From Rob Walker, Art of Noticing newsletter: Alastair Humphreys of MicroAdventures fame.
“I thought that I had been paying close attention to my local area through years of microadventures. Then I committed to spending a year exploring only the single local map that I live on (the big fold-out paper maps hikers use, covering an area of 20km x 20km).
“At first I worried that after years of global adventures — cycling around the world, rowing the Atlantic, walking across southern India etc. — my one small, suburban patch outside London would be agonisingly claustrophobic, boring and limiting.
“But I was wrong! (Surprise, surprise, as you are reading this on TAoN.) I have discovered places I never knew existed, and been astonished at the wildness, beauty (ugliness, too) and history I have discovered. If you find somewhere new within a few miles of home then you are exploring the world just as much as someone trekking across the Empty Quarter Desert in Arabia...”
1. Get a local map. (USA here. UK here.) Printed out is better.
2. Each week select a 1km grid square at random. Then go out to walk or cycle every footpath and street on that square. Look around, take photographs, and dare yourself to be interested in everything.
3. I found the Seek app and the BirdNet app invaluable for paying attention to scruffy little plants and tiny, elusive birds. Suddenly, once I learned their names, I realised that I was surrounded by a wild universe, even on the boring fringes of a city.
4. When I came home I would fall down a Google rabbit hole looking up all the things I had seen — I felt halfway between David Attenborough and 99% Invisible as I learned about nature and drains with equal enthusiasm.
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