Daily "Magic"

One of the comments on my last post about daily sketching (thank you!) read: "What a wonderful way to look at life too." It reminded me of "Magic," a wonderfully daft black lab that was my best friend for 14 years . For eight of those years we would take the same walk every day, day in-day out, more often than not around the same time.

Occasionally I'd drive to another part of town for a change, but the walk that we took was down by Nosehill Creek (parallel to the highway) which ran right into the Bow River almost at the centre of the city of Calgary. Each day: same walk. We'd start at the same place, we'd walk the creek, and sometimes along the river by the zoo, but always the same. The seasons changed and so did the ground cover, but not much else. Same walk, different day.

Yet that dog threw himself with such anticipation and complete wild abandon into that walk. Everything was new, everything was exciting, and every tiny part of the walk was greeted with complete and utter amazement, as if he was seeing it for the very first time. And I knew that if ever I could wake up each day with that same attitude, my life would be rich beyond anything I could imagine.

Recently my van was out of commission and I had to walk a long way in rotten weather. I was tired and grumpy and for some reason thought of "Magic." So I decided to pick up off the ground one of every type of foliage that I could find with the commitment to paint them in my Art Journal later that day. And as I discovered each new piece, that I had seen every day of my four years on Gabriola, I began to really enjoy the walk. Painting the pieces that evening I realised that I had, for that day at least, seen the same, same old, as brand new and exciting.