Walking Into Life

     This past summer, after a debilitating three-year battle with depression, I began to walk my dogs again. Sadie and Sasha are border-collie crosses that love to run and roam. I quickly found that walking them in Val Marie, where I live, left them bored. It was clear they needed wide open spaces.      That led me to the east side of Val Marie, along the Frenchman River. Here was the stuff dog’s dreams are made of! Water to splash in, smelly mud to muck in, dead animals to roll on: you name it, it was there. I learned early that dogs love to show their appreciation, right after the river water, the smelly muck, and the carcasses.
      In the beginning, it was often grudgingly that I would walk them - I only did it because my doctors told me I needed to. I quickly discovered, however, that you can only watch your dogs frolic for so long before you become bored. So I began to look around.
      At first, I noticed the big things: the sky, the trees, the grass. Then I began to notice the little things: tiny yellow flowers on the bank of an irrigation ditch, and a few steps further, a patch of weeds. We all remember how we’ve been trained from birth that weeds are the ‘enemy’, especially if you’re the child of a farmer. But the pattern on the leaves of these weeds intrigued me and I looked closer. There! On one of the leaves! An insect that looked just like the leaf!
      Is this possible? I wondered. Can an insect really look like a leaf? I’d learned all about camouflage in grade six but I’d never actually seen it at work. I stood then, and looked at this world around me, at my world, and something burst inside of me. I felt … something…what was this feeling? I fumbled about in my mind, searching for the perfect word to describe it and I finally fell upon this: life. I felt alive!

      Now that spring has arrived I find myself needing to name those wonders. Actually, I want to discover and name everything! I want to feel even more bursts of wonder and awe like those that I first felt last fall. I never want to be blinded again.

      How about you? What has blinded you? For me, it was my depression that had shrouded my life and blinded me to everything. But what about you? Is it your job? Parenting challenges? Financial difficulty? Ultimately, what steals our peace and joy is irrelevant. What matters is that we muster up the courage to pull the shrouds from our lives and rediscover ourselves. That’s where the magic is! Sadie and Sasha have shown me that nature can be the catalyst through which that happens, that nature can remind you of who you really are.

      Every day that I choose to walk and engage with nature I hear a voice inside me. “You’re on the right path,” it says. I invite you, dear reader, to walk with me in the months to come. I encourage you to find one small wonder in your world and welcome it. Even the smallest of changes has the power to tear away your shrouds, to heal your blindness, and catapult you onto a road of transformation.

My best friend, Sadie

Originally published in the April 26th, 2010 issue of the WRFP