Our faith in the traditions of winter has been restored. Lamentations on high over unwinter-like conditions reached the ears of Mother Nature and she relented. Ravine trekkers were full of gratitude, and had ample yarns to recount of their hair-raising adventures determined not to miss their daily hikes through the ravined forest. Today was the day finally that no one who wanted to miss exercising their privilege of sharing the forest trails met up and relived accounts of tumbling, sliding, slipping, falling.

No one appears to have suffered any damage. They're all seasoned hikers and knew what they were up against when they set off. Tree huggers all. Wherever a modicum of stability could be had, descending those slippery slopes they were fully taken advantage of. It takes a leap of faith to unwind one's arms in deep hugs around trees lining the trails when straight ahead is nothing but ice just waiting to meet one's rump.

There's such a feeling of forlorn misery for those addicted to the forest when all that is available for an afternoon intention to relax while loping along a forest trail is to either deliberately risk breaking a leg or an arm or denting a skull by persisting in a forest heavily glazed with ice, or the even-under-such-conditions infinitely lesser choice of walking along suburban streets and byways.

Instead of coming away from the experience of street walking with a mind cleared of the daily mind-smog of concerns and bad news interrupting the solitude of a pandemic day, ill humour sets in because the sight of streets empty of people but full of driveways and vehicles has induced a headache of visual rejection. Moving limbs fail to make contact with nature's surface, and it just is not the same walking on roads and sidewalks; asphalt may be practical for the purposes to which it lends itself but it is no substitute for the massage that booted feet gain through contact with Earth's surface.

There is a feeling of tired limbs after walking on the street, not the liberated, loose and relaxed sensation one comes away with following the experience of a woodland tramp. One feels cheated of the leisure pleasure, the beauty that nature's landscape presents, the natural elements that stir a distnt primal memory we may be unaware of, but subconsciously respond to.

We were uncertain when we approached the ravine entrance, whether the snow that fell all day yesterday would adequately adhere to the hard frozen surface underfoot. But for the most part, it did. And those who had ventured forth before us had done an excellent job of tamping down the new snow, breaking trail, creating a well trodden surface. Ice did protrude here and there, and there was ample evidence that those before us had slipped now and again. But we were able to spot those areas of mischief and to avoid them.

Snow covered all surfaces, fresh and white and blindingly bright. It had turned out a bright sunny day, a wide blue sky above and the wind was well behaved, an altogether perfect winter day. Officially, of course, winter arrives on the 21st, Tuesday. The reminder is the short duration of daylight as we approach the shortest day of the year.

Now and again we heard distant voices rising in excited exclamations, a sure giveaway that somewhere in the ravine there were children playing in the new snow. Schools are out for the Christmas-New Year's holidays. Closed earlier this year in deference to the new COVID variant that is sweeping relentlessly through populations worldwide. Its inexorable infectiousness is alarming and already Omicron's presence has been discovered in both elementary and high school populations.

So children were sensibly taking themselves to the out-of-doors with their sleds and zipping down the hillsides of the newly-snowed ravine. What should be an exciting time of year for school-age children has been depressed by the necessary caution revolving around a virus that has spread havoc globally. The best of all possible places for children to be; isolated yet still recreationally challenged at the presence of nature's seasonal gift.