Walk 1: Mapping Senses

Through my two walks, I focused on the senses, sight, hearing, and smell. I decided to walk down a neighborhood street that is next to my house with my father. In hindsight, I believe that walking with my father added to the experience I had while walking because it tied in a further personal connection to my location. It helped me focus on the senses that I wanted to analyze.

The first sense being sight, I realized while walking that there were a lot of rustic items in front of houses. Many were mailboxes or personal items such as decorations or cars. To me, the rustic look of the items displays the time and memories that were potentially tied to these items or that the families experienced in general while living here in the neighborhood.

The second sense that I focused on was hearing. I live on the outskirts of Tucson and it’s usually a quiet and slow area. The sounds heard were very basic such as the sounds of walking on pavement and rocks, distant birds chirping, a car, and an old dog barking at us to show that he's protecting his territory. It did give me a sense of nostalgia however, finding peace in the simplicity of it.

The final sense that I wanted to highlight was smell. I was unable to find a way to visually demonstrate smell, but I think that the use of words is a good documentation form. For smell, the main scent that I noticed was the fresh morning air, as I started my walk at 5:10 am. The two other smells that were prevalent were dirt and gasoline. Besides the main neighborhood streets that were paved, the inner streets that lead to rows of houses are only made of dirt. There were a couple of cars and trucks heading out of these streets to start their day and the tires would pick up the dirt and give off a faint scent. When work trucks would pass there would be a brief smell of gasoline passing by.