walking distance

Today I walked for 3-hours in East Vancouver, in the Southside towards Burnaby (a neighboring city, also part of Metro Vancouver). Along the way, I passed by Killarney Park, a corne of which was landscaped with tall native grasses. In the grass was a large inscribed rock with the title “Rhodes Trunk”:

The text says:

“The City of Vancouver is working to reduce the amount of rain water that flows into the sewers during storms. Storm water from the street is channeled into the planted areas behind this stone and those next to the curb on 45th avenue, where it will gradually be absorbed into the ground. Only when the storm is too severe and the ground can no longer absorb it will the excess drain into the sewer. This helps reduce and slow the flow of water that would otherwise have quickly passed through the sewers into adjacent creeks. Preventing the rush of water and sediment from entering the streams helps to support fish habitat by more closely mimicking natural processes. This more naturalized drainage also helps to reduce stream maintenance costs.

Killarney Park is located in the previously marshy headwater of Rhodes Trunk that once flowed to the Fraser River via Still Creek and the Brunette River. The water still travels a similar path through underground pipes installed in the 1930s. The water flows through these pipes until it empties into the open section of Still Creek just north of the 29th Avenue Sky Train Station.

If you look closely there are still clues to the areas marshy past.”

Still Creek is one of the two remaining visible streams in Metro Vancouver, flowing through heavily populated areas of Vancouver and Burnaby to end in the Fraser River. According to the Vancouver Planning Department’s Still Creek Enhancement Plan, the city is “working to rehabilitate and enhance those sections of Still Creek that remain open or that have the potential to be brought to surface, or “daylighted”” in an effort to reconnect people with the natural beauty of the creek, to reduce flooding, and to improve long-standing environmental issues in the Still Creek Watershed.

A while back, I read an article in the NewYorker about a librarian at Columbia, Caleb Smith, who decided to systematically walk every street in New York. How obsessive, I thought, yet strangely compelling. A bit more investigating revealed a small but growing subculture of folks who walk every street in their home town. There’s Jen who is Walking Berkelely, and Alan (age 93!) who walked every street in 244 of the suburbs of Sydney, Australia, and Suzanne, who is walking every mile of paved road in Catron County, New Mexico, and many others no doubt who are quietly doing the same thing offline.

I love walking in my home town of Vancouver, BC, so I decided to try this out for myself. Tomorrow, I’ll take my first documented ramble. We’ll see how this goes.

I’ve been an urban wanderer for a number of years. Walking or cycling are my main modes of travel. Any form of close to the ground transportation intrigues me; I’ve even been considering commuting the 20km to work on a long board (skateboard). Over the past few years, I’ve been doing a lot of long urban treks in my home town of Vancouver, BC. Walking is great for thinking, and along the way my thoughts have turned to related issues like urban space, outside art, gardens, geography, roads and car transportation (along with the messes they create), and neighborhoods.

This blog is a place to explore walking in all its forms. Some folks walk madly for exercise, focused on calories and weight loss, others walk calmly for spiritual reasons, still others for transportation. There are people who are extreme walkers - walking all the streets of a city or walking long walks over days and kilometres. Others have turned walking into art or projects.

One of my favorite reasons to walk is purposeless walking or walking as exploration as described in John Stilgoe’s book “Outside Lies Magic : Regaining History and Magic in Everyday Life“:

Get out now. Not just outside, but beyond the trap of the programmed electronic age so gently closing around so many people at the end of our century. Go outside, move deliberately, then relax, slow down, look around. Do not jog. Do not run. Forget about blood pressure and arthritis, cardiovascular rejuvenation and weight reduction. Instead pay attention to everything that abuts the rural road, the city street, the suburban boulevard. Walk. Stroll. Saunter. Ride a bike and coast along a lot. Explore.

That’s the philosophy I plan to take with this blog. Leave the path open, take the route that opens up, trust to serendipity, relax, and explore.