It's interesting  how your thoughts can go off on a tangent at times. A casual glance at my face in the bathroom mirror while I was cleaning it this morning, and I noted how angular my face looks now, long and narrow when I always thought it was more of a wide oval, and the prominence of my nose struck me. Was it always like this? A factor of growing old?

That led me to recall my sister-in-law, a really consciously-stylish woman, like her father, once underwent rhinoplasty in the hope of diminishing the appearance of her nose. I never thought it dominated her face, but I was curious to see the end result, and in fact I saw very little difference. I kept remembering, how much our interests and concerns differed, hers and mine. She seemed consumed by appearance over all, and though it mattered to me, I felt it to be superficial as a concern in comparison to things that really took my notice.

Then I remembered, for some odd reason, that I had not been invited to her wedding. Which was strange, since I had been invited to her bridal shower. There was a few years between us, but even two to three years placed us on a different social level. I was also slightly less than gregarious, while she was an extrovert. Memories can get convoluted; I had dated the younger brother of the man my sister-in-law married.

I found him to put it mildly nauseating. Soon afterward I hosted a party at my patents' house for my 14th birthday. I had invited that boy and he brought along another boy, a friend of his, who just happened to be the man I've been married to for almost 68 years. When my sister-in-law married her boyfriend, a really lovely fellow, quite different from his brother, her mother-in-law lavished her with all manner of expensive household appliances, and financed the creation of a trendy little shop for them as proprietors.

I recalled, as my thoughts kept unfolding, how this woman approached me soon after my sister-in-law's marriage, asking why I had stopped seeing her son -- as though I had ever devoted any time to him to begin with -- telling me she was prepared to do for me and her  younger son what she had done for her older son and his wife. I was only fifteen years old at the time, but I felt pressured and offended after explaining to her that I had a steady and prolonged interest in the companionship of the boy destined to be my lifelong partner.

What dredges up these old memories?

Well, today has been a typical winter day; some sun along with cloudy intervals, no wind, no snow for a change, and an afternoon high temperature of -10C. It was already three in the afternoon and dusk wouldn't be long in falling when we set off with Jackie and Jillie for our afternoon ravine hike. Getting in to the ravine presents a little initial problem with the pile-up of accumulated snow clogging the entrance to the ravine trails. It requires balance, a good heave upward at a tight angle to gain the footing required to access the trail. We manage, but it's a potentially good way to seriously twist an ankle.

Almost immediately we accessed the downward trail to the ravine through the forest interior we were visited by a number of dogs. It's Jillie's barking that alerts them to our presence. Or, more precisely, Irving, the Cookie Man's presence. At a distance I often see the fleeting figures of dogs taking shortcuts off trail, speeding uphill or down, leaving their humans behind in their anxiety not to miss an opportunity to scarf cookies.

The snowbound wonderland with the forest trees garlanded with heaps of snow that greets the eye at every turn is quite the aesthetic draw. But the cold, crisp air is yet another compelling reason, along with the opportunity to stride along in this kind of pristine winterscape that draws people to venture out on cold days to feel the exhilaration that exposure to nature invariably treats the eye, the mind and the body to.