“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.”
Sherlock Holmes
As much as I enjoy reading about other people’s adventures to far-off lands (like Kate Harris’ bike adventure along the Silk Road) wandering around ordinary places is simply much more accessible.
On Looking—a walker’s guide to the art of observation by Alexandra Horowitz is exactly that kind of walking guide. It’s a series of essays—each one is a walk with the goal to notice the world in a different way. This is how she describes why we stop noticing the things around us:
“One perceptual constraint that I knowingly labour under is the constraint that we all create for ourselves: we summarize and generalize, stop looking at particulars and start taking in scenes at a glance—all in an effort to not be overwhelmed visually when we just need to make it through the day.”
Page 76 from On Looking
As the author embarks on her series of walks in her urban environment, she starts viewing her surroundings in more nuanced ways. The first walk is on her own and she describes the things she noticed along the way. In the next one, she did the same walk with her toddler. The little boy’s focus was completely different and sometimes deeper and more questioning.
In the rest of the essays, the author walks with various experts—like a geologist who talked about the stone used in the surrounding buildings and a typographer who pointed out the shear volume of text in an urban environment. But the essays are more than just walks, there are tidbits from research and tangential observations. The author’s writing is friendly, yet sophisticated and full of great ideas—the kind of writing I aspire to.
“We see, but we do not see. We use our eyes, but our gaze is glancing, frivolously considering its object. We see the signs, but not their meanings. We are not blinded, but we have blinders.” (Pg 8)
Page 8 from On Looking
Some time ago, I did a winter-time experiment. Where I live tends to be very grey in winter and everyday I did a walk that looped through a leaf-less forest. One day, I decided to look for objects that were blue—a colour not common in nature (blue is a fascinating colour, some languages don’t even have a word for it). No surprise, I started noticing more blue things. From the occasional blue sky, to blue markings on trash left on the trail, to the dark blue plumage of a Steller’s Jay, to flecks of steel blue in the gravel on the path. As though, just by deciding, I’d removed my blinders. More blue poured into my world.
Like my experiment in noticing blue, the author sees more in the world around her with each walk she takes. Just by refocusing how she looks, smells, listens, touches (there wasn’t an essay where she tasted things) new worlds opened up.
Now I think it’s time to head out for a walk.