Capricious nature; alternately testing us with tempestuously extreme weather events, or extremes of temperature, tempered by the beauty both invite to accompany them. This Arctic cold that has descended so deeply on such a wide swath of North America, hitting both the north-eastern US and like territory in Canada has given us both record low temperatures and wild wind chills, as well as exquisite landscapes of snow-packed scenery allied with days of brilliant sun.

In the past, when we've climbed the White Mountain range in New Hampshire, we/ve seen signage warning of extreme and sudden weather changes at the summits, posted at the entrance to trails. We experienced many years ago, just such extreme changes when we reached the summit of Mount Clinton and sight was obscured by thick sleet and snow on a June day. 

The U.S. Weather Service has announced the coldest ever recorded windchill registered on the top of Mount Washington of -103 Fahrenheit. Here, in Ottawa yesterday we only managed -43 Centigrade. Glad we weren't on top of Mount Washington. It is so cold here that when Jillie entered the house after a brief encounter with our backyard this morning, she  was alternatively lifting her frozen little paws.

It's been so cold neither Jackie nor Jillie feel inclined to expose themselves to the weather, despite the sun, without being accompanied by either Irving or me. And our brief encounters with the outside convince us they're perfectly right; if they have to suffer, so must we.

Yet, yesterday just before dusk fell we were amazed to see a very small rabbit out in the weather, seated at the stair stoop at the side door, nibbling carrots. The little fellow made its way to the front of the house to begin work on carrots awaiting notice on the front porch. Earlier in the day black squirrels had been around, nibbling peanuts. Hard to say whether they would be in semi-hibernation avoiding exposure to this severe weather if food wasn't readily available.

We turned to the comfort of food ourselves last night, with chicken soup and matzomeal dumplings on the menu, followed up by chicken paella, fragrant and seasoned toward the hot spectrum of taste, then moving on to Chelsea buns for dessert, stoking up the inner furnace against the onslaught of weather certain to question our survival instinct's trust in the future.

Despite remaining indoors  yesterday and today, eschewing our usual hikes through the winter forest, expending energy and enjoying the landscape, Jackie and Jillie had no problems making themselves warm and cozily comfortable these two days, content to remain sedentary in their 'dens' within the house.

Yesterday throughout the day into night, the sky remained clear, the sun vibrantly bright but able to cast little warmth beyond the iron grip of the cold. Most of today was also sunny, which makes for a beautiful appearance, while doing nothing to mitigate the cold. But by late afternoon silver-grey clouds had replaced the sun, and snow began gently falling.

I found myself recently recalling the winter days when I took such pleasure with shovel-and-snow. For the past several years I've left it all to Irving, nursing a wrenched shoulder, arm, chest wall, from an unfortunate fall in the ravine. Time, the saying goes, heals all wounds, referring mostly to psychological trauma, but it also does so with physical hurt if left long enough for the body to repair itself. I decided, when I took Jackie and Jillie out after their breakfast, to shovel the walkways in the backyard and it felt really good. 

When Irving left shortly after breakfast to drive over to a nearby pharmacy to pick up our renewed prescriptions, I decided to slip out of the house in his absence. We'd earlier received an email from the snow removal company that clears out our driveway, so I knew they'd be by some time in the afternoon. I went out primarily to shovel the porch, and the walkways from driveway to backyard and driveway to front walk.

I just didn't feel like leaving things as they were. It felt so bracing to be out there. There was about 5-6 cm down, and the shovel moved so effortlessly, I decided I'd shovel out the driveway. That's just what I did, hoping to be able to finish before Irving returned. I left the bottom quadrant of the driveway at the street junction unshovelled, but the bulk of the driveway was done to my satisfaction, so back into the house I went, and was re-united with two concerned little pups.

An hour or so later, much after Irving had returned to admonish me about shovelling, the big snow tractor was in the driveway, clearing away snow at the bottom of the driveway. And when, soon afterward, we ventured out with Jackie and Jillie for our usual ravine hike, I assessed that the hand shovelling I had done was superior to the work done by that huge  tractor whose lugs bit deeply into the snow, the impressions of which remained evident on the snow it left behind on the driveway.

I felt pretty good about doing that shovelling. Considering I'm a week away from my 85th birthday. Mind, I don't like it when Irving is out shovelling, it really upsets me. I feel pretty strong and limber, have good energy for the most part, aside from the inevitable twitch and tear now and again. I attribute some of that to the simple, brief daily exercises I've done most of my life. I do them now in our bathroom, and it's become a signal for Jackie and Jillie that when I'm finished, we're about to go out for our daily tramp through the woods. They respond by leaping joyously about after one another.

On with their new snug winter jackets and harnesses and boots. Newfallen snow and freezing temperatures play havoc with little dogs' feet. Aside from which the municipality has begun using salt on the roads to melt the build-up of ice. When dogs' paws pick up the salt then walk on snow and ice the resulting cold-effect can be pretty painful and can even cause bleeding cracks on their pads. Inevitably during the winter months we'll occasionally see bleeding marks on some of the trails in the ravine from dogs' paws. Boots save that from happening.

The forest landscape under a pewter sky matching the wide white of the forest floor with the stark darkness of tree trunks rising naked upward looks like a monochromatic black-and-white painting. Both conifers and hardwood silhouetted against the bright white of the snow, the forest interior its usual dusky ambiance made more opaque by the heavy overcast and the random light bursts of snow.

 Footing in ascents and descents of the hills couldn't be better. The snow now deep enough and adhering nicely to the ice layers below. There was no back-sliding or slipping, the snow allowing our boots and cleats fine gripping for stability and balance. Jackie and Jillie have no such problems, they skip lightly through the snow, boot-protected, while its depths leave clusters of snow on the upper portions of their legs.

Ours was the almost sole presence this afternoon on this winter wonderland.The countdown for Christmas is nigh, people excited and involved in last-minute gift shopping. Irving encountered an inordinate number of vehicles on the road when he'd gone out earlier in the day. A month of frantic preparations coming to a head for many people planning on visiting others, despite cautionary messages from health and government-level authorities during this Omicron-spread wave of the coronavirus.

 

He is a corpulent man, almost egg-shaped. Where other people walk, he lumbers along, his gait made distinctive by his size. He speaks slowly, deliberately, with the authority of someone who has great confidence in themselves. His smile has a wry twist. He is the kind of man who, if a neighbour is planning to work on something he will be the first and often the only one to offer to help. He is a man bursting with energy, and with the strength of an ox. 

His dog is large too, a part Bernese Mountain dog. A dog that is also quiet and tends to be unobtrusive, despite its size. We see them both from time to time, not often. We first met him and his dog quite a few years ago. He lives in another neighbourhood fairly distant from our own, but also like ours, abutting on the ravine. In the past he has taken pains to haul lumber into the ravine at places where few others tend to take themselves, to build fairly basic but very useful bridges to cross areas that can become swampy at times.

 Invariably someone complains and the municipality responds by sending out a crew to destroy the bridge. He doesn't hesitate to rebuild, and sometimes it becomes a tug-of-war between him and the authorities. He once asked them how many people had complained and the response was, one. He is such a good soul that he will often take a neighbour's dog out his forays into the ravine, an old arthritis-ridden chocolate lab.

His patience with the dog is endless, because he is determined to see that the dog enjoys its elder years, and the dog does, he ambles along the pathways  makes the occasional detour into the forest interior and swiftly reappears when our friend calls. His own dog tolerates the presence of the other, tending to be a little standoffish. As though he's not quite offended by the older dog's presence, but prepared to accept it as long as it is no bother.

So we were a little surprised today when our friend told us that he had been out with his dog earlier in the week and suddenly it disappeared. It's unlike the dog not to respond when he calls. He thought he heard off in the distance a bit of yelping, but it didn't sound like his dog. When the dog eventually reappeared, it was as though nothing had happened. He assumed that his dog had seen a coyote and had  tracked it, and he was right.

It was only later that he came across someone we both know whose backyard is adjacent the ravine walking his own dog. Its known that there is a den nearby this man's backyard and he often sees coyotes around and about it. Did you know, he said, your dog was in a tussle with a pair of coyotes? He'd watched as the dog chased one coyote into the area of the den and then two emerged and began threatening the dog who then trotted off, the two coyotes chasing after it.

A bit later, the same day, he saw two coyotes in the distance, seeming to watch him and the dog. He's often seen them about and knew his dog on occasion would decide to chase them. Some dogs, in fact, are known to briefly join up with a coyote and they run together in a comradely fashion, playing, no harm coming to either. What our friend described seemed more like a vendetta in the making. He's unperturbed about the situation, he feels that his dog can handle anything he embroils himself in.

We enjoyed our time in the ravine this afternoon, a darkly overcast, and snowy day. Snowy, but not heavily snowing, so when it's over it won't have amounted to much, but the snow layer makes a visual difference in the forest, inordinately pleasing to the eye. Moreover, when it's so dusky in the forest the white landscape acts as a lighting source, quite apart from the beautiful spectacle it presents.

When the trees are covered with newfallen and still-falling snow, there's an exquisitely ethereal look to the landscape, intriguing, mysterious, beguiling. Today also there was hardly any wind and the temperature had risen to -2C, so it felt almost balmy as we strode along, the snow of a sticky character, mediating between the icy pathways and our cleated boots.

Just in time, too, since tomorrow marks the winter solstice and the day following the shortest daylight-day of the year.

 

I was late this morning getting started on cleaning the house. Procrastination seems to have made a home in my busy schedule of housework. I somehow, mysteriously, find so many other things that simply must be done before I hang out with mops and dusters, much less a pail of soapy water for the floors. I now leave the vacuuming to my husband. He's more conscientious than I am and I keep telling him to relax about it. But it is a relief to me that he's taken on the vacuuming.

It should mean that I get through the housecleaning faster, but what it really means is that I can dawdle about taking 'breaks' more frequently, and those mostly consist of sneaking over to my desk-top to have a peek at what's going on. And once there, there's so much going on I feel as though I'm been ambushed; too much interesting stuff to break off quickly as I'd meant to do.

By the time two in the afternoon rolled around, Jackie was getting restless, a signal that I've been lagging. He asks to go out, I take him and Jillie out to the backyard, but clearly that's not really what he wants. Soon, I tell him, I'll get a move on now, and we'll be off to the ravine soon. Just the floors left to do. He's sympathetic and allows me to get on with the floors. Which is to say down on my hands and knees, scrubbing the floors.

They're tile floors my husband installed years and years ago, and they're a breeze to wash. In fact, though there's the laundry room, the powder room, our upstairs bathroom, the foyer, the kitchen and the breakfast room whose floors all get done on Monday, they take no time at all. More or less. And then I'm done, and off we go!

Not so fast. It began snowing a few hours earlier. Not a snowstorm, just a lazy sprinkling of fluff. So no real accumulation, just a thin layer flurrying down, but enough to cover the dark landscape and make it appear brighter. Bright enough, say, so my camera can squeeze out a few fuzzy photos. Because it's half-past three by the time we're in the ravine, and dusk has already asserted itself. Without that layer of snow it would appear much darker.

At one point we see a pinprick of light appearing, disappearing, appearing, then gone again and finally realize it's someone on a bicycle with brightly-lit lamps. A large dog passes us wearing a halter equipped with a night-light and he jauntily lopes on ahead with his human companion eventually catching up, but with the assurance that she can see him for quite a distance.

In fact, we're somewhat surprised, as the dark curtain of early night closes in, at the number of people out on the trails. We had expected to see no one else because of the fast-approaching dark, yet nothing could be further from reality. Everyone delighted to make footsteps in the new snow, and hoping for more to fall overnight. 

The temperature although quite a bit colder than yesterday around the same time, seems far more comfortable today, and we realize there's an absence of wind. Evidently it had exhausted itself roaring through the forest canopy yesterday, and decided to take a day of rest.

 

When I spoke with my brother-in-law today he told me Toronto had received several inches of snow overnight. Whereas we in Ottawa have seen our two snow-storms-worth of snow melt in the last few days, all ten inches of it. Ottawa is supposed to be much colder than Toronto, and usually is, with infinitely more snow in volume. Today's a reversal.

It poured heavily all day yesterday, but we managed to get out for our circuit through the ravine early in the morning before rain started. While we were out hiking along the trail system, we bemoaned the loss of that lovely early snowpack. Its melt and the warm ambience, just over the freezing mark, has left trails inches-deep in guck; slush melted snow well integrated with clay, a slippery, ugly mess.

Still, we were able to get out and at the same time avoid the rain. We'd hoped today would give us a window of opportunity to get out should the rain  briefly stop before carrying on. The pouring rain did give way to continuous lighter rain, but an opportunity to break out failed to materialize. After an all-too-brief flirtation with light rain it suddenly picked up again, with a vengeance.

Persuading Jackie and Jillie to get out into the backyard to do their business failed to receive a warm reception from them, though they grudgingly conceded they would, after all, get themselves dutifully out, before they burst. And while a maelstrom of wind and rain merged with the heavy overcast making a permanent presence for the day, Jackie looked mournfully out at the weather and made no comment.

While his sister, seated in comfort on the sofa, turned melancholy eyes on me as though to entreat for a swift outside burst through the ravine. Her, of all of us, leaving the impression that she's been short-changed by our obstinacy in not preparing our two little black bandits for a quick run through the trails ... the slippery, muck-gushing trails waiting to entrap the unwary with a long involuntary glide until the out-of-control glider is suddenly flat on his back, slathered with muck and nursing a sore rear end and elbows.

Still, there's comfort to be had. Hot, fragrant food to warm a disappointed trail trekker, and soothe the sore feelings of having been denied a run in the woods. We did that yesterday in preparing a Cornish game hen to roast in the oven in preparation for dinner, alongside a noodle-egg-raisiin pudding and helpings of Brussele sprouts. With sweet and piquant Clementines for dessert.

All of it shared with Jackie and Jillie as after-dinner treats. I sliced the sprouts into their little bowls, 'cooked' that for 2.3 minutes in the microwave, adding cucumber, bell pepper and tomato chunks and they were instantly mollified despite the wreckage of a pair of rainy days, courtesy of nature's elements. Tonight it will be French onion soup, fresh vegetable salad, and leftover apple pie. Our just desserts.

 When our children were young Brussels sprouts stirred a rebellion. They were dubbed 'outhouse sprouts' back then, 40 years ago. Now, they choose to place them by their own decisions on their dinner plates. The indoctrination of comestibles.

 

Our early morning food shopping done with, we returned to our anxiety-ridden little dogs for all of us to enjoy breakfast together. And then it was quick work to clean up and get out into the ravine to enjoy this beautiful day we were presented with, as a kindly gesture from nature. A crisp, cold day, the sky a veritable ocean of blue stretching as far as the eye can see, and floating across it the good ship that illuminates our days and is the source of life on Planet Earth.

Barely any wind, so the -4C temperature was beyond pleasant as we set off, Jackie and Jillie geared in winter coats and boots. The ice that glazed the street in front of the house yesterday has melted, under the irresistible influence of the sun. In the ravine, the trails are thick with ice and snow. Despite yesterday's wind much of the snow that fell overnight the night before remains on the trees, well plastered in elegant white.

Without our boots well cleated for the ice it would be quite the trick to manoeuvre without slipping and ultimately falling, but that wasn't our concern since from this time forward we'll be wearing cleats while tramping through the trails. And we don't have to be concerned over our puppies' discomfort when the temperature is this low and the ground is ice-and-snow covered. They're perfectly happy wearing the boots tripping along nicely, and we're spared the necessity to pick them up to warm icy little paws.

Never is snow blanketing the woods more welcome than in late November when the landscape looks dull and sere. Everything is completely changed, from visual perspective to gratification with the exquisite beauty of our familiar landscape which familiar though it may be, offers various facets and aesthetic nuances for appreciation reflecting every type of weather condition and measure of the seasons.

The sun at its approaching-winter angle is blindingly magnificent. Yesterday had been overcast, but when we were wending our way back up the last long hill to street level, just before setting the sun broke clear of the clouds for a few minutes and set the forest canopy where it illuminated the trees, sparked in fabulous red tones of glimmering fire.

This afternoon the sun's rays reflected directly on the trees. Networks of bare branches, still holding a portion of the snow they had been bedecked with, but beginning to melt under the intense light and heat of the sun, looked as though they were being decorated with a myriad of stars; droplets from melted snow crystallizing, catching the sun and sparkling like priceless jewels.

Soon after returning home we left again for a drive downtown to stop in at a shop that supplies my husband with stained glass, lead and all the other materials he requires when putting together a window. The sun owned the sky completely. And it dominated the landscape both above and below, as it glimmered and glanced off the Ottawa River.