life from the end of a leash {november 21, 2021}

Taking a closer look at what's close to home...

It's been raining all day, it's finally stopped. Time to take Bernie for a walk. Time to take notice of what's going on around me as this sniffy little dog and I walk around the neighborhood. When I taught 8th grade Language Arts, every so often the students' writing assignment was to use their senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch) and list 25 things they noticed from the time they got home after school to the time they went to bed. The next day, upon their return to the classroom, they chose one of their examples and elaborated on it. At first it was agonizing for them (and for me as well) but this exercise was to help them understand how they perceived the world around them and ultimately understand themselves a little better.

B's walk...what do I notice?

• Traffic noises...cars, trucks, emergency vehicle siren
• Raindrops hanging from red berries on the hawthorn trees
• Squirrels chattering
• Bernie's toenails tapping on the sidewalk
• The damp smell from the rain
• Big piles of leaves raked to the street
• A boxer barks at B; B doesn't acknowledge the noisy pup
• The cloud-filled gray sky and hearing an airplane but not seeing it
• The muddy path on the nature trail
• Wet leaves on the nature trail that make it slippery in spots
• Birds chirping
• Lots of people walking their dogs
• Taking deep breaths of the cold, crisp air...it's invigorating
• The bright red burning bushes that dot the neighborhood yards...the last blast of color from fall

If I were to write about one of the above bullet points, I would choose the raindrops on the red hawthorn berries and touch on the contrast of the bright red on a gray day, how if you get close enough to the raindrop, it acts like a prism, how the berries feed the birds, how if it were a few degrees colder, the berries would be ice-covered.