Just as well we took a prolonged circuit through the forest trails yesterday afternoon, giving ourselves a really good airing on a perfect winter day. There was no dampness in the air, it was -3C, and though there was wind, it  howled high above through the forest canopy. A day so perfect that many others in the community came streaming out to enjoy the day with the bonus of a forest landscape enveloping us all. 

After we returned home from our forest idyll the temperature kept falling. Until it hit -15C overnight. By morning it was back up to -10C, inconsiderable wind, but damp, heralding snow at some point during the day. When Jackie and Jillie go out to the backyard, they focus now at the very back, centre of the fence where we leave carrots out for the rabbit. We're relieved they're not interested in the rabbit droppings.

Slate-back juncos, chickadees, crows, cardinals and even a bluejay were busy on the porch today. The chickadees don't mind sharing space with the squirrels but the other birds are incredibly flighty; as soon as they sense a shadow hovering nearby they instantly take flight. A contrast to one of the black squirrels who doesn't even bother moving aside off the porch when I shake out one of my dusters.

Well, today was our weekly house deep-cleaning. And I dawdled about between fits of attention to  the job at hand. By the time I finished washing the floors and changed from my work clothes it was quarter to four, the time of the afternoon when dusk quickly enters. And the temperature hadn't nudged up past -8C. So we decided to forego a hike through the forest this afternoon. 

The later hour as it were -- any time after four -- with impending darkness in the forest interior along with the damp cold persuaded us we could miss one day. Sharp in our memory was the two red-on-white scenes we came across on separate trails yesterday. This was no mere signal of a dog having split his paw on the icy surface of the trails, it was the signature of predator carnage. From the amount of blood scattered on the hard snow surface, it must have been a squirrel caught, we imagine, by a coyote.

Someone has pinned up coyote warnings again on the trees at several junctures along the trail system. We will avoid taking Jackie and Jillie out to the woods when natural light is fading, until spring arrives. Yesterday, by the time we wound up our circuit, to ascend to street level, we looked back at one point in the dim light behind us and saw in the distance that another hiker was wearing a head lamp, its brightness piercing the semi-opaque grey of dusk.

Painting of our younger son at a lookout in the Gatineau Hills, Quebec

Whoever he was, he might not be aware that with the dense pewter cloud cover of yesterday when the dark of night fell the ravine would be flooded with a bright, shimmering apricot light, clear enough to give absolute perspective. It's the effect of the overall snow cover and the faroff city night lights reflecting off the clouds and bouncing back down into the forest landscape. An effect that cannot be seen at street level, or even hinted at from the street looking toward the forest. You've got to be right in there.

So we tootled around the house for the time we usually spend out-of-doors. I took a few photographs of paintings that Irving had done decades ago, in the first few years of his retirement; that's almost thirty years ago. He left painting to devote himself to making stained glass windows instead. Jackie and Jillie followed me about. They even followed me downstairs to the basement where they rarely, if ever, venture.