Daniela Ginta, Freelance Writer

Gratitude makes the journey better. Kindness, too.

Category: Kamloops Page 28 of 45

The Sense That Is Never Lost

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On April 20, 2017

In Armchair Mayor Column, Environment, Kamloops, Learning, Life Stories, Self-improvement

It was as if someone lowered pup and I into a glass of milk. We were walking on the dirt trail up on the ranch in the rain. It was foggy but it became so dense the trees were but ghosts guarding a world of chirping and dripping.

Creepy you say? Not a tinge. Comforting and soothing, spring curled up at our sleep, succumbing to incessant and much needed rain. It’s the place where you hear birds and become aware of how little you know past that. Birds? Yes, but which kind? What’s the song about? Are you part of the landscape enough for them not to worry over you, or are you the intruder that rudely converts the sweet morning tunes into alarm sounds? Not that you’d notice…

To call it deafness would be inaccurate. It’s complicit ignorance… to the world that does not require us to know but what a gift towards becoming better versions of ourselves if we do. It is striking that the average person taking a stroll through the woods knows so little about what they see or hear.

Delicate stems of grasses that might as well be invisible for how little we know of what they are and why they’re there, wildflowers so pretty that we perhaps take photos of but do not take the thought far enough to learn their names… Trees with lives so mysteriously and beautifully intertwined with ours; trees that many (most?) of us call but trees, and go maybe as far as divide them into coniferous and deciduous, leaving way too much into the realm of ‘one day I will know more…’ because really, the day is today. That is all we have.

 

What then? Take a long enough breath to feel tingly all over and grateful beyond words for being able to so do. Make it so that you learn one thing on any given day, about the world so humbly laid at your feet you forget to give it thanks for providing the very ground you step on, a solid one. For the way it is mysteriously draped from the sky all over to where your lungs and eyes can be satiated without even you realizing it.

Save your sense of wonder. Save it from the daily rush, save it from careless gazing upon things you might not even notice after all, and save it from becoming uprooted in any way. We’re born with a sense of wonder; when we first touch the world our senses are steeped into all that the world has to offer, and then at some point – you’d be right to ask why and where, therein lies the trouble – we steer away from it.

 

Truth is, it’s still within, all of it. All it takes is silence punctuated with bird songs, rain dripping cold and soothing on your face, slipping on a patch of mud just enough to almost step on a delicate ring of flowers you then go and learn the name of… it’s all there. Pup and I keep finding that out. You do it too, why not?

The Spaces That Keep Our Children Safe

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On April 4, 2017

In Armchair Mayor Column, Health, Homeschooling, Kamloops, Learning, Life Stories, Motherhood, Self-improvement, Social issues

Originally published as a column in CFJC Today and Armchair Mayor News on March 27, 2017. 

For two days in a row last week I drove my oldest son to Harper Mountain. He had two ski passes left from a bunch he got for Christmas. I relish the time with each of my sons alone. There is chatting to be had, silence too, there are things I remember and think about long after.

Most of all, there is the reminder that what counts most as children grow up is being present. Going through the moves of parenting teaches you a thing or two about what being present really means; it teaches both humbleness and gratefulness at once. I get reminded often that we stray from both only to return with more of each.

Over the last year I have amassed a solid collection of comments about how challenging life with a teenager must be. And with a budding one coming close behind. They are 14 and 10. Every time I take a moment to ponder but the same answer comes out ‘No, not really. There are occasional bumps but it’s a good ride.’

On our second day on the way to the mountain, the radio was humming in the background, and we were chatting driving along. A story on the radio caught our attention. We both stopped talking and listened instead. A man was telling the heart wrenching story of his growing up.

It involved abuse, addictions and three little boys aged three, four and five, left to fend for themselves for weeks. There was living in foster homes, temporarily living in the grandparents’ home, facing racism because of their Indigenous heritage from their mother’s side, though the three kids were never told the details of their heritage. There was anger and loneliness.

He started using drugs and alcohol as a teenager. The only place where he did not have to face any realities, the place where he did not have to search aimlessly for what he did not seem to be able to find.

My son and I both listened. The man talked about becoming heavily addicted to crack cocaine and how overpowering that was. How overwhelming the high he was after, how misleading, and inescapable and deadly. He became homeless and living on the dark side of life for ten more years, his will only centered around figuring out how to feed his addiction.

The gap that opened closed without swallowing him up though.

Nowadays, Jesse Thistle knows that he is a Metis-Cree from Saskatchewan, and he is pursuing a doctorate at York University. He is the receiver of many an academic accolade. His focus, unsurprisingly, is homelessness, Indigenous history, mainly intergenerational trauma, social work including addiction studies.

My son and I had plenty to talk about once the story was wrapped up. Fentanyl overdoses news abound lately; questions without answers for now. Listening to Jesse’s story shed yet more light on why this is such a tough issue to solve.

We can roll out numbers and outline the dangers for our children, yet as many of us know, curiosity, peer pressure (or both), bullying and abuse of any kind, loneliness and the sad reality of not knowing where to turn for safe space, that can lead many astray. Listening to someone’s life story outlines all of that.

That’s where parents come in, or significant adults that have the privilege to be in children’s lives. There is no script for any of this, which sends us scrambling looking for ideas and solutions. We jump in with both feet and figure out how to stay afloat as we go, after life dunks you a few times for good measure. That is all part of being human and being present as a parent.

Most of all, being there where our children are, listening to them, not judging, and not lecturing but simply doing our best to forge a bond that can withhold challenges ahead… I choose that as my saving parenting grace. Parenting and grace rarely waltz together, but building trust need not call for graciousness but for honesty. If you carry your heart on your sleeve, your children will too. I choose to believe that.

It’s no wonder they call parenting the hardest job in the world. It calls for guts at times when you feel like an empty vessel, save for the butterflies that flutter within. Yet that is where it’s at. The vulnerable space where we have to do our best to listen, share our own fears and stories and encourage our children to grow by listening too, understanding that their worthiness will never come from an outside source. As we have to realize that our children’s choice of positive ways in life will not come from our policing their every move and raising them with fear, but from building trust.

There are many difficult issues parents face today, including drug use, internet-related perils and all that lurks in the space that parents and children most often don’t venture in together. The scary stuff. Yet listening to people telling their stories of getting lost and, if lucky, found, of needing to have a space to find themselves safely in, renews my belief that children today need us more than ever to provide that. If we don’t, someone else may offer but the illusion of shelter as a lure. That is scary.

Yet the chat about the tough stuff does not start when kids turn 14. It starts when they are two and snuggled against you reading their favourite story again and again. It goes on as they turn ten and you find time to snuggle still and read together, making time to talk about all the things you encounter in the books you discover together. There is a lot of life in there.

As it happens, the books they read by themselves later on, and the life stories they come upon, some as real and scary as can be, they will come and reach out to you and share them too. They are often not looking for solutions, but for confirmation that there is a place where they are welcome, where they are heard and listened to.

Parenting is never be about building walls and having surveillance of all kinds in place. It’s about making sure that the big wide world our children trek through will have an oasis here and there when they need it, and enough islands for them to swim to and rest on when the water they find themselves in tosses them every which way. Because it will. Life has it that way. No promises of perfect form, but plenty of opportunities to make the journey worthwhile.

It’s Time We Decriminalize Political Discourse

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On April 4, 2017

In Armchair Mayor Column, Climate change, Environment, Health, Kamloops, Learning, Social issues

Originally published as a column on CFJC Today and Armchair Mayor News on April 2, 2017. 

If I had a dollar for every time I was part of a conversation that had people purposefully steer away from subjects such as politics… well, you get the idea. It’d be a good chunk of money.

I know conversations that venture into politics can turn contentious, but that’s the nature of the beast. It doesn’t have to be all ugly though. Like with everything else, there is a learning curve that eventually can help us get to the place where we can engage in healthy dialogue that does not turn friends into enemies.

It seems we are inching the other way. Political conversations will get you a raised eyebrow in many circles. That, I dare say, is a threat to democracy itself.

We are soon to be immersed, as a province, in the thick of the provincial elections campaign. There will be news stories about parties and candidates, ugliness included, platforms to read and understand, and many will experience the campaign fatigue that comes from all that information pouring over our heads like incessant rain.  Come May 9, we will have to make our choices. And they’d better be good, is what most of us think to ourselves. But what’s good for the gander will not be good for the goose, or so we think.

The ‘good’ – in whatever sector we’re talking about – will not be the same for everyone, at least not in the details. The basics are the same for most of us: a good education system, medical needs taken care of no matter your social status or age, decent jobs and minimum wages that allow people to live rather than barely survive from month to month, the list goes on. It’s a long one. Then come the specifics. That’s where what’s good for some may not work for others and things like climate change-adapting economy proves too big a conversation to start. The specifics can turn healthy dialogue into ugly word exchange.

Scary as that is, if people aim to give it a decent makeover to the point of making political dialogue at any level possible, we’d all benefit from it.

That cannot happen though when so many of us are shying away from talking politics, considering it boorish and aggressive. It can be, but it doesn’t have to. Public discourse is what keeps democracy alive so it makes sense to have one brewing at all times. People staying away from political conversations at a time when they are most needed – prior to elections – has no positive outcomes whichever way you look at it.

If children and youths learn that talking politics is a dirty deed, they’ll be hard to convince to step up and vote when the time comes. That is a recurrent issue not just in British Columbia and Canada, but in many countries around the world.

When people start asking questions, exchanging information, debating, and engaging in public discourse that makes their concerns visible, that forces the political parties to pay attention and tailor their values to match those of the people they represent.

I get it. Political garb is far from the entertaining stuff that pours from social media platforms, sitcoms, reality shows, or whatever else people flock to these days. Getting past the gagging and learning what each party stands for or lack thereof in some cases, discerning through the promises that have the potential to become reality or fall flat on their faces, that can have some seriously uplifting down the road. Literally.

We usually read about developing countries dealing with corruption and people having to bear the effects of it, be it environmental disasters caused by loose industry standards, subhuman living conditions and treatment of vulnerable population groups, prosecution of people who dare challenge the system, to name but a few. The buffer zone between here and there allows us to touch on those topics or shake our heads disapprovingly while counting our blessings that come with living in a democracy.

As it turns out, those issues pop us everywhere, including Canada. One way to keep them at bay is having people engage politically – from the level of their living rooms to barber shops to public rallies and talks – so that knowledge can be shared, views can be challenged and wrongdoings turned into good decisions and deeds for the community.

It’s about time we decriminalize political discourse and instead focus on making it civil and constructive. There are tomes written on the art of conversation. An almost lost art, I’d say, that can be revived.

Public comments that follow online articles are often vitriolic in their nature and quickly turning to personal attacks. Many use fake names rather than their real ones, which adds to the volatile nature of the present political discourse, making it look ugly and boorish.

By decriminalizing political discourse, we can bring back something that often gets lost in today’s hurried life: a society where everyone has a voice is a better one. Though we call the hunter and gatherer societies primitive when we compare them with our present one, there was one thing that somehow the ‘primitive’ mindset included: everyone contributed to the well-being of the community, that ensured more than their well-being. It ensured their survival.

One facet of it nowadays could be the willingness to engage in educating ourselves politically, engaging with open minds in dialogue that will have us know more, challenge more, be humbled or bold when the situation calls for it, and most importantly, change what needs to be changed when the time comes to cast a vote. A privilege that cannot be ignored.

That our children will follow our example and be grateful for leading the way towards a better future, I have no doubt. That too is a privilege we cannot afford to ignore.

A Tribute To Life And Gratefulness, And To Making The Most Of Each Day

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On March 13, 2017

In Armchair Mayor Column, Kamloops, Learning, Life Stories

Originally published as a column in CFJC Kamloops Today and Armchair Mayor News on March, 13, 2017.

‘I wave bye bye
I pray God speed
I wish lovely weather
More luck than you need
You’ll only sail in circles
So there’s no need to cry
No, I’ll see you again one day
And then I waved bye bye…’ (Jesse Winchester, I Wave Bye Bye)

It was almost tangible, the first breath of spring. Almost. Yet Friday morning arrived dressed in a white coat draped over the thick one from the day before. Still winter then. Grumbling ensued. We’ve all had enough of shoveling, enough slipping, and wiping out. I miss warmth and sunny green days too, but over the years, through ups and downs, I’ve learned this one thing: make the most of the day you have. Snowy or not, it only comes once.

So I greeted the day the way I do every day: pup and I hit the trails. We’ve walked those trails at length, yet the feeling of being there is as crisp and fresh as the day itself. There’s a new song every day, the cacophony of life sounds jumping out of nowhere one second only to disappear the next. As if you’re witnessing the world breathing.

We made it up to the plateau. There was no sky; all was white, trees growing on the ground as they did in the sky. So much beauty it melts thoughts into one: gratefulness.

For our natural world that offers so much, every day, no matter how snowy. For the gift of seeing it all and have time stop for a bit, for that simple yet joyous feeling of walking through fresh snow and having yield under your feet, for the sweet memories of summers past, now present as graceful dry grasses balancing small clumps of snow on their heads. There’s no room to grumble here. There are no sidewalks to shovel, or patches of ice to slip on… Here you can be breathing winter in and letting it kiss your cheeks, and your steps are steady. No need to argue with it. For even a few minutes, you can be away from all that seems bothersome.

There were deer and coyote tracks and the pup’s nose was hard at work sniffing every swift air current that danced around its nose carrying bouquets of smells. Not to me. The scent world is mostly available to pups and their powerful noses. More to wonder at. More to be grateful for.

Somewhat reluctantly, we headed home, to warmth and boys waking up. Come midday, the sun pokes his face through clouds and sprinkles brightness all over. I take the boys and pup to the wonder place that stole my heart in early morning. ‘You got to see, it’s so beautiful it brings you to tears…’. Faces squint wrestling with sunshine, cheeks are red as we hike, and slippery downhills cause cascades of laughter as we try to avoid wipe-outs. Time together becomes yet another story unfolding on a bright winter day when we forgot to miss spring.

The evening brings the sad news of a dear friend’s passing. During his life, Richard Wagamese carried much grace and much pain, and most of all courage to balance both as he went on. He acknowledged his own lack of gracefulness at times, and that brought forth others’ courage to acknowledge theirs. He had an infectious laughter over the silliest of things that would come up in a conversation, and he had an immense love for music. He shared both heartfully.

He had gratefulness, but his demons cared for no such things. Life had not been kind to him and that left marks that showed. They showed in how he told not only his own story, but stories of old that would have you sit and listen. He drummed those stories and he talked of how they remind you of your mother’s heartbeat in the womb, if only you closed your eyes long enough to be able to listen and feel.

Gratefulness becomes the ribbon I now tie all those memories together.

There’s no room for grumbling in a day that reminds of so much. Reminds of life, of its increments of wonder we can choose to open our hearts to or let them fall on the ground only to step on them and say things should be better if we are to be grateful. It reminds of the short time we have to make it all count.

On a day when you see overwhelming beauty in snow-clad old pines, when children’s belly laughs and silly jokes add more precious pages to your life book, when you find yourself broken-hearted and in tears upon losing a friend… it all melts and becomes but ink in which you dip your pen in to keep on writing. Written words or not, relating our stories as we go, with gratefulness, sorrow, and a never-ending sense of wonder, that might just take away what we perceive as ugly bits.

Life is never about the dark clouds that crowd overhead every now and then, but about the light that stubbornly pushes its way through no matter what. Because it does.

Rest in peace, Richard, the stories will keep on rolling. Gratefulness abounds.

 ‘Oh, how many travelers get weary

Bearing both their burdens and their scars,

Don’t you think they’d love to start all over

And fly like eagles

Out among the stars…’ (Johnny Cash, Out Among The Stars)

Where To From Here (Or Why Changing Our Ways Can Spare Some Of The Trouble Ahead)

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On February 15, 2017

In Armchair Mayor Column, Climate change, Environment, Health, Homeschooling, Kamloops, Learning, Life Stories

Originally published as a column on CFJC Today and Armchair Mayor News on February 13, 2017. 

Again, a week of many happenings. Like many of you who heard the story of the Kamloops couple who stopped to offer their help at an accident scene on the Coquihalla and were hit by a car that lost control, I kept hoping that Anna and Matt Grandia, parents of two, will both survive and recover. Sadly, Anna Grandia passed due to her severe injuries. The pain her family goes through and for the rest of their lives, is impossible to put into words.

Yes, it is unfair and senseless; these things always are. Following such tragic stories, you’d expect most of us drivers would learn something and apply it. Speed can kill, speed and winter weather conditions even more so. Yet if you drive around Kamloops and outside the city limits too, you come across speedy, careless drivers whose recklessness not only puts their own lives in danger, but mine and yours too.

What are we learning from reading or watching the news? How far does the message reach? Too often, a simple shrug and the next piece of news moves our attention from stories such as this, heartbreaking as they are.

Albert Einstein once defined insanity as ‘doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’ In case of driving recklessly and the mild consequences the reckless or drunk driver faces, compared to the pain he or she causes to others, well, they are, for the most part, severely disproportionate.

This is not an argument for sacking and punishing people for the sake of doing so. It’s about protecting everyone and making sure rules that keep everyone safe are being reinforced. Because let’s face it, heartbreaking stories seen from a distance elicit a certain response. Yet being in that story changes the terms completely. No one should have to go through something that can be prevented.

Whether it is protecting all people in a community from the ill consequences of dangerous driving, or protecting the community (up to the level of province, country and beyond) from any kind of peril brought upon by someone’s actions, we all need to be able to see where changes need to be made and do all that we can to see them implemented.

Two events I attended at TRU this past week added to the argument. On Tuesday I attended a talk by Naomi Klein. True to her reputation, she said it as it is and in no way sparing the ugly bits: environmentally speaking, we are in a rough spot, our commitment to the Paris agreement not only lacking some touches here and there, but being the complete opposite of what it should be.

With a powerful wind of climate change denial blowing incessantly from the south of the border, and our provincial and federal governments’ commitment to extracting and using more fossil fuels instead of reshaping our ways to sustainable alternatives, things are really not looking good. No, such things are not immediately visible, nor are they served as reminders in our media. We want to keep a sunny optimistic attitude as a society, and we believe that somehow things work out regardless. Again, I am reminded of the definition of insanity by Einstein. Powerful stuff.

Better regulations for industrial polluters that would prevent more carbon from being added to a constantly heating atmosphere, plus better and unbreakable ways to reinforce the regulations, that would get things moving in a different direction.

A forum on air quality, also held at TRU and hosted by Dr. Michael Mehta, professor of geography and environmental science, who has been recently and diligently monitoring the air we breathe using sensors peppered all throughout Kamloops, brought yet another problem forward. The air in Kamloops is often farthest from clean.

From the pulp mill emissions to idling, to air traffic pollution and residential wood burning in town, our air, on a bad day (and they are not rare, unfortunately), is but a collection of small particles and gases that can and do cause serious health problems, in some of us more than in others.

There are solutions, the forum participants, which included the Green Party, NDP and Communist Party candidates for the May 2017 provincial elections, concluded. Things need to change if we are to see better air days.

Better regulations and better ways to reinforce them, not for the benefit of corporate profit but the well-being of the community, yes, it can be done. Our brains are wired to find solutions when a problem is identified. As it happens, denial often gets in the way.

Future bad happenings can be avoided. We now know that leaving things unchanged will have us find ourselves, yet again, to the fork in the road labeled ‘crisis’. Trouble is, which each time we return to one crisis or another, we may find that the time we have left to change things may be drawing short or that we may have had one too many freedoms normally granted by a democracy, taken away from us, which renders action and change far more difficult.

From rules pertaining civilians to those concerning the industry, locally and country-wide, if we care about our collective well-being and our children’s right to inherit not only a better world but also the courage to speak up and influence change when change is due and needed, we ought to change some of the rules we have in place.

As said many times by many wise people throughout history, change starts with bettering ourselves at a personal level by reviewing our values. That way we can be objective in seeing what needs to be change at the level of our community and beyond.

Of Sharks And Jars And The Stories That Lies in Between

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On February 15, 2017

In Armchair Mayor Column, Climate change, Environment, Homeschooling, Kamloops, Learning, Life Stories, Social issues

Originally published as a column on CFJC Today and Armchair Mayor News on February 6, 2017.

What do sharks and glass jars have in common? If you’re ready to answer ‘Umm, nothing’ I will ask you to indulge me the next few paragraphs to show you the connection.

When my youngest was four, we watched a documentary called ‘Sharkwater,’ which ended up being a game changer. He has always had a love for marine life, sharks in particular. Perhaps living on the coast and spending many long hours on beaches had something to do with it. We have since amassed a large collection of shark literature.

The documentary ‘Sharkwater’ pushed it farther. It made my little guy into a relentless shark defender. It sparked great conversations about the state of the oceans and it made all of us revisit the predigested shark dogma that we have been subscribing to for a long time. It inspired many homeschool projects, and it added arguments to the ongoing dialogue about climate change.

Rob Stewart, the director of ‘Sharkwater,’ was a Canadian biologist, ocean and shark lover, and a dedicated environmental activist. He boldly and unapologetically brought up the subject of climate change, ready to pursue it and wake people up to it no matter how big the risks of doing so. I am using the past tense here because sadly, he died last week while diving for new material for a ‘Sharkwater’ sequel.

His legacy (including another documentary called ‘Revolution’ which I highly encourage you to watch,) is one that we must have an ongoing conversation about; more so because as a country, we have yet a long way to go before we can build up to a reputation of climate protectors, which we should for obvious reasons.

Our environmental stewardship record is a tarnished one due to tar sands, pipelines, dams too big and too damaging, mines too unregulated and waters too unprotected. The list is not exhausted yet. Like everything else though, save death, this can be challenged and changed, and ultimately worked into a better reality.

That reality (caring about the world we pass on to our children,) ought to start in our own backyard, individual and city-wide too. Case in point: The city’s decision to have our recycling taken care of in a different way starting next year seems like a good one from afar. That is, until you find out that glass jars and bottles, and plastic bags, will not be part of the new recycling program. Right.

Put simply, if you have time, a car, and dedication, you will likely set aside the glass containers and all the soft plastic, and diligently take them to a recycling depot regularly. Gas will be burned, and time will be spent. The cheeky ones will say it’s time spent saving the planet, yet the exhaust gases to and from will fog up the good deed lenses.

The thing is, people pay city taxes and part of that includes removal of garbage and recyclables. Moreover, we choose leaders who oversee our continuous well-being and make it their mission to care for our health and our environment, among other things. Today’s reality includes climate change. If you don’t believe in that… well, then the overwhelming amounts of trash ought to raise an alarm bell.

We have too much stuff: we buy too much, we throw out too much and we recycle too little in the end. ‘Reuse, recycle, repurpose’ sounds good in an expo context as a logo of sorts, but if not applied fully in real life, then we are missing the point.

Leaving glass and soft plastic out of the collected recyclable items translates into extra garbage. Glass is, after all, 100 percent recyclable – endlessly that is – and the process renders a product that is just as clean and reliable as the product it was made of. Hence the obvious path: we should rely on glass more than we rely on plastic, and we should aim to recycle it to the last jar or bottle. That would reduce our garbage output, reduce the plastic dependency and overload too. Overall, we would get one step closer to making our world more sustainable.

I remember reading a book about the psychology of effective dialogue. Here’s something I remember from it. In face of a less than attractive offer, asking ‘Is this the best you can offer me?’ or ‘Is this the best your business can help us out with?’ usually elicits a positive response. People want to do a good job. We all strive to do better, and a reminder that there is room for better service is enough to ignite the spark.

Being environmentally aware and also business savvy do not have to be not mutually exclusive. That being said, I think it would be fair to prompt the city to reconsider their choice of how they deal with our recycling items by asking: Is this the best you can do for our community?

Rob Stewart likely asked himself the same question when, as a wildlife photographer, he came across shocking things happening in our world. He chose to do better: he became an environmental activist and produced inspiring documentaries. Though he left the world much too soon, he left a better one behind.

So there, sharks and jars do have something in common. They can fuel our determination to do better by our beautiful world, and by our children. Many things can. All we have to do is open our eyes, learn and act in better ways. While we still have the luxury to make choices, that is.

This Is Her, Our Pup

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On February 7, 2017

In Kamloops, Learning, Life Stories, Motherhood

It’s 8.03 so her eyes are on me. Ready? Not yet, cuddles first. Not sure when this became a morning ritual. Her head on my chest, eyes closed, so much is being said without a word coming out.

She knows my every move. Mornings are particularly important because when you have that kind of nose you want to see what the new day tells you about the night before.

She waits by the door, eyes fixated on me. Love and pressure go together sometimes. Finally, the door opens and we’re out. It’s -18 and sunny, though the sun is scarce on our block still. Heel, leave it, good job, repeat. Her little feet dance on the sidewalk this way and that, her nose sniffing tracks of cats and dogs and birds. So much has happened overnight. Again.

The park is white and frozen. We know where the sunny parts are so that’s where we’re heading. Interference. A dog that mostly doesn’t like other dogs, his owner says, shows up. She feels it’s not a friendly greeting but a ‘let me sniff you so I can bash you shortly’, so she declines. A short-lived pursuit follows; her tail is down, she is not comfortable like she is with other dogs. She stands her ground though. A brave pup she is.

We move along. She runs ahead. I stop to adjust my mittens and I notice her standing in the middle of the path waiting. We gaze at each other for a few seconds. ‘Should we keep going?’ I ask. She tilts her head. All right then.

We take a trail that will ultimately take us to the sunny parts. It’s cold. My face is stinging. She dashes up and down the hills chasing birds. Then she stops by the squirrel tree. Yes, there is one she knows of in the park. Other than the whooshing sounds made by my feet and hers, all is quiet.

We reach the sunny path. As soon as I feel the sun on my face I stop and let it kiss my cheeks. She does too. We exchange glances again. We speak sparkling together; a language that makes your day brighter.

All of a sudden she starts sniffing with a vengeance. Her nose plows through deep snow and then she holds it up and smells the air. There are tracks that she sniffs again and again. Then I understand. The snow becomes a translator of our pup’s behaviour. When we’re walking down the street or around here, certain tracks that the snow makes now visible, make her go crazy.

I follow a narrow set of tracks with my eyes all the way up the hill. I wouldn’t have been aware of that if she wasn’t here to make me see. Coyotes. We saw one the other day just out of the park. She looks like one, people say. One day we’ll meet face to face, coyotes and us. I know she’ll be brave, but I hope she’ll be wise too.

We’re in the shade again. It’s cold and I’m thinking of warmth and hot coffee, boys waking up, and morning snuggles with little boy. It’s a good sunny, day. It’s her first birthday.

She’s been a catalyst of laughter in our home, she’s reminded us all of the simple pleasure of being, quiet and peaceful, and let the world go by even for just a bit. She knows our names, we know her favourite games and hiding places and we’re constantly revising the house rules just so we can have more of her.

Happy birthday, pup, glad you’re ours and we’re yours. We love you so.

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