Walking, perhaps once consigned as an inexpensive and accessible form of transport – getting me to where I need to be with my feet – is now responsible for keeping me here, connecting me to this very place, reminding me the world still exists through those very same feet. It situates my body, and therefore my mind, within what is immediate and actual. Walking “is a spatial acting-out of the place” (de Certeau). Walking gives space and place, form and purpose. Without walking it, this place might very well not exist.
Taking place in and through space and the marking out of space, walking is the action, reaction to, creation and the description of space. The paths we take, or avoid, and the reasons for those decisions, describe and inscribe that space. Areas which can be traversed are crossed. Obstacles are negotiated. Whether it’s planned disciplined routes or carved-out desire lines, the paths taken offer a unique experience of place. Fellow walkers carry with them and create their own embodiment of that very same/different place.
“Their intertwined paths give their shape to spaces. They weave places together.”
- Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life.