Slept like a baby log last night. Oh, right, I did have to get up around four. It's all that comforting liquid last evening. Two bowls of soup and endless cups of hot, hot tea  does have the effect. On me, anyway. It's the mechanics of inner plumbing. A night light kept on for that kind of sleep interruption isn't a bad idea. And then a running leap back into bed. Okay, that might be an exaggeration. The running, the leap. Not getting back into bed. That's an imperative, the other is an illusion.

In the process, we seem to have lost an hour somehow. Mislaid it, no doubt, while in the confusion of being half-awake. When I finally woke up, Irving said it was after nine. And then he amended that statement, reminding me that the clock was turned back an hour. Spring forward, yes, of course. We'll 'recover' that lost hour in six months ostensibly when we Fall backward. Plain and simple idiocy.

So of course I've been behind in just about everything in my routine. A lost hour is like an abandoned orphan, now knowing what to do with itself. Irving knew what to do; he turned all the clocks back an hour. Left the stove clock and the microwave clock to me. And I've left them as it. I'll live awhile with the jarring reality of rampant stupidity in holding on to a 'daylight saving' tradition that long outlived its dubious practicality.

The transition actually causes accidents on roadways when drivers are sleep-deprived and their observation and reaction competencies are challenged. It puts people in a bad mood. It's upsetting in many ways until we eventually accustom our bodies and our minds to this needless complication in life.

It was, consequently, later by an hour than usual when we finally made it out to the ravine. A mostly overcast day that reached the pinnacle of its warming and stalled in the afternoon at -2.5C. And an icy wind. Jackie and Jillie were happy to be out. They're forever on the lookout for fresh victims, unaware of their penchant for terrorizing people who dare enter the sacred precincts of their ravine.

There is no longer any ice left over the creek or siding its banks. As we approached the first of the bridges to cross the creek heading to higher ground, a flock of robins lifted itself from the water's edge and flew into the trees above, to await our absence before returning to whatever it is that robins do in winter in a forest around the icy-cold water running along the depths of the ravine.

Perhaps because of the hour -- 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. -- we saw no one else out on the trails, nor any dogs. The evening sun made a last, brief burst of brilliance as it began to set below the horizon. Delivering a message that it's doing what it can to warm up the day and melt some of the still-pristine snow cushioning the forest floor. The sight of that golden orb restores faith in the timelessness of nature which no amount of human pretense can change.