Hot, mid-afternoon walk through Whitemud Ravine…without the dog. I took her on a much shorter walk earlier. She’s just not up to it. Not ill. Not exhausted. She just doesn’t want to go for long walks anymore, or at least, not everyday. I get that. I don’t like it, but I get it. On the plus side, I can walk much faster, and for longer. No stops to pee, smell the bushes, or eat rabbit shit (the dog, not me.) On the negative, no dog. It was about an hour into my walk before I saw another person. It creeped me out, and it takes a lot to creep me out in the woods. Usually there’s someone else around, and usually…I have Maggie. In Mill Creek Ravine, my former most frequented ravine, it never feels quite so isolated as Whitemud. Of course, the first person I did see was a guy in leather, with scraggly hair and a baseball cap turned backwards. At that point, I had been planning to turn back, but I decided to keep walking, to add distance between us. I’m sure he was harmless, but I try to err on the side of caution in remote areas of the woods. Seems like a reasonable thing to do.

So, I walked as far as Snow Valley. In total, my walk was about two hours long. We’re on track to have a record-breaking September heat-wise, and today seemed hotter than it was, even though I spent a lot of it in the shade. Still, the leaves are turning, and the forest floor is becoming crunchified. As long as I have blue sky, the temperature is irrelevant.

4:00PM/23C