When people from the larger community -- through which the ravine we visit daily straddles -- began coming through the forest trails, many among them were unaccustomed to finding themselves deep in a forest, out in fresh air in a natural setting many never knew existed and others did their best to avoid. On occasion we would see people wearing masks as they made their way through the trails. Not just older people, but equal in numbers were quite young people we'd estimate not even to have reached their 20s.

The initial flush of visitors to the ravine in the first six months or so of lockdowns when people were desperate to leave their homes and find a welcoming landscape treated us for the first time in many decades of our use of the forest trails, to bottlenecks where secondary and tertiary trails converged on main trails. 

There were also during those early times of an influx of people entering the ravine many sullen faces. People unaccustomed to being in woodland settings and finding themselves unimpressed, wondering what they're doing there, what might they have been thinking, that they would enjoy the experience...? Mostly people with no concept of trail etiquette or for that matter, interested in the barest amount of civility.

 

Since then, those people have been weeded out -- by natural selection, you might say. And those who still come through, familiarizing themselves with the comfort and pleasures inherent in walking through a natural landscape, finding what they were looking for, content with the experience and determined to repeat it. These are the people capable of smiling, of returning a greeting.

Among a handful of people we're familiar with there was a very young couple with an infant and a baby. The little boy walked with confidence and was as interested in the dogs he came across as they were in him. Never flinching when a large dog came close to sniff him. His mother carried a baby on her back, his father was fully engaged encouraging his son to engage in everything around him, and the little boy was interested in everything.

 

And what a day it was; the temperature soared to an unseasonable 2C, quite surprising us. It was heavily overcast and the forest interior was dark even at three in the afternoon. Before we had been out long on the trails we were arrested by the nearby sound of an owl, hooting with great clarity and effect. Although we looked about everywhere we were unable to see it perched anywhere. A few days earlier we'd heard crows mobbing and likely it was due to the presence of the owl, possibly a barred owl.

And then snow began lightly descending gently around us. Given the temperature it could have been freezing rain, but precipitation enters a series of atmospheric conditions on its trip from the sky to the ground. We tarried longer than is usual to take full advantage of the weather conditions and the pleasurable opportunity to roam about at leisure, not trying to escape the cold, just ambling along.