I have been delaying this blog post. It signals an end. A reflective punctuation mark on a year-long walk. Moments, pulled from a total experience made significant in their reflection. I have explored fifty-three ways to wander, but haven’t exhausted them yet.

Ways to Reflect by Blake Morris

A year made meaningful by the generosity of others: their ideas, footsteps and digital imprints. Walking together and apart. Walks with old friends. New friends created through walking.  A constant exchange through a variety of media–podcasts and zines, video footage and WhatsApp messages, postcards and paintings–organised around the central medium of walking.

Ways to Reflect by James Layton

Ways to Reflect by Debbie Kent

Ways to Reflect by Lian Bell

And now what? A movement from city to town. A new territory to explore, both topographical and sociological (and edible, as Waverly might point out). And hopefully more opportunities to walk together, in Northampton, London, or at a distance from anywhere in the world. Walkers of the world unite!

Ways to Reflect (on climate change) by Blake Morris

Claire Hind

Lian Bell
Debbie Kent
James Layton
Brett Van Aalsburg

 

Mark Hunter

On New Year’s Eve I walked the Thames.

I had no choice, I had run out of time.

There are no tidal waters in Northampton.

Three hours before low tide…

(Low Tide)

Three hours before high tide.

This last year could easily have been a slog. A long haul of walking lonely as a cloud. Instead it was a ‘simultaneity of stories-so-far’. A year of walking with friends and family, strangers, colleagues, artists and collaborators. Old-friends at a distance when we could not walk together; people I’ve never met, but who feel like friends; new friends in London, whose presence in my life has made this foreign island feel like home; artists, by following their wander scores, even if they don’t know it. So to all of you who have walked with me, written the scores I’ve followed, edited, published or distributed the book that made it all possible, thank you. I walk in your footsteps as we build a network of walkers together.

Christopher Mollon

‘I was looking for a job and then I found a job/And heaven knows I’m miserable now.’

‘Two lovers entwined pass me by/And heaven knows I’m miserable now’

‘I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour/But heaven knows I’m miserable now’

Wrights & Sites

Walk 51. A Certain History by Linda Rae Dornan. Counting the periphery of The Racecourse for my first walk in #Northampton. 8:32 – 8:35am: 13 gardens, 5 shrubs, 2 visible ornaments. 8:35am: approx. 238 trees 0 visible insects. 8:56am: a pavement that was 4X298. 9:13am: Left foot by leaves, right foot by twigs. 9:24am: passed by a 5’5” female and a 3’2” female. The taller female smiled and said hello. The shorter female frowned. 9:29am: 5’9” male. No hello but a look and a glare. #newtown #newflat #northampton #walkingart #awanderisnotaslog #racecourse #park #counting #brouwnsteps #trees #sport

A post shared by Blake Morris (@blakewalks) on Dec 22, 2018 at 2:02am PST

 

Linda Rae Dornan

Unpacking in the surprising prairie wind and staying for a hundred years. Enthralled by phasmagoria and the detritus of history. The years slowly crumble through lack of maintenance. A colonial past that still haunts; its uses change and decline. Every moment captured for Insta posterity. Is the market management meeting still in progress? Corporate beancounters the only breaks in the façade.*

Photo: Sandra Cowan (Alberta, Canada)

Photo: Blake Morris (Walthamstow, London)

Photo: Morag Rose (Manchester, United Kingdom)

Photo: Patrick S. Ford (Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam)

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* threaded together from texts written by Sandra Cowan, Patrick S. Ford and Morag Rose.

Charlie Fox

Sandra Cowan
Patrick S. Ford
The Loiterer’s Resistance Movement

Cheap yellow balls. Or were they lime green? Dropping, bouncing, stopping. Rolling across varied surfaces in multiple cities. Helpful people unwittingly disrupting artistic documentation, but making up for it through increasingly meaningful encounters. For some the tennis ball facilitated a strange availability. For others, a continued exploration of a studied area. For me, a continued goodbye… bouncing a ball on paths that would soon be in my past. 

Image: Phil Smith and Clare Bryden, Exeter

Image: Patrick S. Ford, Ho Chi Minh City

Image: Blake Morris, London

Tobias Grice

Clare Bryden
Patrick Ford
Phil Smith

 

Steve Fossey

Portland, Oregon (Photo: Jen Swanson)

Walthamstow, London (GIF: Blake Morris)

Kerstin Kussmaul

Jen Swanson

(Photo by Andrew Howe; Text by Andrew Howe and Blake Morris)

(Photo by Blake Morris; Text by Andrew Howe and Blake Morris)

Kris Darby

Andrew Howe