It came as a huge surprise, even though we had been alerted by Environment Canada of the possibility of a thunder storm occurring during the evening hours. Still, we hardly anticipated its arrival. The table was set for dinner, we were about to begin our salads, when a low rumble actually seemed to shake the very foundations of our house.

Once it was finished announcing its presence, more earthquake-like than weather-related (we are familiar in the Ottawa Valley with earthquake actions, having experienced more than our share of them through the years, all of a mild-to-moderate activity), another series of rumbles (undoubtedly ominous to some, exciting to us) resounded through the atmosphere.

And, following that, the tinkle of glass hitting glass, and we looked out the patio doors, then rushed to the front door, to watch as hail tumbled down from the unruly skies.

Well sheltered from the elements, it is without a single doubt, the most enjoyable of experiences to witness yet another of nature's tantrums, as our climate sits on the transition phase from winter to spring. The two seasons tend to battle it out, cursing one another for intemperance, each struggling to attain the position of power, establishing a semi-permanent presence in an endless game of musical chairs.

I am not the least bit personally familiar with the interior of a beauty salon. Those times in the past sixty years that I have entered such an enterprise have been few. Invariably, I've been dissatisfied with what the skilled technicians accomplish in dealing with my hair, so I have become accustomed long ago to simply cutting and styling my own hair, by myself. A hand mirror used alongside a wall mirror does the trick nicely.

When our granddaughter was in our daily care I used to cut her hair, as well. She's considerably older now, in her mid-teens, so her preference is to have her hair done professionally, and I can't blame her. I certainly cannot do what the professionals manage to. And her outcomes are always successful. So I accompanied her to our local hairdressing salon, and waited there, reading the newspapers while she had her hair done.

It's a large, airy place, very high-tech, well lit, modern decor. The personnel, the young women who work there are outstanding in their behaviour toward the clients that come through their doors. And the clients are numerous, the place is constantly full of people having their hair done, both men and women, although needless to say women predominate in their numbers. The young women are attractive, well dressed, and display impeccable social manners.

What struck me, however, as I waited there comfortably enough, reading the papers, was the decibel level; continuous and loud, so loud I wondered that people didn't find it offensive. It wasn't simply the music, that contemporary music that defies pleasurable listening in any event; it was more background than anything, with its usual thump-thump obscuring any melody, to be frank.

Actually, it was that in combination with the sound of all the electronic gadgetry that is used at the various hairdressing posts, along with the elevated chatter of women intent on making themselves heard. I found it, in fact, quite astonishing that the din didn't seem to bother anyone at all, it seemed to be noticed by me alone.

And since I couldn't do much about it, I simply ignored it and continued reading.

Just wonder, however, what the risk is to the young women working there, on the possibility of future hearing loss as a result of their constant exposure....

Simply glorious, yesterday, with a high temperature of fourteen degrees-a Celsius, and a blazing spring-warmed sun poking through the cloud cover from time to time, plus a gentle breeze to complete the picture. We took to the road shortly after breakfast, hoping to be able to avoid rush-hour traffic, coming and going.

When we reached the historic five-span stone bridge at Pakenham the waters were raging, in full spring melt-flood from the surrounding areas, speedily surrendering their snow and ice to the increasingly warming days.

We noted, out on the rocks, someone - looked like someone in their teens, and might have been, since it is March break and the schools are out - seated quietly, watching the meltwater roaring over the rapids. And we recalled that it was precisely at this time of year, last year, that a middle-aged man lost his footing, meaning to retrieve a boot that had fallen into the water, and was swept away by the unforgiving current, to his death. He had been reputed to have loved the rapids as a young boy, and came often to the area, for a wistful recollection of that time.

And we stopped briefly at the feed store beside the bridge, to see about their peanuts. The price of peanuts has recently risen steeply due to some difficulties in the southern United States, as rumour has it, and setting out daily caches for the squirrels in the ravine has become increasingly costly. The incredibly friendly people in the store wanted to use a small front-end loader to deposit the peanut bag in the trunk of the car. My husband, who has been doing weight training exercises at home for the past year, found it simple enough to move the 50-pound sack of peanuts on his own.

Still, a man who looked as though he was in his 70s, like my husband, who was not employed by the store, but obviously a constant presence there, drawn to sitting around to pass time with others of like vintage, insisted on helping; familiarly, and smilingly, chatting with my husband all the while.

And it did turn out to be a saving: $54 for 50 pounds beats $7.98 for two kilograms.

Last evening the sky was crowded with returning flocks of geese, making their celebrated long, straight and alternately arrow-shaped creases against the sky, joyously sounding their return north in celebration of the Spring Equinox.

And then, last night it began to rain, heavily, raining well into the morning hours. Out in the garden, on one tree, a robin, chirping happy in anticipation of the earthworms that will surely emerge.

In an opposite tree, the brilliant scarlet of a male cardinal trilling the triumphant return of mild weather and the disappearance of ice and snow. In the gardens, the snow and ice are beginning slowly to recede. The ground has not yet thawed but for the first half-inch; under that, solid frozen soil.

Also singing their huzzah! for spring, passing flocks of redpolls and goldfinches; and we, entertained and happily exuberant at their sight and exquisite sound.

His presence in our urban, forested ravine has long been familiar to us. On our daily excursions there, when he follows us to cadge peanuts, it becomes a special occasion. We've grown fond of the little fellow. He is smaller than his peers, a black squirrel sans tail.

We long ago named him Stumpy. And discovered, elsewhere in the ravine another similar to him whom we named Stumpette. We see them both fairly often during the summer months, through into fall and in spring as well. In winter not quite so often, but when we do, we're delighted.

Stumpette isn't as forward as Stumpy, but she too approaches us in expectation that we will deliver peanuts to her personally and we never disappoint. It had been weeks since we last had Stumpy cadge from us, and we wondered, as we've done so often over the years, whether something awry had occurred with him.

Stumpette has a limited range, she doesn't appear too far from a concentrated area where we always see her. Stumpy, on the other hand, roams all over the ravine; we never know where we'll see him, he pops up at the most unexpected places, far from where we've seen him generally.

Just as I was feeling rather concerned a few days back at his continued absence (although we're well aware that he takes advantage of the various cache spots we always leave peanuts in throughout the ravine-trail circuit, knowing full well where they are, unsighted in the process by us), this past week-end, sitting at the breakfast table, I looked up to see him scooting across our back fence.

He obviously has discovered other places besides the ravine where he feels comfortable roaming, checking out prospects.

There was a real winter bite in the air yesterday, seemed more suited to mid-January than the first week of March, when the season prepares to meld gradually into spring. As good a day as any to make the pleasant drive downtown, taking the Eastern Parkway, at a leisurely speed.

The previous days of milder weather and rain events served to begin the process of melting the ice on the Ottawa River. By next week all the ice fishing huts will have to be removed for safety's sake, else they'll sink into the river. For some peculiar reason, there are always those who respond tardily when cautioned of impending ice melt.

As usual Parliament Hill was buzzing with people strolling about the grounds. Busy lines of tourists led by a guide streamed into the National Gallery, its giant spider sculpture "Maman", as usual eliciting gasps of delight, the marble 'eggs' suspended beneath the spider's form not yet hatched.

On our way to the stained glass supply shop, which brought us on this journey, even though we'd been there a mere two weeks earlier. Another set of windows on the go. Designed, and the pieces numbered and cut out, and ready to go. Required: some additional bright rainbow colours for the exotic landscape that will result.

A large, modern, colourful bus with Chinese characters writ large, alongside a banner reading "Taipan Tours", disgorges more sightseers, this time in front of the War Museum at LeBreton Flats. It's a busy area, popular with international tourists, so familiar to us, obviously of interest to those for whom this all appears different and appealing.

Reading through The Canadian Rockies; Early travels and explorations, by Esther Fraser was an amazing adventure, and even though these were the reminiscences and experiences of those who braved the unknowns of an hitherto-unexplored and vast territory of mountain ranges and valleys dating from the 18th to the 19th Centuries, it made me feel personally nostalgic.

These were people who had a professional and both an amateur-explorers' interest in what lay ahead of them, as they blazed new passages to the interior of the Canadian Rockies, never quite knowing what they would find ahead of them, but driven on by impetuous curiosity and an inner need to discover, mapping the terrain as they proceeded.

We think of Canada's First Nations as having been in possession of full knowledge of all these places, the forests thick with giants of their species, the immense valleys of ice fields, the mountain passes, and the grand, imposing, forbidding and beautiful mountains themselves, but the Indians were practical in nature, driven to fend for themselves, not to explore where there was no game to be had at relative ease in quantities sufficient for their needs.

And then, beyond the explorers, the map-makers, botanists and people who dedicated their lives to be the first to ascend those peaks and to name them, there were the hordes of people driven by hope and poverty to go West to take part in the Gold Rush. Many did not survive, from those who were swept away by torrents of swift-rushing rivers we now know as the Thompson and Fraser, and those too who were swept off mountain tops in their weary, storm-bound descents.

When at last they saw the Rockies, "lofty snow-clad peaks, standing out in bold relief against the blue sky beyond and glistening in the sunlight the company was enraptured at the sight of them; for whatever dangers or difficulties might possibly be in store for us among them, all were heartily tired of the endless succession of hills and streams and swamps ... and were willing to face almost any danger that would be likely to terminate or vary our toils."

We flew out to Vancouver twenty years ago to meet up with our younger son in Vancouver, and to travel with him on one of many adventures we shared with him when we were younger. And those adventures, in those years, generally took place in British Columbia. When we experienced our first, memorable alpine ascent fully loaded with backpacks, to set up camp on the slope of a mountain side, below a glacial lake of startling blue, at a short distance a steadily dripping glacier.

Most of the people in this group of Overlanders made the fifty-mile trip west to Cache Creek; hardly any continued north to the Cariboo. Like those who had followed the Fraser, they turned away from the "El Dorado of our hopes". A few journeyed from Quesnel, a few from Cache Creek to the gold fields to see for themselves, but the majority accepted the evidence presented by weary and dejected men returning from the Cariboo: for every one who found gold, nine "merely stayed and starved".

We too, made the long trip from Vancouver to the Cariboo. We stopped at Cache Creek, and made our way to the Bowron Lakes for a week's adventure of canoeing and portaging the string of lakes and rivers that together made up the Bowron Lake circuit, an arduous but breathtaking adventure of our own. We saw others rescued from situations they couldn't manage to endure, but ourselves, like many others, successfully completing the circuit.

We stayed over briefly in Prince George, went on to Harrison Hot Springs, then to Chilliwack, to wander in wonder at the cathedral-like presence of forest giants beyond Lake Chilliwack in the old growth forest there, and stood in awe in the Fraser River Canyon, that deep and immense cleft on the Earth's crust amidst the mountains, with rail tracks and tunnels running right through those mountains.

Our labours through unending days of cold and rain were amply rewarded by the quality of the experience, together doing everything required to make this adventure of ours a shared memory we would treasure. There is no comparison to what we experienced and what those early doughty adventurers and Outlanders experienced; we had the advantage of modern conveniences and the knowledge that this was a temporary break in our lives.

Theirs was a gamble, to take themselves away from the weary squalor of their lives in a harsh land to the hopes of a new start elsewhere, in territory unknown to them, but which was reputed to hold the answer to the hopes of so many. Those who remained despite their disappointments, helped to populate the West.