Walking Olive

the same route before & during sunrise

Since the end of July, my wife and I have been sticking to a training schedule that a trainer put together for our crazy/energetic dog, Olive. This has proved to be the best way for us to double down on the board-and-train that we booked for her during our wedding week.

Olive has been so receptive and has amazed us with her intelligence even more!

For a few weeks in August, I started each morning by taking Olive on a particular route for her structured walk. For some reason I decided early on to go in the opposite direction that we’ve gone on in our past walks (before this training period) and as a result, I was able to dissect and take notes on a particular neighborhood that I hadn’t explored in depth much before.

In a way, I retrained myself in the world of patience and receptiveness; paying attention to the small details and stopping to thoroughly scan my surroundings when Olive was sniffing a particular spot in this “new” neighborhood.

During the work week, our walk took place between 5:30 and 6:25 AM, before the sunrise. The entire walk was significantly dark and that limitation of light forced me to take mental photos and keep track of certain scenes to revisit on the weekends. That’s because on the weekends, we walked the route between 7:00 and 8:30 AM when the sun was creeping through the canopies..slowly showering the neighborhood with a glow.

This 2-step creative process and 1.5 mile route proved to be a limiting yet helpful set of rules to work under. Here are the photographs in the order in which we would come across them on this morning route:

self-assignment: August 2023

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