It was 7:00 pm by the time yesterday's snowstorm blew itself out, exhausted of more white, fluffy fuel. We felt pretty exhausted ourselves, but a good hot, flavourful meal of breaded chicken livers, fried onions, mashed potatoes and green beans resuscitated us preparing us for a quiet evening and a blazing fireplace. All was quiet and calm, our immediate landscape well blanketed in snow. We may be on our way after all to acquiring the usual winter snowpack; it's just taken more time this year than usual.

Clearing out the back steps and the backyard pathways for Jackie and Jillie pleased them mightily. On the one hand they were able to get about unobstructed without having to plough their way through a discomfitting volume of snow they prefer in tamer amounts. And with that taming they happily ran about through the cleared paths, chasing one another, loving the snow but awkward at being smothered in it.

Yesterday's snowstorm gave way to a clear, brilliantly sunny day today. Jackie and Jillie find great entertainment in observing our daily porch visitors, and this morning it was a little black squirrel soon to be joined by red, grey and other black members of its tribe. Juncos and chickadees soon arrived as well. For some reason, it's the black squirrels that draw the ire of our two little black fellows at their audacious displays of familiarity and entitlement.

We had decided to forego our usual grocery shopping for Tuesday in view of the city still struggling to clear out major streets and reports of jack-knifed and abandoned trailer-trucks and delivery vehicles. Already vulnerable commodity deliveries given the new cross-border COVID restrictions hampered yet more with this large snowstorm that left about a foot and a half of snow swaddling highways.

For serene beauty, however, a forest newly bundled in fresh snow has few challengers. All the more so with a clear blue sky lighting up the landscape below. The high for today a cool -13C, but with the stiff wind chill factored in, the equivalent of -23C, and it felt like it. The cold was relentlessly intrusive though we presumed we were dressed for it. 

As for trail conditions, we couldn't expect too much after a 47cm snowfall in one day. We came across one other person out with his dog, a friend of ours who said he had been out on the trails in yesterday's storm. He had seen no other hikers, nor any dogs. What he did see was the occasional small group of teens sliding down hills in toboggans having a wild and woolly time of it.

In fact, unlike decades ago when after such a storm a very narrow track would eventually indicate the few hikers who had broken trail, now so many more people come in to the ravine since the start of the pandemic that what occurs after these storms, is people trickling in throughout the day in numbers sufficient to create much wider trail clearances.

Using the term 'clearances' rather loosely. And loose is what those cleared trails are, leaving one struggling to stay upright, maintain balance and stop slipping on the silken snow surface deeply indented and plushily scheming to have a good laugh when hikers unsteady on their booted feet slip and thump. The effort to pull oneself uphill bears little resemblance to the relatively minor effort with prime conditions.

But Jackie and Jillie, despite the cold, were absolutely overjoyed to be out in the forest. Excited and anticipatory, they flew downhill and up. Jackie in particular ran back and forth so speedily and so frequently he seemed to feel no discomfort as a result of the cold and the wind. Neither one stopped long enough to realize they were being held up by frozen little paws with little rubber boots between them and the freezing surface, they just zipped happily along.