I consider walking to be a form of listening. I spent winter 2022 as Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Arts and Humanities at the University of Alberta, and during that time I embarked on a daily walking practice as one way of listening in this place. My “Winter Walking” score was as follows:
Go for a walk every day.
Listen to what the
snow, ice,
sun, wind,
trees, birds,
structures, and beings
tell your body about this place.
Keep listening.
I made one accordion book to represent each day of walking. “One Hundred Days of Walking” is an accumulation of 100 books, strung together, hung in space above a vinyl graphic, a visual referent of the North Saskatchewan River along whose banks I so often walked, listening with my multispecies companions.
Credits
"One Hundred Days of Walking" was created during a residency funded by Fulbright Canada and the US Fulbright Commission, at the University of Alberta. The photos are from the first exhibition of this work, at the Mulvane Art Museum, Washburn University, KS/US.