Questions for a Neighbourhood Walk

– What is the highest point? The lowest?

– What are the northernmost, easternmost, southernmost, westernmost points?  For compass keeners, add northeastern, southeastern…

– What is the steepest part?

– Can you see bedrock anywhere?  Native soils?

– Where are the stream crossings, ditches, other water flows?  Where have streams been lost or moved? Other flows – air, cars, pedestrians, birds, wildebeest?

– Where is erosion happening?

– Are there named natural features, like streams or hills?  Official names, or named by you?  Who or what are they named after?

– Where is it hot and dry?  Cool and moist?

– What is the most exposed spot, where is the biggest sky?  Where is it hottest on a sunny day, windiest on a windy day?

– What is the most protected spot?  Where is it shady on sunny days?  Where does it stay dry in the rain?

– Where do you have the most vegetation and least amount of built environment?  And the opposite – where do have the least contact with nature?

– What places do you want to linger in?  What places do you just want to get past as quickly as possible?

– Where can people sit in public?

– If you had to divide your walk into 3 or 4 distinct sections, where would they be?  What are the characteristics of each?  What marks the transition from one to the next? Are the transitions sharp or gradual?  What about 10 or 20 sections?

– What animals do you see?  Remember that animals come in furry, feathery, creepy-crawly, and weird versions.

– What animal sign do you see?  Tracks, digging, holes in trees, chewed things, even rat traps and raccoon-proof garbage cans are signs of animals being around.  Also that animal sign that you sometimes step in…

– Where is good habitat?  What are the happy places for dogs, squirrels, greater kudus, rats, sasquatches, songbirds, pigeons, ants?

– Trees are creatures too – where is the biggest one, the most beautiful, the most welcoming, the weirdest? 

– Where are plants reclaiming their lost world – cracks in the sidewalk, along the bottom of old walls, in a drainage ditch?

– What is the furthest thing you can see?  Okay, stars are a long way away – what is the furthest thing on earth you can see?

– Where is the best view?  Where is the deepest view – with distant, mid-ground and foreground?  Where is the view most like a Japanese print?  Where is the view most like an abstract painting?

– Where are “pocket” or “Zen” views – something beautiful you can only see looking a certain way from a certain spot?

– Where can you see a prominent feature – like a tall building, or a mountain – and where can’t you see it from?  What things block your view?

– What is the most colourful location?  The drabbest (or most subtle, if you prefer)?  Where do you find purple objects?  Or your favourite colour – chartreuse maybe?

– Where is the darkest spot at night, or at dusk or dawn?  The brightest?

– Where is the ugliest spot (or, if you prefer, the spot where you have the greatest opportunity to find previously unappreciated beauty)?

– Where is the loudest place?  The quietest?  How does that change from hour-to-hour, day-to-day, or season-to-season?

– Where is the most diverse or interesting soundscape?  The most natural one?

– What languages to you hear from passing people?

– Where do you hear music? 

– What things along the way are most pleasant to touch?  Hottest, coldest?

– Where does the ground feel smoothest, roughest, softest as you walk/roll/ride?

– What are the strongest smells, or the most distinct smells?  The most pleasant, or evocative?  The most awful (or, if you prefer, the smell where you have the greatest opportunity to find previously unappreciated beauty)?

– Where do you smell people cooking?  What are they having for dinner?  Where are unseen people burning the coffee, spray-painting, tarring a roof…?

– Where was the skunk last night, or the tom cat?

– Where do passing dogs find particularly fascinating smells?

– What can you taste along the way (and not suffer a long slow death because of it)?  What can you taste for free?  What is most pleasant tasting thing?

– Where is your happiest place?  Most inspiring or uplifting or joyful?  Serene or calming?  Saddest, or most melancholy?  What places make you angry or irate?  For all of these, why?  Is it the place, events that happened there, both, something intangible?

– What places are mysterious, or eerie, or spooky?

– What places are sacred, or holy, or at least special?  To you, to other people?

– Where do you feel a sense of danger?  What are the dangers, real or imagined?

– Where do you feel a sense of adventure, or that there is a bigger, maybe more exotic world out there?

– Where do you least want to be in an earthquake, tsunami, tornado, global pandemic, zombie apocalypse?

– Where are the most people?  The fewest?  The greatest diversity of people, however you see “diversity”?

– Where do kids play?  Where do they play that is not specifically designed as an Official Place for Kids to Play?

– Where do teenagers hang out?  Where do they go to do things they don’t want adults to know about?

– Where do canoodlers go?

– Where are the hip people, the cool people, the fashionable, and the in-crowd?  Where are the weird ones, the individuals doing their own thing?

– Where are the homeless people, or people on the edges of society?

– Where do old people hang out? 

– Where are different groups of people most common – school kids, people with strollers, people speaking Slavic languages, people with shiny shoes, people with no shoes, people with non-traditional hair colours, smiling people, frowning people…

– Where do people talk to strangers?  What do they say?

– Where do people do “normal” things that would seem remarkable to someone from a different society?  What are distinctly local things that people do?

– Where do you notice the electrical power grid?  Where does it look most complicated / spectacularly jerry-rigged?

– What are the communications systems – those other wires up there?  Is there any evidence what they are for non-initiates, like company logos?  Are there cell towers – maybe disguised?  Special antennas lurking on poles or buildings?  Old satellite dishes?  Raised platforms with people doing semaphore?

– What are the manhole covers and other esoteric metal plates on the street for?  Do they say on them?  Do any of them have artistic designs?

– Where does the rain go?

– What kinds of markings are on the roads or trails?  Which ones are organizing traffic and people, and which ones are revealing hidden secrets (or at least sewer pipes and gas lines)?

– What is out there to prevent or fight fires?  To respond to other emergencies?

– Where are the most “authority” signs?  What are you being told to do or not do by signs?  What is the weirdest sign?  What signs express a particular local peculiarity (“Do not climb the cactuses”, “Tsunami escape route”…)? 

– Where are the most commercial signs?  Where can you see the most corporate logos from one spot?  Are there hand-painted signs?  What’s the grooviest font or image?

– What do personal notices posted on poles and walls want to tell you or ask you about?

– What places are dedicated to other systems in society – education, child care, medical care, police, justice, recreation, service groups, religions?

– What places are well-designed for pedestrians?  Poorly designed? Which did designers create from scratch and which evolved naturally?

– What structures have been put in to control cars, bikes, skateboarders, pedestrians, large carnivores, viruses, zombies?

– What is the tallest building, the oldest, the most distinct, the cutest, the most decrepit, the most hideous?  Which buildings welcome people, and which scorn them?

– Where is public art?  Is there unintentional public art?

– What historical artefacts are there?  Monuments, plaques? 

– What personal memorials are there?  What to they tell you about the person?  Are you older than they ever were?  What do people coming to the memorial see and think?

– Are there Thomassons – architectural vestiges of by-gone days that are now useless, but are still maintained?

– What are the nicest parks or gardens, public or private?  Where is the best vacant lot, abandoned area, industrial wasteland?

– What are the best places for parkour, real or fantasized?

– Where are lost or threatened heritage features, whatever “heritage” might be locally?

– What is the most ordinary place?  Where do your thoughts drift off and you forget to pay attention?  What is one thing worth noticing in that area?

– Where are the “spaces between” – forgotten gaps between places, transitions that are neither one thing nor another?

– Where are physical memes – things that one person did that their neighbours liked and copied?

– Where are your favourite distinctive decorations – lawn gnomes, ornate railings, concrete lions and pineapples, stylish sewer grates, shoes over telephone wires, rustic log bridges, repurposed old skis or bikes…

– What are the quirky things?  Public features, or private expressions of quirkitude? 

– Where are the entrances to the underground/underworld/other worlds? – Where are you most likely to find ghosts? Faeries, goblins, water-sprites? Giant ground-sloths?  Alien landing spots?