Place Odyssey and the Art of Walking

SPACE

Much of our lives are spent careening through space. Under seatbelts, above the clouds - crossing continents in hours. Down random highways, spanning miles in seconds through landscapes of logos and déjà vu. Down the aisles of grocery stores stocked with seemingly infinite choices yet very few clues as to where you really are. This is space – a vast realm of illusory disconnectedness.

PLACE

Places are centers of unique value and meaning that our lives exist in in various ways. Your hometown may be a distinctive place that is dear to you. You too may have heard sad stories of places near and dear to the storyteller that have been altered in ways that make them unrecognizable. Places like Yosemite National Park evoke a strong "sense of place" for people from around the world, including many who have never been there. Sense of place is often cultivated through art, literature, experience and even sometimes partly through legislation (such as designating an area a historic district or a national park).

Place Odyssey and the Art of Walking is about developing our sense of place.

It is about exploring unique places in a conscious and humble way while discovering details and connections that define the quality of our lives on earth. It is also a practice in perception...sometimes of reconceiving the very spaces that define our lives. Why is it that we regard some places as sacred and special and take others for granted?

This is a full-body/mind/spirit/soul effort. The slow pace of walking is ideal for it. Walking also allows us to make spontaneous stops to engage in the lives of landscape and people. Stories emerge through the act of walking and stories are critical elements of a sense of place.

An object or place achieves concrete reality when our experience of it is total,

that is, through all the senses as well as with the active and reflective mind.

Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience

I love Brittany, I find the wild and the primitive here. When my clogs resonate on this

granite soil, I hear the muted, dull and powerful sound I look for in painting. Gaugin

The Land belongs to the future…we come and go, but the land

is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the

people who own it – for a little while. Willa Cather, O Pioneers!

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Place Odyssey and the Art of Walking

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