The Cartographer's Walk

A working in two halves. First you walk, looking closely at everything along the way. Then you sit at home and walk the same route again with your eyes closed, seeing how much you kept and what you missed the first time.

The working

1. Take a short walk somewhere you can look around safely: a park, a quiet street, the garden.
2. As you go, look carefully at what’s around you, the colour of a door, the shape of a tree, a crack in the path. Every so often, glance away and recall what you just saw, then look again to check.
3. Keep building the map as you walk. There’s no need to hurry.
4. When you get home, sit somewhere comfortable and close your eyes.
5. Walk the whole route again in your mind, from your front door to the end and back. See each thing you noticed, in order.
6. Try looking at a few places from a different angle than you saw them, from above, or from the other side of the street.

Closing

Open your eyes and notice which stretches of the walk came back clearly and which were blank. Next time, look a little longer at the blank ones.