Today's Fog Conditions

Mist mischievously traced its presence over the snow, lifted, dissipated, then retrenched, a few inches above the banks of snow as we made our way up the street, toward the ravine. The street itself was clear of the presence of fog. Rain had seen to that. And at 8-degrees, milder even than yesterday when the fog was all-encompassing and visibility elusive, it looked like a different landscape altogether.

We'd had overnight rain, heavy at times, melting away both layers of snow, and overall fog conditions. Morning rain, fitful and light kept the fog from re-forming its sight barrier. Clever Nature, keeping us guessing, never a dull moment. And that would be entertainingly fine, were it not for the fact that we still have an expectation to clear up from yesterday; our son's departure to Vancouver.

But this was morning, and departure still hours away. We found as long as we were careful to remain on the hard-packed snow of the trails, the going was easy enough. Forget for a moment, step incautiously to either side of the trail, and your boot and leg sunk deep into the weather-denatured snowpack.

The creek was in full flood mode, roiling and boiling in dark brown eddies over storm-tossed accumulations of branches and twigs, clay bank collapses and rocks. Particulate matter had been peeled off the bed of the creek by the madly rushing run-off, aided and abetted by the effects of overnight rain. The darkly swollen creek rushing downstream exuded the sharply sour odours of gases newly unleashed.

A quick glance affirmed the resident squirrels' appreciation of yesterday's nut offerings. The wide board rails of the four bridges we would pass in our roundabout were now devoid of nuts and dried fruit. In the equally bare branches above, a nuthatch polished its beak and chickadees flitted hither and yon. While in the near distance the uncanny call of a woodpecker was heard.

Surprisingly little of the snowpack appeared to have melted, despite the mild atmosphere, the rain still gently blessing the tops of our rain hoods. Untracked stretches of snow presented as a different and attractive backdrop, having acquired a softly dimpled aspect. In other places we guess at the maker of snow tracks, identifying variously muskrat, beaver, mice, rabbit, squirrels.

And, of course, dogs, plenty of those have left their tracks, small and large, happily rambunctious and weary plodders alike, all out for their daily constitutionals with their people. The dogs, unlike the ravine's genuine denizens, have taken leave of their toilet manners, and their reeking droppings appear everywhere we tread - cautiously.

As we approach a mixed copse of maple and pine there's a convocation of crows, loudly mobbing. Our biologist son, whose departure back to Vancouver has been delayed by yesterday's impossibly dense fog, alerts us that something is up. And he peers skyward, then around the encircling trees.

Bringing our attention to the presence, halfway up a pine, perched on a jutting branch close to the trunk, a barred owl. Clearly its presence, whose discovery delights us, is perceived as an insult, if not an outright threat, by the crows, hysterically circling the majestic bird. The crows call their defiance of the owl's presence in their domain. The owl magisterially ignores the pests.

As we proceed, we drop into another hollow, replete with drifting fog, eerie, wispy, transcendentally beautiful. Presenting to us its benign face. Its presence in the ravine, absent up above, on the street, is appreciated where it does not present a threat to our plans, and we hope that its intransigent face of potential threat absents itself from our experience later this day.