The connection between thought and place was first described as psychogeography in the 1950s, but it would be impossible to say when the relationship between the two actually began. Movement is a way of knowing. As you travel through time, and move along your daily route, you know, with certainty, how the ground feels. You know what the weather is like.
Your final week of prompts is rooted in the techniques, experiences, and experiments posed by urban explorers. They challenge us to explore our environment differently and to use our feelings -- not maps or technology -- as a guide. There's no wrong way to engage in these prompts; however, the more you subvert them, the more you may discover about yourself and the place you're in.
Your prompts for this week
Monday
Today, follow your route backwards. If you normally have an "out and back" route, stop every 100 or so paces and look, intentionally, in a different direction. How does your feeling about the landscape change when you see it suddenly from a different perspective?
Tuesday
Create a map of your route. Don't worry about scale, simply draw a line in your notebook to represent where you'll go or where you've been. Add annotations for things that are noteworthy. Use your map to navigate your route. Notice what you've captured accurately, and what you've missed.
Wednesday
How does the place you're walking affect your thoughts, feelings, and actions? (I had a very long fight with my spell check about whether this should be affect or effect. After reading their respective definitions -- multiple times -- I'm still not convinced I'm wrong.)
Thursday
Create a new map of your route, but use your emotions as the scale. Perhaps there's a favourite tree that you turn into a forest, or a particularly dull stretch that you shrink into a marble. Don't worry about how your map looks. The outcome is less important than the simple observation of how a place makes you feel. A simpler version would simply be to colour the map according to your mood for today. Perhaps you started grey and finished blue, with a splash of orange next to your favourite tree.
Friday
I'm hopeless at remembering the look of a place simply by its looks. I need stories. And, once I have a story for a place, I can remember it with exquisite detail (although sometimes the details aren't entirely correct). On your walk today, think ahead and behind. How do you remember a place once you are no longer there?
Saturday
You have the support of the ground as you walk. What's beneath the ground? What else do you have the support of? How does it feel to know, no matter what, you have the support of the ground beneath you?
Sunday
Today is the shortest day. It gets brighter from here.
When you have the opportunity, stray from your normal route. Perhaps a left-hand turn before you normally would, or a path you've not gone down before. Be safe, but stray a little.
Observations for the week
Being outside helps my mood, even if it's raining. Sometimes I get utterly wet through, but if the walk is short it can still be fun. A few years ago, I took an online course from Open University on psychogeography. Many of the prompts are inspired from the reading I did for that course.
The second time around
Since we began, 100 days ago, our little village of Princetown in England has lost more than an hour of daylight, and then gained it all back again. The dawn sky is lit before I finish my breakfast. Soon, the wheatears will return to the moor to mingle with the stone chats and confuse me once again. Budburst for hawthorn is imminent, and rowan will follow several weeks later. The world wakes up again.
Things you might like to read
Wanderlust: A history of walking by Rebecca Solnit. I first read this book as an audiobook. I was running (and travelling) a lot in those days. I ran the streets of Yeovil, and rode buses in Geneva, and I listened to Rebecca.
I'm a sucker for a book about psychogeography. Firstly because it's such a great word, and secondly, because I love reading about how place can evoke specific emotions. We all inherently know that it does, but rarely do we consider it a valid form of study. Tender Maps: Travels in Search of the Emotions of Place by Alice Maddicott does just that. She recounts travelling through different cities and how the places affected her. I've visited a few of the same, and it was fun to compare our experiences whilst I reminisced about my own.