It's April, after all, nature's spring-cleaning month, when we can expect ample rain to encourage warmer atmospheres, in turn inciting flowers to begin to erupt out of the warming soil. The sunny days we also celebrate come sandwiched between rainy days, and today, yet again, is one of those rainy, dull days. But yesterday we had the opposite, and decided, after our ravine walk, to go downtown to Byward Market for magazines and cheese.

The drive to the market along the Western Parkway is an adventure in itself, you never know what you can see in the fields adjacent to the highway; red foxes, deer on occasion, rare though they are, and yesterday a grey coyote, taking its time, ambling along a field that will soon be seeded with a crop. The coyote likely looking to rustle up mice, rabbits, moles ... who knows? His sighting was a surprise for us, and a pleasant one to know we're sharing our environment with other creatures of the Earth.

The urban forest is coming to life. Looking at it in the aggregate, you can see a flush of new life stirring. The willows will be the first with their yellowish, pale-green flush, now on the cusp of arriving. But the poplars, already sporting fuzzy catkins aren't far behind, nor the maples whose red buds will soon be in full evidence. The Ottawa River is swollen with snow meltwater. Everywhere we look the elements of spring are in place, finally.

Byward Market reflects that, too, all the more so on a sunny, windy but cool day. A day that teases people's instincts to get out in the fresh air and enjoy the feeling of freedom and anticipation of warmer days. Cafes in the market are not yet preparing their outdoor patios but it won't be long. There's a lot of construction going on in the downtown area, and the market area is no exception.

It's a colourful place, teeming with people of every description, young, old, hale, and otherwise; people who look like those you can see anywhere else in public places, and those who distinguish themselves by a personal style that calls attention to an obvious rejection of the boring ordinary, an embrace of the outlandishly extravagant in garb, colour and attitude.

All a reflection of the multi-faceted expression of human nature. Emulating nature herself in her infinitesimally vibrant and distinct categories of life. Like the flamboyant, strutting wild turkey we passed returning home on the parkway who obligingly posed for my camera, setting aside for the moment his search for a companionable hen in the mating process of spring calling.

When we passed the RCMP musical ride paddocks there were none of the beautiful, black horses to be seen. In their place were hundreds of Canada geese, industriously pecking at the bountiful leavings on the grassy meadows, and alternately blissing out, warming themselves in the sun after their long migration north, themselves harbingers of spring's arrival.

At last another sunny day after a rainy Sunday and heavily overcast Monday, both days bringing in windy, much cooler temperatures. Our brief flirtation with warmer days and clear skies over, it seems, for the present. The thermometer dipped to the freezing point last night, and although this morning was bright and clear, it was also cold.

But since we were planning to go out this afternoon, we decided for an earlier ravine walk and set off well geared with warm jackets, head coverings and woolen gloves. And oh yes, our sturdily reliable cleats pulled on securely over our boots. Both the boots and the cleats are well slathered in dry mud, and today's outing just added to the coating.

To venture out even at this late stage after spring's arrival is to risk a slide and a fall, and whatever would result from either, so we feel it's prudent to continue wearing the cleats, and we're not the only seasoned ravine trekkers who continue to do so. Though truth to tell, we failed to see many people out walking the trails in the past several days.

The ravine's reputation for its springtime transition gives many people pause for second thought, that they would vastly prefer to avoid the mud and the still-remaining ice and snow conditions that pose such a challenge to balance on downhill forays.

They're missing unexpected treats. We consider them treats, in any event. This morning we had the first sighting of the very first of the spring flowers that erupt from the forest floor. Hard to believe since frost hasn't quite departed its depth of presence in the soil, but there they were, a small colony of delightfully bright yellow coltsfoot flowers.

Elsewhere, bright green mosses have been freed from the weight of snow and ice that kept them prisoner over winter. Woodpeckers have been busy in the ravine, rat-a-tatting contentedly away, and chickadees and nuthatches flitter about everywhere. We even saw a goldfinch for the first time this spring.

Years ago, when our youngest son took us alpine camping in British Columbia, we were two years from turning age 60. We had long been accustomed to mountain climbing, since from the time our children were in their early teens we had explored mountains in Vermont, New Hampshire, Quebec and New York State. It was a family recreational enterprise that we always looked forward to and which we expanded upon in Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia and climbs not far from the city limits of Tokyo, Japan. Mountains and forests always seemed to attract us; far less ocean settings.

Gates of Shangri-La

On that alpine camping trip halfway through our climb near the Stein Valley as we were approaching Long Peak, our destination where we would be introduced for the first time to glaciers just beginning to melt in July, we came across an alpine cabin built for the use of climbers, particularly during the winter months, as a stop-over. We explored the interior before moving on to complete our climb. There was a visitors' book inviting whoever might come by to sign it, and we read a few entries. They were all written by people who had stayed over the night, using the cabin's rough but useful facilities, including a wood stove for warmth.

Our son would himself, from time to time on winter climbing forays stay over in that cabin if he was in that area. He described for us the cabin being completely inundated by snow, so that he and his companions would have to work to shovel out a tunnel to the door and entry to the cabin. After which the wood stove, the basic bunking facilities and the shelter the cabin provided was a treasure in itself.

Most of the more recent entries in that book of comments made mention of a packrat that inhabited the cabin, or which lived nearby, entering the cabin from time to time. All of the comments sang its praise, as a sturdy picker of items from the stores of the unwary.  Packrats of course are known for their inbred propensity to collect objects and store them away in depositories where those prized objects remained the property of the packrats. They would include keys, and other such things that people would not necessarily be pleased to lose. Fortunately, it seems that the frantic loser-of-keys would always find them stored somewhere in the cabin, often inside the wood stove.

I think of ourselves sometimes as packrats. Mostly, when it comes to the weekly day I assign to clean the house. Like packrats we too gather to ourselves all manner of objects that please us for their aesthetic attraction. And, of course, while packrats might not concern themselves with continually dusting the objects in their treasured caches, we humans do. We burden ourselves with the ownership of bits and pieces and then assume the obligation of their care. It is the dusting of this and that which tends to consume so much of my cleaning time. Getting down on my hands and knees to wash the floors of our house is a relief; easy to do, doesn't take much time and thankfully it's the final thing I attack on house-cleaning day.

A real grab-bag of weather conditions yesterday greeted us on Saturday when we were met by completely blue skies, not a wisp of cloud to be seen, the sun reigning supreme, warming the atmosphere and lightening moods for the Easter week-end. The wind, though fairly benign with a temperature of 14C, heralded a change in the atmosphere which was yet to come.

The weather report, however, gave ample warning of a complete change-over in the afternoon with wind and rain expected to dominate. So we decided, directly following breakfast and its associated clean-up to head out for our daily ravine walk, a little early, to ensure it wouldn't be interrupted by rain. We were, it seems, almost the only people with that in mind, since throughout the duration of our hour-and-a-quarter ramble there was no one else to be seen.

We did briefly encounter the normally good-natured Husky, Jango, with her person, meriting a short stop and the exchange of the usual pleasantries. (She's the one several weeks earlier who had cornered and caught a little red fox, before someone intervened to save it from Jango's hunting instincts.) So Jackie and Jillie did have the opportunity to come across a furry friend, but that was the only occasion for the day. The assumption is that since stores were closed on Good Friday, the entire universe thought it a good use of time the following day to cram into shopping malls.

Thereby missing their opportunity for the day. It wasn't long after we returned home just past noon when the sun was crowded out by dark clouds which soon opened into a deluge that kept on giving copiously for the rest of the day. And on into the night. And on again, this morning. We expect we'll still come across ample snow and ice when we venture into the ravine, hoping for a break in the rain by this afternoon.

Our youngest son called last night to tell us he was setting off this morning from his home in Vancouver for the three-hour drive to the Skajit River where he planned to spend the next few days, canoeing and camping on a river sandbar or gravel bed alongside the river. He usually undertakes a trip like that once in the spring and again in the fall, conditions permitting. The urge to get out into the natural surroundings so accessible throughout British Columbia never fails to grip him. It's both the naturalist inclinations and the scientist's curiosity that propels him.

Conditions of ice-melt and the snowpack gradually receding leaving behind the usual muck on the forest floor, but particularly on the slopes between the hills and valleys appears to have kept a lot of the regular ravine trekkers from coming out this past week. Quite a few people don't own the kind of cleats we keep strapped over our boots all winter long and well into spring.

Without those cleats we'd have surely experienced many a fall, some slight and some capable of doing considerable physical damage to our bodies. We have, in the past, slipped often enough and had falls. And, as said, some were trifles though we'd come away from them well slopped in mud, and others caused enough damage that we suffered the consequences for weeks, even months afterward. So, for us, caution is the best solution.

On yesterday's walk we did come across a whole whack of people we know, including some we have never before seen. At least at a rough estimate, eight people, singly or in pairs out walking their dogs, and themselves on a perfect spring day with a temperature high of 14 degrees, a slight breeze, and plenty of sun gliding in a wonderfully clear sky. We saw a pair of Mourning Cloaks, the first sighting of those early butterflies this spring. There'll be more to come.

We're familiar with those parts of the ravine where the snow and ice on the trails will take much longer than other areas to finally melt. The creek is running flat-out with the milder temperatures and the occasional rainfall, so it shouldn't be more than a few weeks before the forest floor is sufficiently clear of snow and ice to enable us to shelve the cleats for another year, and that'll be a relief.

Jackie and Jillie, perhaps puzzled at first when they noticed the receding snow, now take it for granted; perhaps they recall previous springs, perhaps not. They're only two-and-a-half years old, after all. But they're revelling in their own new freedoms; lighter sweaters (mostly in an effort to keep them as free of mud as possible) and lighter harnesses.

A plenitude of delightful (to them) odours emanating from the winter-long accumulation of all manner of organic detritus -- and I mean all manner, including the absence of manners that seem to strike dogs in the depths of winter when the snow has built up to great heights and they defecate on the trail and people fail to remove it.

It's more a spontaneous reaction than a deliberate action when I finally get around to collecting little Jackie and Jillie, one after the other, after assembling scissors, brush and vacuum to finally give them haircuts. It's a tedious job. One requiring patience far more than skill. But I have found the last several times that our little pups underwent the process that is certainly not a favourite of theirs, they've exercised patience, too.

I usually do Jackie first, while Jillie sits imperturbably close by, watching, but not particularly interested. Jackie was the most difficult of the two, fidgety and fearful. Now, he no longer trembles through the process, and more or less submits to the indignity, knowing from experience that no harm will come to him. And when I'm finished with him, he fairly leaps for joy, ecstatic that the misery heaped upon him has come to an end.

I then begin the very same procedure with Jillie. She's more inclined to be phlegmatic about everything than her brother. While I'm ministering to Jillie, Jackie excitedly noses around us, curious and frantic that his sister is now receiving close attention. He resorts to hijinks to get my attention, but it's focused on his sister, and he's jealous. Finally, he'll settle down and just wait, and when she too is released from the ordeal, they both rampage about until taken outdoors briefly.

We decided to take them for their usual ravine walk, and on return home to indulge in a bath for them. Jackie intuits exactly what's on the menu, and he becomes crazed with excitement; a bath is something to be anticipated with great excitement because it can be enjoyed, feeling the warm water being laved over him, the sudsing and the gentle scrubbing, and then the bliss of being softly towelled. When he's dipped into the bath, he's still and he's quiet, awaiting the details to follow.

When it's his sister's turn he's frantic with jealousy, right at my elbow while I'm ministering to Jillie, yipping and emoting and trying to pull her ears. It's far worse when she's being towelled dry. At that point he's furious, and leaping up to the bathroom counter where the towelling is being done, growling at Jillie, trying to snap at her and pull her hair.

Once they're both dry enough for release, the hallways of the house become frantic raceways, as they leap upon one another, wrestle, and romp and race about the house like a noisily thumping herd of goats.

It seems counter to rational consideration that a man of 80 who has recently undergone open heart surgery would seek to 'test' his returning strength and endurance by changing the tires in his vehicle from ice tires to all-season ones at the arrival of spring, but that kind of consideration has never given my husband pause. He has resumed his regular weight-lifting exercises, and as he said, he doesn't quite trust those who are in the trade of doing such things, preferring to do them himself.

This, from a man whose working career was that of a government bureaucrat, sitting at a desk all day or trotting on government missions around the world. But a man nevertheless who always believed he could do anything he had an interest in doing, and looking after the mechanics of items he owns is one of them. Another, far more important one to him being satisfying his own anaesthetic by engaging himself in creating art, and at the same time becoming familiar with the operative wherewithal to enable him to make his own home renovations.

His imagination never tires, his passion for productivity only increases, and his drive to challenge himself never goes unanswered. It's been quite an experience, going through life sharing, in however passive a way, his curiosity and determination to engage himself in enterprises that most people would hesitate to involve themselves in. Caution is not a word he places great store in.

That, and his irrepressible fascination with the world around us, from omnivorously reading the accounts of others who have moved forward toward their own destinies in which adventure was no stranger, to hauling us all off as a young family in our early years as parents to become closely acquainted with the nature around us. Now, that has always been a mutually shared drive, the need to be close to nature, one that our children became themselves intimately involved with through exposure and familial recreational choice.