We're on a truly odd roller-coaster of peculiar weather happenings. In one fell swoop of wind-borne change, the  temperature soared here past 10C, unbelievably balmy, making quick work of the snow that fell yesterday afternoon in a mini-blizzard that lasted several hours and brought us a plush new coverlet of fluffy snow. All that fluff has now turned to water with little ponds appearing everywhere.

We debated whether Jackie and Jillie would appreciate their boots for a hike through the ravine today, and decided they would. We had anticipated that the high temperature would turn the prevailing ice that has covered the forest floor from hard, glossy ice to a denaturized ice, soft and malleable underfoot. But just in case, because you never know, we strapped on cleats over our boots and set off.

The street leading up to the ravine entrance is now entirely free of the snow and ice that had packed it solid for the past several weeks. Hard-packed snow and ice still remain at the edges extending from the curbs outward, but the street itself is now free. The wind helpfully blew us up the street to the ravine entrance and it didn't take long to discover that ample ice remained and on the trails it was thick, extending from one side of the forest to the other.

Our descent into the ravine was tricky; like Jackie and Jillie we scouted out the most obvious places where our boots should tread, taking our time with our uncertain way down. Irving is forever offering to stabilize me, to hold my hand, my elbow, because he is more sure of his footing than I am, but I always envision myself falling and bringing him along with me. I'd rather fall on my own than be responsible for his falling.

We found the trails more relenting in the most surprising places, where they normally tend to be more difficult, and that offered us a bit of relief until we gained the upper portion of the forest trails again and could relax on more level terrain. Still icy, but more safely negotiable with the assurance our cleats give us. We thought, under the circumstances that the snow would have melted apace, but were happy to discover plenty of it remaining.

The snow that did melt found its way into the creek at the ravine bottom, and it was streaming wildly, dark and cold. Dark with the turbulence-driven sedimentary particles the force of the water was thrashing up from the bottom of the creek. Plenty of fallen twigs, broken off trees from the weight of the snow that had fallen, turned briefly to ice, then melted as the temperature rose.

We kept looking for alternate potentials to the wide swath of uneven ice that made up the trail system, and on occasion found a few that served us well. Jackie and Jillie were busy poking about here and here while carefully avoiding the wide, frozen central portion of the trails. Not much chance of coming across others out with their dogs in the ravine these days; people perhaps somewhat more sensible and certainly more acutely avoidance-prone of falls than we are.

There was one descent where purchase was so tenuous that pure insecurity had me accepting Irving's offer to guide and support me at a particularly treacherous point. A sense of accomplishment and exhilaration does flood briefly into our minds once we've completed the circuit, made note of our surrounding, changing landscape, and make our way back up the last of the hills to street level.

The thing about it is that brief daily escape into nature, irrespective of conditions relieves us of a certain amount of stress. The leisure pleasure tinged on these occasions with a sense of heightened awareness of our surroundings and the necessity to exercise caution, strips deeper, more concerning thoughts from our minds, however temporarily.

As we approached our house, there was Mohindar in his driveway garden hose in hand, washing down his car of road spray. Both he and Rajindar now have received their third vaccine doses. They each went separately to area pharmacies to have them administered. The pharmacies are taking up the slack and providing better service to residents than the provincial health services. The clinic where our family physician practices out of, has been virtually out of bounds for almost two years. Today a call from the clinic asking if we'd had our flu shots yet. They haven't administered them during COVID; our pharmacy did.