Chicago Walking the Outer Drive

Walking in Chicago is more beautiful than expected. The city is crazy with recycling bins, water saving barrels & prairie gardens. The Great Plains prairie foliage (forest) is everywhere, even in the more formal gardens around Grant Park. The city is going back to seed.
Spied red-winged blackbird, monarch butterflies of course of course! in bushes and grassy spread. And a cardinal in native trees. The sound is cicade-ified and crackly.
I walk and am happy here. Feel the natural landscape popping up through it all. Feel my human animal self popping up through it all.
Coming home to visit with my feet walking was good idea.

Lily

Packing

Here is my current packing pile. More electronics than clothing: 2 pairs socks, 2 pairs shorts, 1 pair pants, 3 shirts, undies, swimsuit, kerchief, still camera & 3 lens, video camera, phone, cables to charge electronics, ipad, chris' ipad camera connector ( bless your heart!), walking stick, 3 water containers, hats to decorate with found objects, tent, toe shoes for evenings in camp, dope kit, gorilla pod, 1 skirt, rope, book (brides of Eden) first aid kit, pack, sleeping bag and pad, electric tape & scissors, 2 pair socks. Still need to pack food for first 2 days. We'll restock food in Monmouth on Monday evening.

Location:NW Grant Ave,Corvallis,United States

My sweetie got me an ipad for the journey. It is a whole new experience to type on these funny keyboards. I once typed two fingered. Now I am typing with two thumbs.

Tonight I will walk to da Vinci days and listen to music.

This experiment In urban walking is interesting. I am finding I miss the forest. But I don't want to use my car anymore than I have to. So just keep stepping out my front door. I look for new routes. Try to find urban paths. Look into gardens. I'm nosy. It keeps me interested.

I wonder about our longer walk. In urban settings basic needs are in some ways more difficult. I wonder where we will find to fill our water bottles or if we will need to carry a days worth of water with us. I wonder if we will find private places to eat our lunch or use the loo. I wonder how strangers will react to two middle aged women walking with backpacks through their towns.

Lily is right, you cannot plan an adventure. Not really. But I am trying to lay down as many contigency plans as possible. I am trying to be prepared. I don't want to have to walk too far out of our way to pick up something we forgot to bring. I want to be safe.

Lisa

Location:NW Grant Ave,Corvallis,United States

Almost everyone walks here

Here I am at the Portland airport.   PDX.  On my way, flyingwise, to Chicago.

Every place I look, people are on their feet walking. 
There are moving-sidewalks, elevators, and escalators, but each one of these comes to an End.  And people walk.

Out the windows are big airplanes and smaller airplanes.  People in airline uniforms walking around
underneath them.  Everywhere, people walking.

There are 3 trees I can see from here at my gate, E2.  They grow under open glass skylights and huge windows. Each one growing in it's own square wooden planter, a shiny silver rim along the top.

So this is not the wilderness of dense tree, brush, shrub and pine needles. Here we are somewhere between the city and the landscape.   We all walk under the awning of 3 trees someone planted for us.

Thank you tree planter whoever you are.

I wish I had my bird-call whistles with me; lingering near the trees I'd tweet a little. A slight nudge of awareness to bring more outside inside,  more feet awareness than shoe, more head in the clouds than    airplane.



Lily
here we are.

One way the body "thinks" = curiosity

Body Habitat Walking is propelled by many curiosities:
What does walking and our feet have to teach us?
What of the commoditization of the natural body walking into a sport-based activity, or a method to lose weight, or a way to raise money for good causes?

Who benefits and who loses when we walk?
The geo-architectural planning implications of a culture that does not walk?
The development of psychosocial personality & belief structures (many fear & class based) that become reinforced in the Mind that does not walk on the planet?
The character of physical weariness & longing of the body that does not walk on its native landscape?

Is walking a way to recover the paradise-cycle of being lost, found, lost, and found again, repetitively throughout a lifetime?
What of the eco-political forces that keeps us dependent on wheels instead of feet?

Can walking weave an awareness of fragility and mortality into our everyday lives?

Art show goes on while I walk and a bit more

As my eyes become the eyes of a walker, I see the art show on display along the streets of Portland. There is wilderness, there are wilderness galleries and their are the sculpture tattoos of my kind everywhere. Some of these I like. Some I just see. Here are a few for your walker eyes to enjoy.







Today the squirrel lays down on the platform where I feed the birds and animals in my backyard wilderness. His paws are in front of him; squirrel sphinx like. His back legs and pawns sprawled out behind him. Wet dishrag squirrel pose. He tilts his head to the nuts and seeds and eats them up for awhile. Then he lays his head down across his front legs and closes his eyes. Summer squirrel pose.

I am learning a lot.

here we are.

Why?

Why?  Why am I doing this?  Why walk from Corvallis to Portland?

• Because I like to walk.  Because when I walk I see things that I don’t see if I go faster.  Because it was a puzzle to solve:  How do I get to Portland by foot?   Where can I stay en route?   Is it possible? 
• Because we have so constructed our lives and the world that a simple walk seems impossible.  We have forgotten that foot travel is our natural mode of transport.  As a nation, we drive everywhere.  I wanted to explore what it would be like to walk.
• Because I am deeply disturbed by the oil spill and I want to explore spending time car free, tire free, petroleum free.  I know we will still be dependent upon petroleum in many ways.  But in one very profound way we are going to cut ourselves free, for 9 days, we are going to walk.  
• And because Lily and I were sitting in one of our favorite coffee shops talking about what Body Habitat was going to do this summer and one of us said "we should walk from Corvallis to Portland" and the other one said yes.

Here’s the route:
Corvallis to Adair Village (9.7 miles)
Adair Village to Monmouth (13.4 miles)
Monmouth to Salem (17 miles)
Salem to E.Z. Orchard (5.4 miles)
E.Z. Orchard to Mt. Angel (10.7 miles)
Mt. Angel to St Josef Winery (11.6 miles)
St Josef Winery to Canby (5.9 miles)
Canby to Lake Oswego (12.5 miles)
Lake Oswego to SE Portland (10 miles)

Total mileage 94.5 miles in 9 days

Why I bought new shoes

I am a walking animal.  I was built with the hardware I need to transport myself  on the planet.  Feet, legs, hips, spine, torso, neck erectus and dangling on top-the head.

Body Habitat projects take me out of wondering Who I Am. Out of measuring and testing myself to become a better, kinder, happier, sexier, smarter, more spiritual, shinier person.  As my body shapes, listens;  revives contact with natural worlds, I begin to wonder What I Am.? This question is new.  I like it.

So far:   vulnerable, unfurry, guessing, dependent, bony, viral, imaginative, horny, fussy, ground-roving, thin-skinned, predatory, muscular. I easily fall prey to nettles, blackberries, roses and small sharp rocks embedded in my heels.

Here are my new shoes.  Patagonias from REI.  I feel extravagant, embarrassed, happy to have them.

It is hard to remember that BHWalking project is about walking, not suffering.   

Lily
here we are.