How to Stop Running and Actually See What Is in Front of You

Fall is the easiest season to practice this. The colour does the advertising. You still have to stop.

I took the crow on a walk. Dead branches, blue sky, a spruce still green on the right, and one black bird sitting the limb like it had the afternoon booked. It was not doing anything useful. It was watching. That is the whole picture.

The other shot is older, near Okotoks. Aspen gone yellow, one white trunk standing out in front of the stand, grass already tired, sky flat and grey. Nothing rare. Just a stand of trees on a day when I was not in a hurry.

How to do the walk

1. Leave the house without a destination that has a closing time. A loop near home is enough. River path, coulee edge, the block with the old trees.
2. Put the phone in a pocket for the first ten minutes. If you open it at the trail-head, you will spend the walk looking for a post instead of a bird.
3. Walk slower than your normal pace. Not a stroll for show. Just slow enough that a branch moves and you notice.
4. Stop when something holds. The crow did. So did the white trunk against the yellow. You do not need a rare animal. A bird that stays put is enough.
5. Look at the edges, not only the subject. Bare limbs against sky. Green spruce next to dead wood. Yellow leaves with the grass already brown underneath. The picture is usually in the contrast.
6. Then take the photo, if you still want it. One or two. Not a burst. The crow will leave if you fuss.
7. Put the phone away again and finish the loop looking.

What you are Practising

Most days the walk is transport. Parking lot to errand, errand to car. Fall gives you a reason to break that. The leaves will not stay. The crow might not be on that limb tomorrow. Neither of those facts requires a scenic viewpoint or a full afternoon.

You are not trying to collect views. You are trying to arrive in the one you are already standing in.

Near Okotoks that can be a coulee, a shelterbelt, a path along the Sheep River, or the trees at the edge of a field. Go while the yellow is still on the aspen. Mornings are quieter. Late afternoon light sits longer on the trunks.

If you only have twenty minutes, take twenty minutes. Stop once. Look at whatever is actually there — a bird, a white trunk, the way the dead branches cut the sky.

That is the how-to. The rest is just walking.