The creek down in the ravine as we sauntered downhill into the forest enclave, treated us to a convincing enough springtime ritual of flooding, a truly command performance. It was not only the sound of water rushing over rapids where detritus attempts to block the smooth downstream passage that alerted us as we made our way down the first long descent, but the unmistakable and rare odour rising from it.

The flush of melting snow from the hillsides served to fill the now-gushing waterway to the extent that it dug up accumulated detritus on the creek floor, churning it and turning it over in its mad rush and thus disturbing the vegetable matter decomposing within to produce marsh gas, that distinctively sulphurous-smelling methane gas familiar to anyone who has paddled a canoe through a marsh when paddles were dipped deep enough to disturb the layers of biodegrading vegetation below.

As we made our way onward over the bridge and ascended another hill delving deeper in the forest confines the smell receded until it was no more. The footing was once again semi-slippery, the resulting semi-melt of the accumulated winter's-worth of snow and ice beginning to turn to slush because the high temperature for the day was a balmy 4C.

We could actually see, in some instances, where snow was disappearing. Gauged by eyeing the depth of the trail as compared to specific hallmarks familiar to us; the crook of a large tree, the height of passage over a bridge, with the top rail several feet 'lower' than normal against our own height, that kind of thing. No problem for Jackie and Jillie, the snow still firm enough to resist the weight of their light bodies.  For us, though, it has become mandatory to walk like a cat, in a straight line over the tramped-down trail.

One deviation resulting from a momentary lack of awareness and we find a leg suddenly immersed in snow up to a knee. And then the struggle to retain balance and extricate that wayward leg. Best to remain aware. One foot directly in front of the other.

When we exited the ravine, once again closer to the creek, that all-enveloping odour once again blighted the atmosphere. And as we gained height, we lost the smell. Then became aware that a large, very large vehicle was employing its plow to clear the melting ice off the road and onto the shoulders of the road already piled at a level equal to our height. The immense machine was unable, despite the milder temperature, to scrape the ice down to pavement, but it did remove a tonnage of surface ice that had turned to mush making progress down the street bipedally like making one's way through a swamp.

We're on track to welcome spring. Which will, without doubt, eventually arrive in all her early glory.

Yesterday morning the gardens outside our front door were still enveloped in snow from the snowfall of the day before. It took little time before mild temperatures moved in and wind whipped the snow off the trees. And then with the high for the day at 4C, snow began melting.

Sudden. Dramatic. Those are the shifts we experience in this region of the world when seasons, particularly winter and spring, prepare to absent themselves and introduce themselves in that order. It might seem reasonable to human minds that such transitions take place in an orderly, and gradual process, but man presumes and nature proceeds to do as she wishes, when she wishes, as she wishes.

But the signs -- we're beginning to see them. They're unmistakable. Yesterday a rabble of crows was vociferously making their presence known in the ravine. Swirling, swooping, flying above the canopy and calling to one another. Gathering and separating, re-gathering, hoarsely proclaiming their presence. It's entirely likely that this ritual has little to do on this occasion with harassing a sleeping owl.

And we've seen ducks increasingly, in the creek, and the creek is now wide open. We've an immense snowpack, the height we're walking on over the trails represents at least three feet of accumulated, dense layers of ice and snow. When it melts there will be a mad downward rush from the snow-packed hills of the ravine into the receptive creek prepared to wash winter into the past.

As for winter, we're not the least bit fooled. Our winters have a tendency to stubbornness; procrastination at the very least. True, we've suddenly turned from sub-zero to above-freezing temperatures during the day, dipping back to -6 and thereabouts at night. Perfect conditions for the sap to be ascending into tree trunks from its winter absence. Area sugar shacks are advertising their maple syrup activities. Another spring ritual -- the sap is running, and it's maple syrup time...

Yesterday, hardly anyone but us was out and about in the ravine. It's getting a little sloppy on the trails. But nothing like what it'll eventually -- and thankfully temporarily -- become. We had a prolonged trail walk and it was beyond pleasant to be able to remove mittens without hands freezing.

Another sign of spring -- squirrels are out and madly dashing about, chasing one another frantically up and down tree trunks. It's squirrel mating season and they're determined to get the most out of the season. Black squirrels chasing black squirrels and the occasional grey squirrel, and red squirrels chasing red squirrels. Chipmunks and other creatures are far more discreet.

And the best and most fascinating part of wildlife-spotting yesterday? At our own front door. Literally. We sometimes glimpse rabbits and raccoons coming around in the evening hours to gather up seeds, nuts and bread we leave out on the porch. Yesterday evening we hosted what we think is a juvenile raccoon, a lovely little fellow who was as curious about us as we were about him.

We were so busy yesterday morning -- my husband downstairs in his workshop with his latest stained glass window at a particularly fussy juncture, and me upstairs routinely cleaning the bathrooms and other light housekeeping, that we hadn't noticed it was snowing.

That changed immediately we stepped outside the house, into a whirling, swirling fantasy wonderland already steeped deep in snow and now being refreshed with a fresh coverlet of swiftly descending, dense snow. We were surprised, hardly expecting yet another snowstorm, yet also delighted at the swiftly-occurring change in the landscape with trees heavily traced in new snow, a sight that never fails to impress us.

Such glorious visions bring out the awestruck child in all of us. As for Jackie and Jillie they couldn't have been more excited to bounce along the newly-fluffed forest trails and to romp about with renewed enthusiasm in familiar surroundings that add immensely to their quality of life. As the snow swirled about us it limited the range of our vision, adding a tinge of mystique to the experience of the trees newly-laden with snow crystals, the dense, opaque backdrop of buoyant snow drifting onto the forest floor lending the landscape an aura of magic.

Decreased visibility resulting from heavy snowfall is quite wonderful when you're trekking through a woodland arras, not so much when you're driving, but we were fortunate enough to be able to fully enjoy the snow falling while out on forest trails. There is one misgiving about the decreased sightline, however, in that Jillie has a habit of racing ahead of us. Sometimes she looks back to ensure we're in sight, sometimes she just keeps going.

And we keep calling her back. Mostly, she'll return if the call-back sounds urgent enough, but if she's on the track of something interesting her return is either delayed or non-existent until she hears an exasperated note in our imperative to return to us. Yesterday, we felt just slightly nervous over the possibility of her coming across for example, that hostile dog we met on the trails the day before.

And there's also the caution-quotient comprised of the fact that though we haven't seen any ourselves, others have told us that when they've been out very early morning and at dusk they've caught fleeting images of coyotes. One of our friends has been kind enough to show us photos he's taken of the coyotes that slip about behind his backyard fence, adjacent the ravine.

So for obvious reasons we feel more comfortable keeping Jackie and Jillie within close eyesight, without wanting to restrict their freedom too much. Jackie is seldom a problem that way. Though there are frequent times when he will rush madly ahead in pursuit of heaven-knows-what, he always races back to rejoin us. And if he is ahead and we want him closer, just speaking his name will impel him to return. Besides which, most often he is happiest trotting along beside us or between us.

It was a fabulous hour or so spent in the ravine yesterday. The muffling of sound, the constant, heavy snowfall, the exquisite landscape bathed in pure white, all conspired to please our aesthetic sense. The temperature had risen to a benevolent 2 degrees, yet it kept snowing, no freezing rain. Surprisingly, we saw no one else out enjoying this weather-and-landscape treat.

Later in the day, long after our return from our ravine ramble, the snow picked up even greater momentum and it didn't take very long before a sizeable accumulation resulted. Once more revelling in a world of sparkling white surrounding us.

Not long after we started off on what would turn out to be an interesting ravine ramble early yesterday afternoon, we came across an old acquaintance with her large mixed-breed (a little bit of Collie, some Lab, etc.) dog Millie, and as we stopped to chat she began describing an encounter they'd just had with a large, threatening dog that had Millie hiding behind her for comfort and protection. We thought she might be talking about one of the bull mastiffs we've seen lately, and hastened to assure her that the beasts, though muscular and large, tended, in our experience with them to be gentle enough not to be troubled by their presence.

They certainly aren't aware of their strength. And their appearance tends to startle people, inspiring fear in some. I've been knocked over on the trail by one of them backing into me, my boots sliding on the impact over the icy surface of a trail, the snowpack sheltering me from harm. And a week ago it was my husband's turn when a bull mastiff suddenly appeared and shoved him over in close, muscular contact, surprising both my husband and the beast which appeared confused to see my husband on the ground. Again, no harm done, though at age 82 in such terrain other encounters could prove to be less harmless. But the young man who walks these large animals is obliviously unaware of his responsibility.

Turned out our friend was aware of the presence of these dogs and their disposition and was really speaking about another dog altogether and we couldn't place it through her description. Well, we came across that dog ourselves not long afterward. We were up on the flats whose roundabout trails through the forest lead eventually to a number of descent choices into the ravined forested areas. Our sightline gave us access at one point to another trail which was when Jackie and Jillie began barking. That barking alerted two large dogs that I took at the distance to be the Dane mix and its partner, a bull mastiff but which proved as the red-coated dog swiftly loped along a connecting trail to confront us, not to be a correct guess.

We'd never seen this dog before. And its companion dog which remained on the distant trail was a Bernese, after all. Not far from it strode along a tall woman. Meanwhile the dog confronting us ignored Jackie and Jillie, both of whom were becoming nervous at its presence. What the dog focused on was not my presence but that of my husband, walking behind me slightly. It was clearly hostile, all the signature symptoms were there, and then it began a low, threatening snarl which turned into a gruff bark. That elicited the attention of the woman across on the other trail and she shouted. The dog turned and loped back to her.

We continued on our way, puzzled by the dog's behaviour and realizing this was the dog our friend had spoken of. And then we came across another friend with her three sibling Border Collie companions. We asked Sheila if she'd come across the dog and she launched into an explanation that the day before that dog had threatened to tear her three apart. It was on leash and on the other end was a 20ish man whose attempts to restrain the dog led to its hauling him forward, boots sliding on the icy trail. She had been forced to go off trail with her three until the dog and its handler passed.

Today, she said, the same dog was being walked by an older woman and the dog seemed not to 'notice' her and the three dogs as they passed on the trail. She asked the woman if the young man she had seen with it yesterday was her son. The woman said the dog was a year and a half old, never neutered and they were tending to that shortly. Meanwhile, she appeared to have the dog in infinitely better control than her son, but given the propensity of the dog to confront people and other dogs it should have been on leash.

Shortly, we came across a cheerful young woman, leash in hand, no dog in sight, who stopped to ask whether we'd come across a woman and two large dogs. We told her the direction we'd seen the woman and the dogs moving toward and she set off to find them, explaining they were supposed to meet up in the ravine. Later, as we descended into the ravine ourselves, continuing on our circuit, the foursome, now two women and the two dogs passed us, heading in the direction opposite to ours and the two dogs seemed passive, disinterested in our presence.

We also came across a few other dogs we hadn't before seen, a tiny Schnauzer who emitted a high-pitched squeak of excitement on seeing our two, and a bouncy little Poodle mix who streaked across the trail toward Jackie and Jillie, eager to be friends and to have the chance to play and run about. This was one of those lovely, late-winter days with a relenting temperature of two degrees at its high point, the sky a perfect cerulean blue, the sun blazing its brilliant shafts through to the forest floor. The wind was nowhere near as intrusive as it had been the day before.

The trails were no longer slush-piles, but once again solid and firm underfoot, and we passed through a series of stunningly beautiful winter-wrapped landscapes, both familiar and unfamiliar reflecting our long acquaintanceship with the forest and the fact that it never, ever looks quite the same on succeeding days, reflecting nature's seasonal nuances.

Yesterday, the street outside our house was turned into a slush-field of melting ice. For the first time we can ever recall a huge municipal plow drove back and forth on the street to remove the snow of the day before when about ten cm of snow fell and then the precipitation turned to freezing rain; this, atop a season's accumulation of ice on the road, but it did so with a new mechanism that restrained it from filling in driveways, what a minor miracle!

My husband had just finished shovelling out the backyard walkways for Jackie and Jillie and the side walk at the side of the house, then the walk up to the porch and the porch itself. The snow on the porch had been trampled with tiny footpads of all the little animals scrabbling to find seeds, nuts and bread under the new snow that my husband put out for them the night before. First order of business after clearing away the snow was to replenish the pile.

On Sunday because rain began in the wake of overnight snow, and then freezing rain with no let-up we had no ravine walk. Out we went yesterday afternoon on the mildest-temperature day yet, of 4C. But wind, there's always wind, and this one was strenuous enough in impact to make for real discomfort despite the moderated temperature. As for our progress up the street, well it was a picky affair trying to avoid the large puddles of salty-ice-water that had materialized, instead plunging into the wet morass of remaining ice and snow edging toward melt.

When traversing the road is so challenging we tend to carry Jackie and Jillie over from the house to the ravine entrance; just as well they're so small. I leave the heavier of our two little burdens to my husband and I hoist Jackie, the skinnier of the siblings. The moment we set them down on the trail, off they bounce excitedly to the crest of the hill and downward into the ravine. For us it was tough going, since the trail, with new snow and a change in conditions, was no longer icy and each step we took brought us forward only to have our feet sucked backward again.

The creek is now open and running freely, frothing here and there. Crows were circling above the canopy, calling. We kept an eye out for the presence of owls, but saw none. We did see some others out, a large, happy black Lab that kept inviting Jackie and Jillie to run with him, finally giving up and splaying himself out on the snow, as though on a deep-seated couch, relaxing in the cool comfort of its plushy invitation.

We walked alongside the Lab and its person for awhile; there's always so much to talk about. And then came across another acquaintance with her two rambunctious Irish Setters, and suddenly Jackie and Jillie came alive to the pleasures inherent in running about as a pack, then finally rushing over to where they could all detect the heavenly aroma of dog treats on offer....

It's where we come close to exiting our circuit, looking up and over to the edges of the ravine bordering on the street we live on that some captivating sky scenes can be seen in the landscape reflecting the vicissitudes of weather. And though I most often use that background to capture a relatively unobstructed view of enchanting blue hosting a scintillating sun, yesterday there was just a faint outline of the sun struggling against a ragged charcoal grey cloud in a snow-pewter sky that kept releasing powdery snow-fluffs into the atmosphere.

We've been literally bathed in sunshine for the past week. Brilliant, warming spring sun. That winter remains well ensconced within our landscape is undeniable, but we're on the lookout, as it were, for the inevitable whiff of spring on the horizon. Crows have returned from wherever they took themselves off to for the past few months -- likely the boreal forests.

A ravine-hiking acquaintance informed us yesterday that he'd come across a Barred Owl down in a direction opposite to where we tend to head, an area where beaver keep constructing their dams and harvest poplars. And that may very well explain the noisy gathering of crows we've heard lately since typically crows love to harass owls.

Under a brilliant blue sky and full-thrust sun rays the snowpack has been illuminated to the point where glancing at it threatens to do damage to one's eyes. I keep trying to remember to wear sunglasses, but invariably forget. My husband reminds me and I tuck them into a pocket or slide them to the back of my head under my headband, and then continue to forget them.

I find snapping photographs of the sun full-bore irresistible, I'm always looking for the perfect opportunity to grab the perfect frame and sometimes I find myself satisfied with the outcome. My camera always at the ready I still can't capture the antics of our two little dogs when they suddenly break out in a frenzy of action. They scatter too far, too quickly, the camera is too slow to respond and so am I.

We had a bit of a break in the temperature yesterday, it rose from a morning -12C all the way to -2, but the icy-cold radiating up from the heavy snowpack on the forest floor of course has its impact. In some areas where the sun is able to break through the forest canopy for stretches of time the ice on the trails is beginning to relent, the snow and ice turning to mush. But these are anomalous, not yet wide-spread.

On the first half of our circuit through the ravine with Jackie and Jillie yesterday we came across quite a few dogs, large and small resulting in little happy gatherings distracting the dogs from their preoccupation with rushing about to ensure they haven't missed any 'messages' left at the side of the trails.

So it was yet another lovely winter day, bright, crisp and the landscape quite, quite beautiful. I was reminded of how stark it will look when winter finally departs and spring moves in, tentatively at first then with growing assurance. The forest floor will be steeped in snow-melt and there will be muck everywhere. On the positive side, Jackie and Jillie will no longer need their boots against the cold. On the negative side, we'll have to wash their little paws every time we return from a jaunt.

And today? When we venture out into the ravine it'll be in the wake of the latest snowstorm which began in the early hours of this morning, not long after the clock was hitched forward an hour. A kind of double-whammy. We'd already had quite an accumulation by the time we came down from bed to breakfast. And it won't stop until mid-afternoon.

The Rideau Valley Conservation Authority is keeping close tabs on the watershed before deciding whether and when to cut the (ice) keys on the river in preparation for the ice floes that will inevitably float downriver and over the Rideau Falls. It's a spectacular sight, to see those huge slabs of ice tip over the falls and splash massively into the river below, on their downriver spring route. Those huge ice slabs initially hit the water with a resounding boom, sending sprays of ice-cold river water upward, then they submerge, and finally float to the top of the water again to resume their long journey, gradually melting the while.

This year's snowpack and depth of ice accumulation is unusually high. Coupled with the fact that the usual 'January thaw' failed to materialize this year as it does most winters -- when a week of milder temperatures intervene and we experience an appreciable melting of the snowpack -- so conservation authorities are warning people living in flood-prone areas that they may soon be facing unprecedented flooding. Without doubt, people living in vulnerable areas will be busy soon, sand-bagging their properties in hopes of escaping flood damage. It is a frequent occurrence.

When we headed out yesterday for our afternoon ramble in the ravine it was with the knowledge that we will soon be having milder temperatures and the snow surrounding us will gradually disappear. Winter's back hasn't yet been broken and there are as yet few signs of impending spring, but it's imminent, simply not yet appreciable. The temperature at its high yesterday rose to -6C, with lighter wind under a sunny sky. It was, in fact, the perfect winter day. Our faces still became rigid with cold, increasingly so, as we made our way along the forest trails; the wind, it's the wind, it's always the wind.

On the other hand, as a social occasion for Jackie and Jillie it couldn't have been better. We came across some hiking friends and their dogs; quite a few, in fact, which meant that a general hectic romp was in order, a passel of happy dogs chasing one another about, while we stood briefly passing pleasantries with others.

The passageways we regularly shovel in the backyard after each snowfall to accommodate Jackie and Jillie, and our driveway remain stubbornly icy, the product of intersections between extreme cold and moderation, snow and freezing rain interacting. But the thick ice surface on the road leading to the ravine has relented thanks to sand and salt and what little traffic this street gets, finally transforming the glare ice to a less firm surface allowing us traction, and giving us some relief from a fraught balancing act.

One of our friends cautioned us yesterday as we met on one of the trails, that we're expecting another 10cm snowfall within the next few days. Coinciding with another delightful occurrence, daylight saving time imposed on all us hapless and unappreciative residents of this country. Just as well we can enjoy so many delightful distractions to give quality to our lives -- such as good health, beautiful landscapes and the willingness to embrace each season for its unique attributes.