DEEP IN THE URBAN FOREST

February in southern Ontario and you become your own environmental system. Warm moist breath on cold hard air creates a wreath of clouds around your head. My cloud is like a contrail, a thin white line that quickly streaks and disappears on to the air.

Terra's cloud is indeed its own system, a white hurricane that swirls around her head as she lays on the snow, panting, cooling off, her brown eyes like islands deep under the clouds.

This Cedervale Ravine, a long trail that sprawls along a deep ravine in Toronto's north end. The sides of it go up a good 40 ft in some areas and are thickly wooded. Streets pass over it, supported by high trestles the bases of which are the canvas for urban artists

Terra flies up and down the hills, hunting squirrels which elude her, hunting sticks which fall victim to her; the World Wildlife Fund may order an injunction against my dog, for almost single handedly rendering sticks in urban ravines extinct

This is a special place in the city, an urban forest if you will. As you pass under the overpasses you can hear the traffic, in the winter through the bare trees you can see the houses up on the top, but it's easy to forget where you are; hawks circle over head, tiny streams bubble under thin black ice and wild creatures lurk in the undergrowth

On this cold winter day with a few large flakes of snow floating in the air as if they were lost, torn off from something, adrift, it is easy to get lost; not physically lost on the trail, but lost in the bright white snow and the hard blue sky and the tangle of trees

Here's a little video