This is Winter?

Yes, it most certainly is. We've now left behind us the shortest day(light) of the year and henceforth the days will begin, so slowly we hardly notice it, the long ascent toward lighter days hours. In a few months' time we will suddenly realize that dark no longer begins its descent in mid-afternoon, cloudy skies or clear. And we will voice our happiness over this realization, and congratulate ourselves over having weathered yet another winter.

It's cold, but everything is relative. It should be colder, according to the weather calendar. That didn't stop me from shivering during our ravine walk today. But that was my fault since, looking at the thermometer and seeing it was a full three degrees warmer than yesterday I failed to dress as well as I did yesterday, suffering the consequences of inattention and undue jauntiness.

Today I took the camera along. Because there was a weather event yesterday certain to reflect the arras of the ravine in a different way. Also, there was a softly lingering fog as the low overnight temperature gave way to a gradual warming trend. We'd heard a municipal snowplow crush the ice off the road early this morning in its sweep through the city, post-storm. Plenty of accidents reported during the freezing rain event of yesterday.

And today the creek is swollen, muddy and rushing madly to empty itself of the most current dump. As we enter the ravine, we're slowly but steadily sprinkled with fine ice droplets falling from the trees overhead. Underfoot we crisply crunch through the ice pockets on the trail. Without our trusted cleats we'd be doing more of a downhill slither than a confident stride.

Ice still captures every branch and twig of the trees we pass. Conifer branches hang low weighted down with the burden of the ice still covering every needle, but slowly shuffling off. There is a beautiful aspect to the ice-limned trunks, limbs of the trees, they take on an unexpected look of transcendence, transformed from the ordinary to the sublime.

The sky is the colour of pewter, a shimmering grey-white. The weather forecast had hinted at the possibility of some afternoon sun - as improbable as that seemed, given the low and overall overcast, yet we did almost have the impression at one point that the sun would prevail. It tantalized us with its possibility, but withheld itself from reality.

The frozen trail began to relent under the warming trend and once again gave up little puddles of muck to stride through, whenever we weren't encountering ice-glassy strips of trail. Improbably for this time of year, there was the sound of Canada geese overhead. Still not cold enough in its usual Canadian-relentless winter way to encourage them on their southward journey.

There, up high above, a few crows are in noisy pursuit of an intruder, a close cousin. The raven for some reason we're not familiar with is unwelcome here in this home of our local crow community, and it lifts off its perch and departs, hoarsely cawing in defiance. Our little dogs paddle through the ice puddles, slip on the slick ice surfaces, stop to sniff time and again, new odours revealed with the slight thaw.

Little hope of snow on the way in the next few days in sufficient quantities to transform this into the winter landscape we're far more familiar with.

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