Dave HuggardIn the first wave of the pandemic last spring, Parisiens were only allowed to go 1km from home. [That’s 0.62 miles for Americans and Liberians, 2187.2 cubits for ancient Egyptians]. We didn’t have such strong rules in British Columbia, but it certainly wasn’t a time to wander widely. I wondered what my 1km-world would be like, and decided to check out its boundaries. I did have the passing thought that a 1km circle in North Vancouver might not be quite so interesting as 1km in Paris.
I went precisely 1km in the 8 compass directions: North, Northeast, East, etc. And found that it is a fairly wonderful mini-world I live in: cherries were blossoming, beeches bursting forth, backyard gardens abounding, and bungalows, um, bungalowing. The highlight was a flying-saucer-crossing sign [Why do we have so many flying-saucer-crossing signs around here?] with a little-green-man jacket hanging from it.
It’s a nice place, my patch of inner suburbia. I thought about doing a 100 day project of drawings within 1km of home. But here’s the problem – and this is totally, absolutely a First World Problem: it’s a little too nice. I wasn’t sure I could face 100 days of trim houses and pretty ornamental shrubs. But, hark!, what are these sounds I hear rising from just beyond my circumscribed kilometer? The distant roar of a freeway, the rumble of a locomotive, the clank of a ship’s anchor chain, perhaps even wind in the mountain treetops. Maybe I could go a tiny bit farther… [To be continued]
Geeky note 1: I figured out the eight location exactly using the ruler tool in Google Earth Pro, an incredible free, but large and somewhat tricky, program. Failing that, you could use Google Maps and a ruler. Or, when I was a kid, we used to have maps scribed on papyrus – if you found one of those, you could use a ruler and protractor. Or I’m guessing that there is an app for those phone-things that normal people use.
Geeky note 2: It’s a minimum of 7.36km of walking to get from home to each of the 8 points and back again. More if you follow social niceties like staying on roads and not walking straight through people’s backyards.