Walking

My personal "landscape" project still not really begun. Inspired by reading about Hamish Fulton's walking through countryside (also John Grande's interview of him in Art Nature Dialogues) I thought of starting an individual suburban walking project. Hamish of course interested not at all in urban landscapes.

Kathleen Vaughan wrote a PhD dissertation about the walks she made in her neighbourhood with her dog. I have no dog (family allergies) and still after 22 years here do not consider this suburban enclave a "neighbourhood" in any meaningful sense, but still think a geographical scoping of this middleclass comfort zone could provide me with some grounded feeling of place. A "psychogeography" (as in e.g. Debord) as it were.

Yesterday I lit on Richard Long's site by typing in "walking as an art form", also noting one statement he makes:

"Walking itself has a cultural history, from Pilgrims to the wandering Japanese poets, the English Romantics and contemporary lon-distance walkers."

My first "textwork" would be an account of an unremarkable walk-to-get-to-places from the suburbs downtown to the Canadian Opera Company for a lecture plus DVD showing of Dialogue of the Carmelites (Strasbourg production -- thinking now if at as a tragic final walk for the nuns. . . ), then along Front St. to St. Lawrence Market, streetcar and subway hop to meet daughter for tea then via Cumberland to Bay St. subway Lost and Found in hunt for gloves lost earlier in transit, thence homeward. Noting the varieties of walking involved:

trudging: through deep drifts of new snow on yet-to-be-cleared sidewalks
hiking: up the long hill to the subway station
leaping: over puddles of slush at street corners
speed-walking: to get to the COC on time given subway delays
purposeful walking: to get to St. Lawrence Market to buy bread en route to Union Station
fatigued shuffling, including careful walking: up sloppy slippery steps from Museum stop to Wymilwood
strolling: from Bayview no. 22 bus northbound along the street of snow packed down by cars, finally reaching home towards twilight

If I were to compose a haiku for each type of walking, the experience might be artistically elevated into a haibun.

Most of the day however was devoted to time-motion walking on a map preordained by city streets and transit routes. On the beaten path, except where breaking trail through snow, and only one other set of bootprints. Should have recorded that with a camera.

On my list of books to read: Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust; Robyn Davidson's Tracks; and Thoreau on walking.

Meanwhile, in the ordinary course of the day, there is still the ordinary act of walking.