From Outside Lies Magic, John R. Stillgoe, 1998

 

Get out now.  Not just outside, but beyond the trap of the programmed electronic age so gently closing around so many people at the end of our century.  Go outside, move deliberately, then relax, slow down, look around.  Do not jog.  Do not run.  Forget blood pressure and arthritis, cardiovascular rejuvenation and weight reduction.  Instead pay attention to everything that abuts the rural road, the city street, the suburban boulevard.  Walk.  Stroll. Saunter. Ride a bike, and coast along a lot.  Explore.

 

Abandon, even momentarily, the sleek modern technology that consumes so much time and money now, and seek out the resting place of a technology almost forgotten.  Go outside and walk a bit, long enough to forget about programming, long enough to take in and record new surroundings.

 

Flex the mind, a little at first, then a lot.  Savor something special.  Enjoy the best-kept secret around—the ordinary, everyday landscape that rewards any explorer, that touches any explorer with magic.

 

The whole concatenation of wild and artificial things, the natural ecosystem as modified by people over centuries, the built environment layered over layers, the eerie mix of sounds and smells and glimpses neither natural or crafted—all of it is free for the taking, for the taking in.  Take it, take it in, take in more every weekend, every day, and quickly it becomes the theater that intrigues, relaxes, fascinates, seduces, and about all expands any mind focused on it.  Outside lies utterly ordinary space open to any casual explorer willing to find the extraordinary.  Outside lies unprogrammed awareness that at times becomes directed serendipity.  Outside lies magic.

 

“Miracles” Walt Whitman

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the
        ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

From Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,

And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,

And the tree toad is a chef-d'oeurve for the highest,

And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,

And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,

And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue,

And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels!

 

Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

 

 

From Walking, Henry David Thoreau

 

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking . . .

 

Sauntering, from idle people who roved about the country in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under the pretense of going a la Sainte-Terre, to the Holy Land . . . mere idlers and vagabonds.

 

He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all.

 

For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of Infidels.

So we saunter toward a Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light.

 

 

Exploring as I teach it depends heavily on understanding the pasts that swirl around any explorer of ordinary landscape.  Unlike so many historians entranced by great political, economic, and social movements, I emphasize that the built environment is a sort of palimpsest, a document in which one layer of writing has been scraped off, and another one applied.  An acute, mindful explorer who holds up the palimpsest to the light sees something of the earlier message, and a careful, confident explorer of the built environment soon sees all sorts of traces of past generations.  Students with no particular interest in schoolroom history involving presidential elections, treaties, and wars often awaken to the richness of spatial and visual history, simply because objects and even landscapes from the past have shaped their lives and shape them still.

 

Palimpsest: a manuscript or piece of writing (usually papyrus or parchment) on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain. 

• something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form: Sutton Place is a palimpsest of the taste of successive owners.