The "Landscape Architecture?" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading about a fellow by the name of Alastair Humphreys who is an English adventurer, author and motivational speaker. Over a four-year period he bicycled 46,000 miles (74,000 km) around the world.  He was the National Geographic Adventurer of the Year in 2012.  He is responsible for the rise of the idea of the micro-adventure which is short, local, accessible adventures.  For more than 20 years, Alastair roamed the planet. He rowed across the Atlantic, traversed India on foot, cycled around the world. In his essay “A Single Small Map Is Enough for a Lifetime," he writes that climate change and familial commitments have caused him to narrow his horizons, to seek diversion in his own backyard, “on the fringes of a city in an unassuming landscape, pocked by a glow of sodium lights and the rush of busy roads.”  To begin this exploration, Humphreys ordered a map of his neck of the woods from Britain’s Ordinance Survey, which, for a fee, will create a map of any 20 square kilometers of the country at 1:25,000 scale, where four centimeters is the equivalent of one kilometer on the ground. Each hyper-detailed map includes not just roads but footpaths, vegetation and variations in terrain.  Humphreys commits to deeply exploring one small segment of his map per week, to getting intimate with his immediate environment, by walking or biking every millimeter. “I wanted it to be serendipitous, not governed by my preferences,” he writes. “I hoped to see things I would not ordinarily come across. I decided to treat everything as interesting.”  The first kilometer he undertakes to explore is purposely devoid of any exciting landscape features. He wanders a former marshland, contemplates the seasons, communes with crows and, with the aid of a smartphone app, geeks out on common reeds. His journey is quiet, and contemplative, but still riveting, even in the absence of any drama.  Although Humphreys has made a career of traveling on a grand scale, locating magic in the miniature comes easily. In 2012, he popularized the idea of the “microadventure,” a short, local outing that nevertheless provokes a shift in perspective (picture, for instance, camping under the stars in a nearby wood.).  In a 2015 interview with "The Times", he extolled the merits of the “5-to-9 adventure”: “After 5 p.m., you have 16 hours that are all yours,” he said. “So you can ride your bike or take the train out of town, sleep outside somewhere and come back to work maybe a bit rumpled but feeling great.”  Humphreys’s hometown project is inviting, a reminder of Thoreau’s wisdom that: “It matters not where or how far you travel — the farther commonly the worse — but how much alive you are.” Now seems like a ripe time for neighborhood micro-exploration: In winter, the landscape is denuded; each segment of tree branch and skyline available for scrutiny.  A high-resolution map provides a satisfyingly orderly way to make sense of the environment, to catalog what’s here now and what was here before, to pay close attention to what’s going on in the world. Is there some kind of analog we could apply to our interior lives, territory that feels far more vast and ungoverned and in need of organization? Is there a way to shine a flashlight upon the disused bridleways of the mind?  Meditation suggests it might be possible, but the rapidity with which our internal terrain changes makes the possibility of any definitive guide all but impossible. This necessitates, I suppose, close attention. A commitment to visit and revisit our intimate landscapes, mapping and remapping the contours of home.  Alastair Humphreys is an interesting fellow to say the least!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.