Six months

Today marks six months of daily walks and keeping a photo journal. I can hardly believe I didn't miss a single day in 183. What an adventure it has been!

I picked this as a daily "ecstatic task" close to the root of my creative drive. It drew me closer to nature, and indulged my fascination with colour, texture and light.

I reached my six-month goal, but don't plan to continue indefinitely. The daily task must be easy to do. As opportunities for walking become darker and colder, I have stopped looking forward to them. These past two weeks, it was only the call of six months that kept me going. My relationship with winter is a fragile truce. I do not love it; I respect it.

This calls for a new daily activity more suitable to my seasonal temperament. It might or might not have a public expression, although I like how the photo journal kept me accountable—to no one in particular, but to an audience.

The journal began in late April with vivid spring images. I had hoped to end with glimpses of winter. In fact it snowed today—quite hard in Fergus this afternoon, where I could see through the shop windows, squalls whiting out the distant woods. But by the time I finished work, drove home and went for my walk, the sun had come out.

And the thing that struck me most was my own garden, which was new this year but so eagerly established itself, still soldiering bravely on, shabbily radiant at the end of October. This weary, white Echinacea sun among exotic blue Fellicia daisy stars reminded me of the Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetic. So here, at the end of a six-month-long journey (an 183,000-word novel if a picture is worth what they say), I offer from my doorstep this visual haiku, a backward glance at summer.