CHARLOTTE GRAY
New Edinburgh, Jan. 6, 2017.
“Every morning I walk our dogs, Jake and Herbie, in Stanley Park. For me it’s the perfect buffer between my domestic life of showering, breakfasting and seeing what needs to be done in the house, and my writing life, which is like a parallel existence where I start staring at my screen and thinking of exactly the way to express what I’m trying to put into each of my books.
“The walk in Stanley Park is a daily joy. It’s almost like a narcotic, because I see so much. This morning I was noticing how the river is completely covered in snow now. One year we were able to skate on it, and that was beautiful. One day in winter it’ll be the tracery of branches covered in ice and a few chickadees bravely carrying on as though it wasn’t minus 20 degrees, and then in summer it’s going to be an extraordinary explosion of greenery, particularly the willow
trees, which are so pretty.
“I’m very anti-social while I’m doing this. Lots of people walk their dogs in Stanley Park, and many of them stand and talk and their dogs run around, but I’m so busy refocusing my mind that I’m sort of like a guided missile as I follow the path around, just sort of vaguely waving at neighbours. And I’ve actually transmitted my anti-social behaviour to my dogs, who know that they are not allowed to go roaring off after the other dogs their size.
“But I’m also enjoying the changing seasons — for example, there’s a point when the ice is melting, and the city comes down and brings little boats and an extraordinary number of city employees to blast keys in the ice so we don’t have a flood. So that’s always an excitement, and it’s always that sense then that spring is nearly here. And hearing the rumble of the blasting that they do, and enjoying that sense of momentum, the seasons changing, life goes on.
“So I’m partly focusing on what I’m going to write that day, and I’m partly seeing that, ‘Wow, there are far more red-wing blackbirds suddenly,’ another sign that spring is coming. Or in the fall when I realize, ‘Oh, that tree is tinged with orange, and that one is almost completely red.’ That sense of time and seasons being inexorable. It’s probably the more important, and certainly the most intoxicating, part of my day.”