walk on snow and ice the resulting cold-effect can be pretty painful and can even cause bleeding cracks on their pads. Inevitably during the winter months we'll occasionally see bleeding marks on some of the trails in the ravine from dogs' paws. Boots save that from happening.

The forest landscape under a pewter sky matching the wide white of the forest floor with the stark darkness of tree trunks rising naked upward looks like a monochromatic black-and-white painting. Both conifers and hardwood silhouetted against the bright white of the snow, the forest interior its usual dusky ambiance made more opaque by the heavy overcast and the random light bursts of snow.

 Footing in ascents and descents of the hills couldn't be better. The snow now deep enough and adhering nicely to the ice layers below. There was no back-sliding or slipping, the snow allowing our boots and cleats fine gripping for stability and balance. Jackie and Jillie have no such problems, they skip lightly through the snow, boot-protected, while its depths leave clusters of snow on the upper portions of their legs.

Ours was the almost sole presence this afternoon on this winter wonderland.The countdown for Christmas is nigh, people excited and involved in last-minute gift shopping. Irving encountered an inordinate number of vehicles on the road when he'd gone out earlier in the day. A month of frantic preparations coming to a head for many people planning on visiting others, despite cautionary messages from health and government-level authorities during this Omicron-spread wave of the coronavirus.