Sobering but unsurprising news for those living in the country's most populous province and in the nation's capital. Unsurprising to anyone keeping tabs on the continually growing daily count of new cases and deaths attributed to COVID-19. Sobering because you feel from your own experience that the public is engaged in doing  what it can to avoid either contracting or passing on the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but you also know from what you've read that there are those in society who feel it entirely unnecessary to heed the pleas and warnings from the medical community.

 In the first wave of  COVID to hit the province the hospitalization, intensive care and death toll was borne largely by the health-compromised and elderly who lived in long-term care homes and retirement homes. Now, in the second phase of the pandemic, long after governments at all levels pledged to ensure that the elderly would never again become victims of a vicious virus, those same governments are shrugging their shoulders in helpless dismay as the same scenario is once again unfolding.

Case numbers have been rising steadily for the past month, and accelerating for the past week and more. Each day brings another record-shattering total of numbers of people infected, hospitalized, placed in intensive care and ultimately buried. And, once again, it is the elderly and the infirm taking the brunt of the assault. We're given the grim news that a projection of daily cases in the province exceeding 6,000 by mid-December, if new cases continue to grow at five percent.

It doesn't seem too much to ask of people that they wear masks when in indoor spaces, to practise responsible social distancing, to wash hands repeatedly, given the threat facing all of society, with our medical system groaning under the weight of new admissions to hospitals. Most people are happy to comply even if it has disrupted their lives in ways both slight and profound. The upward trend in infections is deeply worrying across the country.

So you go on living your life as close to what you know is normal as possible. All the way the dark shadow of the coronavirus threat hovers in the background. We're fortunate that we have easy access to an alternative venue outside our home that has meaning to us, that helps us stay focused on the value of life and how much it is to be appreciated. Out on the forest trails, we're exposed to clean, fresh air, the views of a natural landscape's beauty, while we're exercised, moving our limbs, relaxing our minds.

My husband is an avid reader of short stories. Of the writers he most admires, he turns to reading and re-reading the classing literature of late 19thCentury and early 20thCentury Russian classics. Some of which I have read myself in years past. The stories move him greatly, and he believes that the quality of the writing in its insightfulness far surpasses that which issues from most other countries' writers in portrayals of humanity and the vicissitudes of life. While we're out, walking through the trails, he often describes and recounts the stories to me. He has always, as long as I can recall, narrated stories to me.

Our house last night was redolent with the smell of onions, although I had kept the kitchen stove fan on while I was cooking a vegetable stir-fry featuring, onion, garlic, snow peas, bell pepper, broccoli and bok choy. The vegetables were paired with steamed rice and chicken strips cooked separately that had been marinated in garlic, soy sauce and olive oil. I had planned it for the day before, but a power outage prevented it, so it was featured for yesterday and the fish dinner I usually prepare for Thursday has been moved forward to tomorrow.

Friday night meals are immutable, starting with chicken soup and rice. It's traditional in most Jewish households as a culinary custom. This morning I decided to bake a cheesecake. My husband, who often drops by to pick up extra food items here and there brought home a large tub of cream cheese yesterday. Since it has a best-before date of 16 November, half of it was destined for a cheesecake. It's the best-tasting cream cheese I can recall; smooth, creamy and rich. As for the cheesecake, it's vanilla with white chocolate, glazed with blueberries.

Jackie and Jillie's reward for being good little dogs was a promise that 'soon' we'd depart for our afternoon turn in the ravine, where they could revert as they usually do from good little dogs to bad little dogs. Their trail manners leave much, much to be desired. Not only are we not particularly good teachers, it would appear, but it might also be that we can continue placing the blame for their hostility to dogs they don't know to their very specific breed as toy poodles.

The day was much like yesterday temperature-wise, with a high of 6C, a bit of wind, and heavily overcast. So we dressed for it, and were comfortable throughout the hour-and-a-half time we enjoyed our circuit. Because of people being cooped up in their homes and getting tired of it, we've seen an increasingly-steady stream of new faces in the ravine. And while we certainly can't blame anyone for seeking out venues where fresh air and exercise can be had in an impressive natural setting, we've come across a surprising number of  truly morose individuals whose grim faces would curdle the good cheer of anyone else.

 

People who simply ignore the presence of others, not bothering to respond to polite greetings. This has nothing to do with maintaining distance, and everything to do with some people in society harbouring sociopathic tendencies for whom social etiquette of polite acknowledgement of the presence of others makes no impact whatever. And that's a pity. The human equivalent to bad-mannered little dogs.

 

 

 Optimism and hope are necessary states of mind for a well-balanced psyche. But it's increasingly worrisome news we hear, more liable to make people feel glum and powerless than to look to the future with confidence. Public health authorities and government figures at the executive level keep emphasizing that there is just so much that they can do for society; society too must make an effort to ensure that we all come through this dreadful pandemic as well as might be expected if everyone recognized the vital importance of tuning in to messages of quiet instruction.

Among us there are too many skeptics, those who appear to believe in conspiracy theories, that the COVID-19 epidemic that is making people ill, sending many to hospitals, where some will not survive is nothing but an attempt by government to take greater power over people's lives. That physical distancing alienates people, mask-wearing is a needless exercise in frustration and the manner in which ordinary, normal life has been altered in an effort to restrain the virus's contagion is all for nothing.

Cranks and outliers see nothing amiss in behaving as though these temporary restrictions in lifestyle and the social distancing mandated in an effort to control a deadly virus that preys on the elderly and the health-impaired are unneeded. That they will comport themselves as they wish. While mocking those who slavishly adhere to authority. In the process of eschewing masks to control the level of contagion, and mingling in close interior quarters with others of like mind, they believe themselves to be superior to the quaking fear-mongers.

They become disease carriers and since they're mostly fairly young, most sail through the period of infection, but those whom they have themselves infected may not be young and represent the vulnerable in society. Even so, they are responsible for widening the pool of SARS-CoV-2 virus sufferers, ensuring that the disease acquires a firmer grip on society as a whole. A process that leads inevitably to an unsustainable burden for the medical community, with hospitals stretched beyond their capacity to function, equipment and protective devices coming into short supply, and cases continuing to multiply, along with community death rates.

Shelf fungi

 We have all of this in the back of our minds, as we go about daily life trying to do our best to shelter ourselves from infection and bearing in mind that in so doing we're also helping to keep the infection rate down. It's a question of whether the majority of the population who do as we do will in the end have the greater, positive effect on the situation, or whether the situation will continue to spiral out of control as a reflection of a minority within the population who have little concept of personal responsibility.

To soothe our overworked concern quotient, we're able to enter an environment that salves the wearied mind with its calm natural landscape. So we are among the most fortunate of the fortunate, making our daily venture out into a natural setting accessed by us with little effort, taking along our two little dogs both as irresistibly accented company and for the good of their own health. 

As we did today. As we did yesterday. As we do every day of the week, the month, the year and the year before this one. It's fall, and fittingly, cool, windy and rainy. But eventually the rain does stop, and the sun emerges, highlighting the change in the season moving steadily from early to late fall and eventually winter. Each season with its own charm and challenges.

When we descended into the ravine early this afternoon, we did so on increasingly leaf-and-needle-padded forest trails. Where freshly fallen leaves lie like colourful confetti and as we progress, our eyes are drawn to individual leaves, different from the congregate they lie among; carmine, splotched, striped, gold, as distinct and individual as are those who make up a population of people, some stand out and some melt into the crowd.

Night rain had swollen the creek again, and it was muddy close to the bridge we were about to cross, just as the floorboards of the bridge had muddy imprints of dog prints as testament to the love of many dogs to plunge into the creek, likely for them the most attractive element of their ramble through the woods as companions to the humans in whose homes they live.

Since the pandemic, the woodland trails that once were the precinct of community members who love the natural trails through the extensive forest and ravine, suddenly became a popular destination for many others out on bicycles, runners, family groups, dog walkers, and though things have quieted down substantially from earlier months as area parks have re-opened along with other venues popular with people, it is only Saturdays now that we see occasional trail walkers among the regulars. 

Half of the time we were out, we were hard put to dodge groups of other people making their way along the trail system, but the other half of our circuit was relatively free of such impediments to quiet peace and balm to a disquieted mind. Most people are courteous, and those that are not are simply a temporary part of the landscape. 

Then and now. What a sheltered life we live. With all its complications life here where we are is simple though it most definitely is not for other people living elsewhere in a world of mass upheaval. For those people living through the trauma of war and tragedy, areas of the world where disease and exploitation by their governments, neglect and privation take their toll, life is anything but simple; it is a challenge to survive. News reports of events taking place elsewhere on the globe keeps us informed and even at times incredulous that violent strife and existential threats must be faced by others, while our lives proceed along a circumscribed path of peace and stability. Reminding us of our good fortune in living in a country like Canada with its enormous geography and vast natural resources.

Bedtime reading has me lately fascinated by accounts written 550 years ago throughout Europe, penned by people living in England, and preserved by a chronicler of the same era, Richard Hakluyt. His Voyages and Discoveries make for fascinating instruction on the state of the world in the 1560s. Where wars were always on the horizon and humankind was as discriminatory toward others different by ethnicity, culture, religion and tribe as they are at the present. Take this for example:

Presently the Inquisitors came up another pair of stairs, and the Viceroy and all the chief justices with them. When they were set down, then came up also a great number of friars, white black and grey (orders) about the number of three hundred persons. Then was silence commanded and then presently began their severe and cruel judgement.

The first man that was called was one Roger the chief armourer of the Jesus, and he had judgement to have three hundred stripes on horseback, and after condemned to the galleys as a slave for ten years.

After him were called John Gray, John Browne, John Rider, John Moone, James Collier, and one Thomas Browne: these were adjudged to have 200 stripes on horseback and after to be committed to the galleys for the space of 8 years.

Then was called John Keyes, and was adjudged to have 100 stripes on horseback and condemned to serve in the galleys for the space of 6 years.

Then were severally called the number of 53 one after another, and every man had his several judgement, some to have 200 stripes on horseback, and some 100, and condemned for slaves to the galleys, some for 6 years, some for 8 and some for 10.

And then was I Miles Philips called, and was adjudged to serve in a monastery for 5 years without stripes, and to wear a fool's coat or sanbenito during all that time.

Then were called John Storey, Richard Williams, David Alexander, Robert Cooke, Paul Horsewell and Thomas Hull: the six were condemned to serve in monasteries without stripes, some for three years and some for four, and to wear the sanbenito during all the said time.

Which being done, and it now drawing toward night, George Rively, Peter Momfrie, and Cornelius the Irishman, were called and had their judgement to be burnt to ashes and so were presently sent away to the place of execution in the market place but a little from the scaffold, where they were quickly burnt and consumed. And as for us that had received our judgement, being 68 in number, we were carried back that night to prison again.

And the next day in the morning being Good Friday the year of Our Lord 1575, we were all brought into a court of the Inquisitor's palace, where we fund a horse in readiness for every one of our men which were condemned to have stripes, and to be committed to the galleys, which were in number 60 and so they being forced to mount up on horseback naked from the middle upward, were carried to be showed as a spectacle for all the people to behold throughout the chief and principal streets of the city, and had the number of stripes to every one of them appointed, most cruelly laid upon their naked bodies with long whips by sundry men appointed to be the executioners thereof; and before our men there went a couple of criers which cried as they went: behold these English dogs, Lutherans enemies to God.

They returned to the Inquisitor's house, with their backs all gore blood, and swollen with great bumps, and were then taken from their horses, and carried again to prison, where they remained until they were sent into Spain to the galleys, there to receive the rest of their martyrdom: and I and the 6 other with me which had judgement and were condemned amongst the rest to serve an apprenticeship in the monastery were taken presently and sent to certain religious houses.

That was then. This is now. And early this morning, after yet another predictable early morning rainfall, we tucked Jackie and Jillie into their harnesses and walked with them up the quiet street we live on to access the ingress to the ravine and the forest below, to spend the next hour-and-half wandering about the forest trails, mindful of the berries waiting to be picked and eaten and shared with our two little dogs. If these summer days do not represent a blessed life, then what does?

From time to time, as is usual, we came alongside others we know, some just recently introduced as it were, but most familiar to us from years of mutual devotion to the fresh air, exercise and sheer unadulterated pleasure of enjoying tramping through woods in all seasons and all weathers. With most of these people were their companion animals. All of us serene in the landscape. Appreciative but not too engaged in the thought that we are all extremely fortunate.

We may be beleaguered with fear of a global pandemic that haunts the world as a threat to health and recover, taking countless human beings to an early grave, but we are reconciled to the fact that we must take extraordinary precautions to maintain our health and keeping a reasonable distance while still making the most of life's opportunities is certainly to be recognized as cardinal in our efforts to remain well. And so, we do.

There appears to be no news of a benign nature of late. The world is heavily over-shadowed by the sinister threat of the novel coronavirus. In Europe, Italy and Spain, France and Germany all have sobering news of new cases of COVID, along with staggering death rates. The United States is struggling to cope with a massive infection and death rate.

Last night I received an email from an old schoolmate, someone I had gone to high school with, seventy years ago. Later, when we were older, in our late teens and both married, we spent a lot of time together socially, as couples. Life happens, people move to other cities and connections are lost. But twenty years ago we re-connected remotely, and began sending emails updating one another. She's had a hard life.

Made all the more difficult now. One of her sons had re-located many years ago from Toronto when he married an American, to live in Colorado. He's now an American of long standing with dual citizenship. He informed his mother last Friday that his son, her grandson, had died. He was a physician practising in New York, and had been infected a month ago. He was in recovery and it was thought he had beaten the pathogen. Then he was discovered alone in his apartment, unconscious. Before he could be transferred to hospital, he died.

Sorrow hangs heavy on all of us, and fear haunts our every hour. And then, there are lighter moments. Today is our daughter's 58th birthday. I'm corresponding by email regularly with her daughter, our grandchild. We're comparing notes on grocery shopping, the difficulties inherent in trying to remain physically distant and intact while in an enclosed environment with others trying to do the same thing, focused on acquiring the necessities of living while avoiding the possibility of dying.

Today dawned sunny, but much colder than yesterday when it had been balmy, but given to heavy rain all throughout the day. We've been enjoying sunny intervals, some overcast, and light snow flurries. Last night's wind was ferocious, and it toppled a few immature trees in the forest. Today's wind is brisk, adding to the cold atmosphere.

We were able to leave the house in the early afternoon with Jackie and Jillie, to set out for a relaxing hike through the ravine, after yesterday's weather-enforced absence. For the first time since early winter we embarked on a hike without cleats strapped over our boots and it felt liberating. And though we had thought we were finished wearing hats and gloves and winter-weight jackets, we needed them today and so did Jackie and Jillie, out wearing thick wool sweaters.

Without the cleats, we had to avoid one section of a trail we always take to begin our circuit that always remains deep in snow and ice when all other areas have long since shed their ice. So we began the circuit in a total reverse of the usual and chose different connecting trails that kept us clear of any icy trail challenges. It was a relief to shed the cleats, almost as much as it was to hike along without keeping a sharp eye out for slippery surfaces; instead there were boggy ones.

The forest floor now has countless deep pools of melt-and-rainwater. Where deciduous trees tend to predominate in some areas of the forest, the view is stark and dark; bare tree trunks unrelieved by any hint of verdancy, awaiting the arrival of foliage. In avoiding the areas of deep ice still clasped to parts of the trail system, we take a different direction, briefly leaving the confines of the forest on our way to completing our circuit, which takes us alongside the creek where heavy remediation work was done years ago to stabilize the collapsing hillsides above.

There, a casual glance toward the creek from the improvised path we were on, free of the presence of trees because they had been logged out of necessity to enable large earth-moving and -drilling machinery access, brought a familiar sight to our notice. Among the granite rocks that had been dumped alongside the creek, and the detritus of fall, bright little yellow heads of Coltsfoot, the first of the wildflowers to make their early spring presence.

When we returned to street level, we came across one of our most dear neighbours, Mohindar, who had been out for a walk around the block to get some fresh air. As we chatted, we learned from him that the supermarket where we do our grocery shopping had suddenly become a potential threat. In that one of its employees had been diagnosed with COVID-19.

And then, when we arrived home, walked up the driveway, sauntering briefly past the driveway, onto the patio and walkway at the front of the house, another delightful surprise greeted us. A small patch of bright purple crocuses celebrating spring!

Never let it be presumptuously supposed however plaintively that there is nothing to do in a household at a time of widespread self-isolation while a mysterious public danger haunts the byways of ordinary life. Certainly the parents of children, small and large, have more than ample concerns, both to keep their families safe, and to ensure the children are well occupied.

Those without children at home have more than enough preoccupations to wile away the day, any day, in ordinary everyday tasks that, despite emergencies of unforeseen and dramatic proportions must and should be done, if for no other reason than to maintain a semblance of sanity. Being busy and looking after matters is an excellent way of distracting the mind from dreadfully pressing news that never fail to upset.

Of course, reading the newspapers is for many people like ourselves also an act of obedience to custom and since we have two newspapers delivered daily to the house, we have two newspapers to inform us of all the alarming things that are happening in the world. Aside from the usual diet of concerns over conflict, abnormal weather conditions, critical food shortages and petty crime, the last of which directly impacts, the former hitting elsewhere around the globe, there is the one, universal calamity that has focused the mind on how vulnerable humanity is to the vicissitudes of natural selection.

In the sense that some areas of the world's humanity adapted to a culture that preys for food on exotic wild animals, and the pathogens those animals harbour which don't appear to harm them, have selected humanity to begin infesting with the glee of finally finding warm and moist interior homes that succumb to the devastating effects of dominating immune systems to death.

When we cracked our eyes open this morning we had the sense that the outdoors would be dark and dismal, so we closed our eyes again and went back to sleep. Waking to the day, however, is an inevitability and eventually we roused ourselves, a little late, much to the annoyance of Jackie and Jillie, though they slept as soundly as we did until we no longer did.

The importance of routine is never to be discounted, even though doing things that are a little extraordinary from time to time, is a pleasurable breakaway from routine, after which we're always pleased to return to the familiar. In a time of COVID, representing the routine breakaway, there is no pleasure however, and routine calls out to rescue us from dwelling too heavily on the 'what-ifs' that send blood pressure soaring and mood crashing.

My husband has his workshop and I have my kitchen. In that kitchen crisp oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies were baked today. Bathrooms were scrubbed. Beds made. Old newspapers in the family room discarded. Order restored where disorder had reigned after the day before. And then the decision to embark on an adventure, even if that too is a familiar routine.

Overcast, cooler than it has been the last few days, we dressed a little warmer, and Jackie and Jillie wore snug little sweaters and off we went. Some of those parents with children stopped tearing their hair in frustration long enough to haul their kiddies off to the forest trails, but not many. It's good for children to be immersed in natural surroundings, but notoriously children don't care for anything that's 'good for them'.

We, on the other hand, do appreciate everything that's good for us, and made the most of our hour-and-a-half circuit along forest trails, opting today to select a series of interlocking trails that we began in a reverse-order pattern, making the familiar a trifle unfamiliar and pleasing Jackie and Jillie no end.

That we're now finally enjoying perfectly wonderful spring weather would be quite beyond pleasing, if it wasn't accompanied by the grinding fear that stalks our every thought during this time of the global pandemic that has brought such uncertainty to our lives. Certainty in fact, lies in the knowledge that nature and its verities arrive as they always have and should.

We now see on neighbourhood streets on the rare occasion when we're out and about other than hiking through the forest trails, an abundance of people we've never before seen. Elderly people, young families, teens on bicycles, mothers pushing strollers, people walking their pets or jogging. True, the word 'abundance' is over-stretching the reality, it's not as though the streets are full of people. They're not.

As a relative term, however, it works, since usually there's no one out and about other than sitting in a vehicle as it passes. Outdoor living for most people just hasn't been a priority. Even for all those who can, like us, easily approach a natural forested area to enjoy a quiet stroll through forest trails. Of course we have many area parks as well in the neighbourhood, most with children's play sets. When our granddaughter was a young child we would take her there daily, with at least three or four in walking distance of our house.

At the best of times those parks too are never full of people, much less children. Now, however, that so many people are home because so many are employed in government services and are working from home, the opportunity is there to walk about the neighbourhood. For all the traffic on the roadways, people could walk on the roads never bothered by cars whizzing by.

The result is that we see an uptick of people new to the ravine, walking through the trails, but not many. Mostly, they're people we've seen over the years and have become familiar with. When we were out this afternoon with Jackie and Jillie, the temperature was 14C, with a lovely breeze, blue sky and blazing sun. Since the forest canopy will be bare for perhaps another month, the sun really warms right through the forest.

And despite that, there remain areas on the trails stubbornly holding onto ice and snow. But it's like that every year. Those places where there are conifers and the sun doesn't really penetrate, tend to hold the ice for far longer. But the hillsides are now almost all bare of snow, presenting an altogether different landscape, preparing to host emerging vegetation, renewed out of the thawed soil.

When we had been out about three-quarters of an hour on a number of adjoining trails, I suddenly realized the cleats were missing on one of my boots, and felt immediately vulnerable. We turned back to retrace our steps, and it wasn't long before we met up with an acquaintance walking her two dogs, headed in our direction, and in one of her hands, dangled my cleats. She had actually thought they were her husband's, who had lost his a week earlier.

Reunited with the cleats, we turned back the way we had come, to complete the circuit we had decided upon. Twenty minutes later approaching us was a large black Labrador, and with it a young man we've known for some time. He wanted to talk about coyotes because he'd seen them on a few times lately, so evidently relaxed about his presence that he was able, on two occasions, to take some pretty good photographs. And he wanted us to see them, stretching his iphone in our direction, as close as  he dared, to maintain adequate distance. The photos showed quite large animals, to be sure. Our friend's too-close proximity to us made me nervous, and that too was certain.

We continued on, ambling through the trails, hearing a Pileated woodpecker in the near distance, chickadees flirting with one another through the evergreens alongside the trail. No sign of Mourning Cloaks today and likely because the temperature had dipped last night back down to -6C, nipping that new life in the bud. But there will be more, many more, in the days and weeks to come.