I have always been attracted to fresh, young faces. But then, who isn't likely to react to the appeal of youth? All the desirable features of attraction seem magnified in the young. Very young children appeal to the heartstrings of those in advanced years because of the vulnerability seen in those wide-open, curious eyes, wanting to know everything about existence in one wholesale gulp of exposure to anything new.

The eagerness to experience new circumstances, and the capacity of the young to embrace new knowledge has never failed to amaze me. I am always surprised at the sagacity of observation of young people, their casual expressions of truth and reality as it appears to them.

They seem to soak up knowledge at an astonishing rate, far surpassing what I dimly recall of my own experience so many years ago, it seems like ancient personal history. As though to prove that the human mind, when new and uncluttered is capable of absorbing minutiae of which earlier generations never had exposure to in an evolving technological, more pluralistic and population-crowded society.

Children reflect their inherent personalities at a very early stage in their development. Some indications of their character are available for observation from infancy on. Character traits for good or for ill. Traits that can become enhanced or alternately modified to make them less extreme in the final analysis to present the evolving mind which experience and observation has mellowed, or conversely solidified.

But when it comes to the aesthetics of confronting the reality of youth in its dewy bloom of relative innocence, nothing so much beckons forth from my inner consciousness of joy tinged with admiration as much as the vision of a young girl either on the cusp of her maturity, or one who has entered adulthood but retains that freshness and beauty bestowed on the young, the envy of the elderly of the human species.

Within our subconscious lies a minefield of pensive regret, fears, sorrow and helplessness that our conscious mind thrusts deep below, in the knowledge that we must surmount those emotions, otherwise how can we proceed with life?

Those concerns and those fears rise from time to time, dredged up from the safe confines of the deep mind and memory to surface in dreams we often call nightmares, but are really somewhere in between both. As it was with me several nights ago with vividly seen and felt but now seldom thought of incidents of the past that come knocking on the subconscious vault of memories.

Our granddaughter speaks often with me about her apprehensions but her determination to leave home, to follow her instincts that tell her attendance at a university far, but yet not too far from home will guide her to her future. She has had several acceptances to the universities of her first and second choice, having applied to no fewer than five to ensure she wouldn't be left behind, but pleased to have been accepted by at least one of her first choices.

Attending that university will take her from rural life which she quite detests, living on the near outskirts of a fairly large city, to the largest city in Canada to attend university there. She will be living in residence, so there is some assurance there. And she will be following in the footsteps of her two uncles who migrated there as well for the same purpose, though not her mother who attended academia closer to home.

She sent links to me through her email account to give me an idea of the kind of accommodation available to her. She had just gone through the process of completing applications to her first and second choice of living accommodation on campus, after having discussed them with her mother and me.

And it was these things that apparently triggered those strange dreams for me. On the surface we applaud her determination and decision to pursue an undergraduate degree that will fit in nicely with her longer-term and larger professional choice, to study law. We're glad for her, and we're committed to financing this years-long venture leading to a satisfying professional future for her.

We do have some concerns with respect to her well-being, on her own and studying away from home, her exposure to the larger world, to the social and political circumstances she will find herself in. She is not yet 18, young and we hope, not too vulnerable, since she is practical and given to bookishness with a healthy outlook on life tinctured with a fair degree of skepticism, but a hearty helping of the perception of justice.

I dreamed of our children when they were her age, so many decades ago, preparing to leave home to attend university, and my quiet and silent panic at seeing them go, the empty feeling of their not being immediately present any longer, and how I would manage to cope with my loss and their expanding freedom. I did, and they did, but the pain of that inevitable separation obviously lingers, abiding deep beneath my immediate awareness.

It has been many years since I read Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I enjoyed the book, just as I had One Hundred Years of Solitude, perhaps even more so. There is a quality about the manner in which the writer described the transitory lives of people whose experiences mirror in large part, that of all those who preceded them and those who succeed them; unsurprisingly, since he wrote about the human condition, humanity with all its foibles, but most piercingly about the need that exists in the human soul to love and be loved.



The ephemeral quality of the prose, with its mystical,never-quite-there yet utterly believable presence, casts a spell over the reader, momentarily lifting the screen of practical literalism of our everyday world and our understanding of it, to invite speculative mysticism briefly into one's credulous literary experience.

When my husband brought home from our public library branch a DVD-film of the novel, my first instinct was to dismiss it. No film could capture those elusive qualities of human romantic emotions interplaying with so many other emotions, good and ill, and the grand sweep of its exotic setting. It would surely have been a failed mess of an attempt to transpose the novel into a screenplay. So I hardly expected much of it, when we viewed it last night.

When the film was over, we were both left with the very same impression, that it had been sensitively, humorously, intelligently and good-naturedly transposed from the written world to the world of the cinema with a good deal of success. We enjoyed the film, felt the acting was excellent, the screenplay successful, the filming gorgeously overwhelming to the senses.




The film, after its 2007 release, evidently did not receive much in the way of positive reviews by film critics who it appears, seemed quite convinced in their professional evaluation, that it failed utterly to capture the magic realism of Mr. Marquez's magnificent muse unfolding in his portrayal of a period-piece love triangle.

We beg to differ.

Never too old to live and learn. And in the kitchen, try out various culinary experiments that may or may not turn out to your liking. And to repeat old favourites. My husband's favourite type of dessert is a cream pie. Coconut cream, banana cream, he loves them. I don't. Nor do I enjoy producing them. But, occasionally I relent. And last Friday was one of those occasions. He'd like a coconut cream pie, so I'd produce one.

Of course the ingredients and the how-to are in my head, but I thought I'd see what the Internet had that was perhaps different. I found one recipe with a full range of approval stars and focused on it. Five egg yolks in the filling, whipped cream topping, and butter used in the making of the pie crust. And the recipe's author spoke of the rave results.

When I did the pie, I thought I'd try her recommendation of 50% butter, so I used Crisco shortening as usual, supplementing it with 50% of the amount I usually use, with butter. Baked it and it looked fairly good. Then filled it with the filling which I'd prepared with 2% milk and three eggs, reserving the egg white for a whipped frothy top of egg white, in lieu of the whipped cream.

The crust, unfortunately was tough and unappealing to the fork and the palate. But my husband loved the filling and the meringue, which was the main thing, obviously. And then the following week he came across a recipe for a 'coffee cake' published in the local newspaper that he thought looked intriguing. So did I, and I offered to bake it for yesterday's dessert.

Apple Sweet Bread

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1-1/2 tsp. baking powder
2/1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. each ground cinnamon and nutmeg
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp. vanilla
2 apples, peeled, cored and coarsely grated (about one cup)
1/2 cup unsweetened desiccated coconut
1/2 cup raisins
Combine the dry ingredients; whisk egg, sugar, oil and vanilla; add flour mixture, then stir in apple, coconut and raisins. Spread in prepared 8"-by4" loaf pan, for an hour at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

I don't like using oil in baking, so substituted the oil for margarine and increased the volume to a half-cup, and used two eggs instead of one, slightly increasing the amount of flour to compensate. The result was a slightly moist, light and delightfully fruity loaf cake. I had also prepared a crumb topping comprised of 1/4-cup flour, 1/4-cup dark brown sugar, 1/4-tsp cinnamon, tbsp.Becel margarine, and 1/4-cup chopped walnuts.

The resulting product was excellent.

The trails in the ravine have flattened out very nicely, thanks to the last several snowstorms which have filled in those tricky-to-manoeuvre places where back in January during the temporary thaw when the snowpack became slushy, footprints were sometimes etched deep into the snow in places, leaving veritable yawning chasms conspiring to trap the unwary hiker. More than a few people have found themselves with twisted ankles resulting from the chopped up trails.

But that's all behind us now, since those gaping holes have been nicely filled in. And although it's been horribly icy, temperature-wise, with more than a few days of miserable high winds driving the chill deep into clothing interstices, freezing noses and digits in the process, sunny days have ameliorated the situation, giving us at least a hint that spring is on its tardy way, or will be eventually.

Unlike the day preceding it, yesterday Riley was able to trot through the ravine without having to be picked up to ease his freezing little footpads. We knew we should have put his boots on, but thought we could get away with toughing it out, rather than irritate him with the process of getting them on.  Nor, given how well the snow has now been tamped down, did he accumulate those irritating iceballs stuffed deep into his pads, making his progress awkward.

Strangely enough, it was on Tuesday when the wind sent its nasty fingers of ice through our piled-on garments, stinging our faces and freezing our cheeks, that we saw a larger than normal number of people out walking their dogs. Walking quickly, though never loathe to stand about for a few moments, talking. Their companion dogs were invariably large and young and boisterously enthusiastic. Truth was, even at that chill temperature, it represented a break from our previously long spell of minus-16 to -20 Celsius that we've been coping with.

Yesterday we came across a young man we've often seen before, walking his happily energetic little Whippet, grace in motion, wearing his warm winter jacket. And accompanying them were two matched-for-cuteness little Maltese terriers. This was the first time in the ravine for the pair of white female Maltese, and they were excitedly veering about, seemingly everywhere at once.

When we come across scenarios like this, stand and talk with ravine hiking acquaintances, watch their companion animals enjoy the freedom to roam about in a natural environment, it adds considerably to our own enjoyment and the privilege we have, to do the same.

It is extremely cold and continues to be extremely cold. We have a weather system arriving that will give us milder temperatures, at least around minus-6 degrees for the high, accompanied by snow events, not that we don't already have ample snow cushioning the landscape.

And with thoughts of the difficulties facing the birds and small animals in our area, with diminished foraging opportunities and winter conditions offering fewer nutritional options, we've fully committed to helping in our own small way. Apart from our daily peanut depots cached in our nearby ravine, we've amassed a wild-bird pantry full of all manner of seeds and tiny peanuts in an excellent mix that includes black oiled sunflower seeds.

My husband bought a large bird feeder, and a collection of suet balls to hang in the front gardens. The suet has been up for over a week and we've never really seen any birds taking to it, but it's probably mostly woodpeckers that would, and they don't seem to leave the confines of the wooded ravine, though we see the Pileated often, not so often the much smaller hairy and downy woodpeckers. At our daughter's home in the countryside her various birdfeeders and suet balls are always crowded with birds, from red polls to oriels, chickadees and juncos.

We've had chickadees aplenty and juncos as well, though not yet any nuthatches, to the feeder. Still, it seems as though all of the birds prefer our original offering place, the wide top rail of our front porch, to the bird feeder, let alone the suet.

And the squirrels, red, black and grey, find the seeds and the peanuts irresistible in this time of seasonal deprivation. We're happy to see them all, taking advantage of whatever they can find to allow them to weather the long cold winter days and nights.

We were surprised and happy, in a way, to see the rabbit that has been chomping on our backyard shrubs out on the porch again, this time in broad daylight, yesterday afternoon, nibbling away on the seeds and nuts the more careless feeders fling from the porch rail to the floor of the porch. Concerned that he was revealing himself in the light of day, since its habit is to come out nocturnally, the dark offering shelter from potential predators.

We'll just have to trust to nature's benevolence allowing some of her creatures to escape the feeding cycle. We don't usually see hawks and owls beyond the ravine and into the more urbanized streets, but there are predatory neighbourhood cats always on the prowl. Their presence disconcerting, particularly when on occasion we come across the sad carcass of one of their kills.

But the extreme cold and high humidity combined with wind, also seems to work to diminish the enthusiasm of household cats for roaming about in these icy months, giving the existential upper hand, albeit temporarily, to the small wild creatures that frequent our feeding stations.

We're almost in mid-February, on the downward side of Old Man Winter. How far away can spring be? Close, but in our minds, viewing the snow-laden environment that surrounds us, too far. We read in yesterday's paper that the process of freeing up the Rideau River from its winterbound state is beginning. Early this year, it seems.

City of Ottawa crews get started on the annual ice breaking operations on the Rideau River. Photograph by: Chris Mikula, Ottawa Citizen

 

As we drove the Ottawa River Parkway from our west-end location to arrive in downtown Ottawa, heading for the Byward Market, we passed the Rideau Falls and could see the activity commencing. The keys were being cut, had been cut, and orange-suited municipal workers could be seen below, struggling with huge saws and another contraption that is new to us, a larger, more technologically advanced ice-cutting device. Purportedly, its use has minimized the need for explosives.

Powerful saws make quick work of the ice as a work crew cuts slots or ‘keys’ in the Rideau River.  Photograph by: Wayne Cuddington, Ottawa Citizen

 

Explosives are still being used, but minimally, only in areas where the machines cannot be useful because it's too difficult to position them usefully in certain places.

Before long March will arrive, and the opportunity to see impressively huge ice pans floating downriver, tumbling off the elevated portion of the river just beside the falls into the river below, their weight causing them to sink in an immense splash of freezing river water, surfacing soon afterward to continue their journey downstream will beckon. It's quite the sight, fascinating to watch as this hugely thick ice sheets slide past, crash below and float serenely on.


Ice blocks over the Rideau Falls at the Ottawa river 
 
When we first saw this yearly event, we were amazed. The power and majesty of the natural elements that surround us never fails to impress us. In the event, this key-cutting exercise is a preemptive effort to forestall flooding, a natural enough occurrence that can have grave consequences to public safety and the destruction of the hundreds of buildings existing along the river shoreline.

The amphibex can crawl up on the ice surface and break it apart using its weight alone. If that doesn’t work, the hydraulic arm can finish the job.     Photograph by: Chris Mikula, The Ottawa Citizen