a (pedagogical) walk

short stories from scandinavia - part 1

As you may know, i spent most of June overseas (once again - i am acutely aware of the privilege). The question i get asked most is was it for “work or play?” and i struggle to answer this one without sounding like a cliche. What even is work if I’m wholeheartedly invested in everything I do, and approach everything play-fully? You would think this is an exaggeration, but I genuinely did a *cartwheel* during a practical workshop that i was *hosting* at a conference… i love the reputation of being unserious but deeply invested. i think we take ourselves too seriously and we take the harm we can cause in sport not seriously enough. to survive this tension, i try to channel the type of curiosity that toddlers are renowned for, and the byproduct is a protective layer of unbridled joy that i draw on in the moments that i (regularly) ask myself, why do we bother?

A more accurate way i can describe my travels is through different types of adventures. I still treat the conference itself as an adventure and ultimately the inspiration for being in Scandinavia again, but i also spent a week across Oslo and Tromsø leading up to the event, and another week in Stockholm afterwards. If i’m going to fly for 24 hours and force myself to sit still for that long, then i’m gonna run wild when i get there. To help cope with the suffocating stillness of a plane, my friends and i have started referring to my need to fidget as ‘Venom’ and i just think you’d appreciate that tidbit.

I’ve been deliberating how best to share the depth of my heartfelt experiences over the last few weeks, and i’ve been leaning into storytelling, poetry and drawing lately, so I wanted to collate my adventures as a series of short stories. they may start in a vague chronological order to begin with, but in the spirit of one of my favourite conference presentations around temporality and moving beyond mechanical time, they will be interwoven in, around and through the days and events. i know my writing is very much a stream of consciousness already, but this will more authentically follow the way my mind bounces between ideas, stories, tangents - seeing connections between things that may seem unconnected, except for a tiny overlap of one word, moment, feeling, memory. by now i shouldn’t need to warn you that this may be different to anything you’ve read before, but just in case you need the reminder - seatbelts are recommended.

also, apologies in advance for the swearing but i believe the language is important to illustrate the moment.

i fucking love streams

i had vaguely heard of walking as pedagogy before, but i’d never really been exposed to it intentionally. i was already looking forward to the post-humanist/structuralist themed workshops because i find this mindboggling space fascinating, but i’ll admit i was worried that a workshop in this sense would be too static. i missed the first half but thankfully caught the part where we had to go for a walk, so i bounced out the door. we were to venture out into the world (because after all, “The world isn't in your books and maps, it's out there.” J. R. R. Tolkien), and just *notice*. i was stoked, i notice a billion things a second and now i have a reason to? what a win. but the commentary around me was the exact opposite. more specifically, we were to pay attention to intra-actions of the human and non-human.. and if that left you with a WTF face, don’t worry, me too. as we left, i heard someone immediately say “i need to get out of this damn building”. WOO 1 point to you. that’s exactly what the activity was about, a building is nonhuman. nailed it. i think it’s so easy to forget that while the concepts might feel intangible, they are often related to the things we are directly experiencing, we’ve just never considered them in such a way.

before i delve into the hilarious and chaotic running commentary of our walk, it’s worth mentioning a later conversation we had about noticing. i pulled up the list of things i’d noticed and photos i’d taken to capture the walk because i thought it was interesting, and a friend of mine commented that there’s no way all that happened as we were walking. well, of course it did. many more/other things likely happened on their walk but probably went unnoticed. i am conscious that perhaps my hyperactivity and busyhead (thank you noah kahan) lends well to my ability to notice, but it’s also kind of intentional. someone just yesterday noted that perhaps my affinity for writing/drawing/sketching means i notice things others never would, like the fact the little symbol for the City of Oslo is kinda cute (and now lives on as a sticky note in my notebook). so, maybe it’s not that non/human intra-action is beyond comprehension, it’s that we’re stopping ourselves from noticing it because it’s easier, more familiar, less taxing. but like most things, the effort it takes may get easier over time.

i will draw this as a little treasure map someday, but until then, please appreciate the unfolding of events to follow.

firstly, you must pick your companion wisely and honestly, i could not have asked for a better person to wander alongside. did we technically just meet? well, yeah other than a few shared comments in other workshops and a wholesome lunchtime conversation, gushing over each others note-taking styles. we burst out the doors of the building, trying to beat everyone out because the lake was calling and even though we never explicitly said that’s where we were heading, many of us set off in that direction. within 2 seconds, a harry potter reference was made because i noticed they were cutting the grass, and i’m not sure why i said this out loud but i started a story about how i really really really wanted to be Hermione Granger growing up (still do) but technically i couldn’t embody the character because one of her favourite scents in the love potion is freshly cut grass and i HATE that smell because i’m allergic to grass… we knew it would be a fun walk from that moment on.

the grass was a little dewy so we followed the concrete path that took us to a small carpark at the back of a building. it was an infinitely less inviting space than the lovely grassy path that someone else took behind that same building and yet we decided not to take it, without a word, and followed the built environment instead - even though it led us somewhere less inviting. again, non/human interaction at its finest. after the weird driveway, we could see the lake so we just continued on, wandering down the gravel path and chatting away until my humble companion spots a bubbling stream to our left, to which they exclaim (and the capitalisation is not an exaggeration here): “I FUCKING LOVE STREAMS”. what a wholesome statement, i think between untameable fits of laughter. how many times have you seen something out in the world and thought, i love that, with that much GUSTO - especially something nonhuman like a stream. why do we often reserve our love, or at least the exclamation for it, for certain types of relationships? i’ll continue this thread in a story called ‘enthusiasm’ next, but lets stay here a little longer because we’re only like 5 minutes into the walk.

as we continue, we find a path that runs around the circumference of the lake and decide to go left, joining the existing flow of occasional runners and commenting ‘ew, running’. there’s a lovely little outcrop with a bench to enjoy the view, and it reminds us of that particular scene in Harry Potter where Hagrid is standing on the shore of his lake and realises that his adored hippogriff is about to be executed (okay don’t come at me for spoilers, it’s been long enough). pitch perfect, we stand on this outcrop and are *obliged* to recreate the scene. i feel so sorry for the locals because we pretty much screamed “buckbeak’s been sentenced to death!” into the void of the lake. we also noticed that you could just like, walk into the lake at any point along the shore so a brief rhetorical question of “i wonder if the lake is cold” means that i’ve immediately removed my shoes and gone to stand in the lake, of course. have we met? (probably not, but i think even just by only reading this, you *know* that’s something i would do). not only that, i later convinced my friends to join me so we could get photographic evidence hehehe.

there were some specific jetty’s and outcrops where people were congregated to swim, and even that was interesting because why congregate in these designated spaces to enter the water when you could just walk in from anywhere? non/human interaction strikes again! you might also notice the structure to the left of this photo, which is a perfectly built wheelchair-accessible ramp to enter the water. we’d already commented earlier that day on how many wheelchair users were on campus and that many spaces seemed thoughtfully designed with automatic doors etc (except they all had these terrible ridges in the floor omg the duality of it). i wondered if being in the water is seen as important given a structure like this would have cost significant money to construct and is so intentionally designed to not just access the water but genuinely enter it in different ways. eventually we realise we should probably get back to the workshop and wonder if anyone else is having this much fun in their walking pedagogy (but we doubted it), so we began the ascent to the buildings again.

our feet were too wet to put back into our shoes and ‘standing in the lake’ wasn’t really on the bingo card for the day so we started walking along the gravel path barefoot and it did NOT go well for those of us with ~sensory issues~. i couldn’t walk on the grass (because i’m allergic) so i received a piggy back instead 🥹 too wholesome for day 2 of a conference. as we wandered the paths, we all stopped for a moment to look at a winding road to the right, and then all continued onwards - WHY!? we were drawn to this alternative route but continued along our existing path? the epitome of path dependency 😉 (someone stop me please). at this crossroads, we couldn’t help but notice how absolutely ridiculous this whole adventure had been, so we turned to ask the 4th member of our group if he “regrets joining us for the adventure”… to which he says an EMPHATIC YES.

i am still laughing about that exchange 😂 i didn’t notice that we often pose questions in english negatively, and australians are very good at telling you what something is not… how are you? not bad. how long will this take? not long. so the question he expected was “are you enjoying this adventure with us”, but instead he admitted that he hated our presence with such joy in his voice! ah i love languages. just like that, we’re almost 2,000 words into a story about one 30-minute pedagogical walk. isn’t it fascinating how much you can notice when that’s your intention. i’m not sure about anyone else, but i left the room worried that maybe this non/human stuff is beyond my grasp, and i came back with 5 photographs on my gorgeous little camera, walked back into the building barefoot, received a piggy back, made 3 friends, and laughed until my face hurt.

what a wonderful world to be a part of.

(stay tuned for more “short” stories to come!)