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Change of Flow

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August 2012 I attended a writing workshop titled “Making a Personal Metaphor from the Natural World” by the writer Matt Love at the Alder Creek Farm Conservation Site in Manzanita, Oregon.

Another of Matt’s prompts that day – was to use different blue crayons and draw a body of water resembling self.

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My crude picture was a side view of a river meeting the ocean (I was thinking about the mouth of the Columbia River colliding with the Pacific Ocean between Washington and Oregon).

– Then name it

I came up with “Change of Flow”

– The next step was to write some thoughts about our sketch.

I wrote:

I am at a point in my life where, like the mouth of a river meeting the ocean, flow has changed.

No longer going in a predictable direction, now part of a more random, changing… Freedom.

The largely wilder side of uncertainty is both calming and stressful, at the same time.

This change of flow is unique in its position of looking into the future, while looking backward.

The gravitational nature of this place in uncontrolled.

– Next we were to go back and underline the top three words.

– Then write a sentence summarizing our thoughts.

“I am at a point in my life where, like the mouth of a river meeting the ocean… Flow has Changed”

Dalmatian!

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Sarrah usually even enjoyed the attention from hoards of kids who are in excess when the weather is nice (Kids instantly forget everything they’ve ever been told in regards to “strangers”, let alone running toward me and Sarrah).  Thanks to Sarrah’s typical patience and our many visits to parks, beaches, trails and sidewalks many kids of all ages got to meet a real life “Dalmatian!”   I couldn’t even guess how many hundreds of these people enjoyed their gift of meeting Sarrah.  She was the most popular and often photographed dog, every time.

Salted Air

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Sarrah seemed to have an affinity for salted air, in all of its forms: warm and strong, crisp and bright, cold and damp or even the bone soaking kind driven by wind.  She led me to find and appreciate the less popular versions of marine air, which are highly addictive and ultimately better.

Winter Walking

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The Pacific Northwest offers dampness in the longer evenings, the kind that makes bones ache a little, in the aged and the damaged.  These cold night walks were my least favorite, but also became part of our routine.  I found that ending each day with a stroll does let mental junk settle and unwind springs.  Living near the Puget Sound often brings moist cool marine air induced fog.  This heavy, thick, ‘cotton like’ mysterious air requires a little more caution when walking amongst distracted moving vehicles, due to poor visibility as it shrouds depth and changes perception.  Sarrah and I typically walked three times each day; we experienced all flavors of the weather that come to the Pacific Northwest.  Some varieties were appreciated more than others, but we grew to enjoy all of these experiences, together.

Snow!

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Despite her lack of cold weather fur, Sarrah excitedly danced in our rare snow.  Many years, we do not get any snow near sea level.  Some winter’s we get a trace, others an inch or so as we did for Sarrah’s first, possibly instilling a lifelong zest for snow play.

On extreme occasion we get Buried with several inches, those heavy snowfalls were delightful, for Sarrah.  Her eyes got bigger; she made whimpers of excitement, when we finally got outside she would buck and bounce, jumping into the thick of it.  I used the longer leash, usually reserved for parks and beach walks, extending a fifteen-foot roving radius of restrained freedom for galloping through yards.  Like a kid off on a snow day I would bundle up and head out for the best, to turn her loose in the backyard to run, roll, dive and play.  She would gallop through the thick bright white fluff and occasionally stuff her nose into it, snorting with excitement.  It seemed that the huge fluffy flakes were her favorite kind, when the opportunity to get out into it came falling, we did.

Sarrah discovered regardless of the amount of this mysterious cold illuminating white stuff, it only stays here for a few days and then as quickly, it goes… away.

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