I Wish I Could Draw

I wish I could draw. I wish I could draw my morning walks on the Greenway with Little White Dog.

I would draw in pen-and-ink my view of LWD as we walk: the leash extending down to her at a 55 degree angle. Her little legs, one touching the path, one mid-air as she merrily skips down the way. She is so happy! Smells abound. From my vantage she is all butt and legs, and the tail is her banner, upright and slightly blowing in the breeze.

I wish I could watercolor. I would capture the macro view of the scenery alongside the path. At a distance it appears to be all grasses and brambles, branches and volunteer brush. The colors are already golden and bronze from the drought.

The micro view would be inset in little cutaways at the bottom of the page. It would show the breathtaking beauty of the goldenrod, the purple statice, the wild coreopsis.

I wish I could draw. In pencil I would sketch the strong and beautiful covered bridge that spans the creek. The timbers are already worn from our traffic over it: feet, bicycles, strollers, skateboards. At first, only a few years ago, the beams were yellow wood. Now their patina is a deep brown. They are so broad and thick that my feet thud on them like a voice with deep timber, like the voice of a large older man. The side rails and overhanging roof provide the perfect frame for a delicate spider web, 16" in diameter, woven in the thick of night and sparkling in the morning sun.

I wish I could draw. Again in pencil, I would capture the brown rabbit who bounds across the path, certain that our little dog means certain doom to him. His heart is pounding as he pauses, just 9 feet away from the path, in his little clearing. He is still as death and thinks surely I can't see him. Little White Dog is oblivious. All the wild has been bred out of her so that she only has tiny threads of instinct remaining in her, and even that confuses her. But Rabbit does not know this. He hides, still but for his twitching ears and nose.

I wish I could capture for you the sound on the Greenway. It is a hush so loud that it is a sound in itself. It is the sound of sun, and of things growing, and of the reticent pleasure of so many who have walked this way before me, and those who will come behind. I am alone and I feel alone and being alone is its own glory, yet it is a public commonway and in just a moment someone will be in the same spot feeling the same quiet ecstasy, or missing it entirely.

I wish I could draw. I would draw for you the wet and muddy white dog seated beside me in the car. Her back is white, silky, and well-groomed. Her usually-white legs, belly, tail, her snout and the ends of her ears are brown, curling from the moisture, and separating into tendrils. She looks at me plaintively when I tell her that one of us smells like a wet dog: is it me?

We arrive home, to the ordinariness of it all. To routine and familiarity. But no matter how many times we walk the Greenway, it is new all over again. Things have grown or died away, deer or rabbit startle and thrill us, the sun slants in just a slightly different way. The creek level is down, or up, and blooms have faded or started anew.

Sigh.

I wish I could draw.