Tiny Homebound Explorations 101
Tips to have your own mini adventures + a tiny photo gallery of my own
It's autumn where I live! The absolute best season of them all! The poll results from the last email fell with 'tiny, homebound explorations' and 'texture, textiles and rewilding' in a tie. Which means we have a double whammy of topics!
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Anywayyyyyyyyyyyyyy, we're starting today with what I think is probably fundamental to both rewilding nature and the cultivation of our imaginative lives: the tiny, homebound exploration.
It's been called different things by different people - microadventure is a term that pops up a lot, which is one that I happen to like.
When I moved to this town I didn't know it very well at all, but during the lockdowns I found myself wandering around and was delighted in my small discoveries, including a former bathhouse which was initially a district building of the Public Psychiatric Hospital, recorded on the land register in 1902.
Scroll to the bottom for more photos of tiny finds.
Tiny Homebound Explorations: it doesn't take much to feel like you've broadened your horizons
Tiny homebound explorations can cover a lot of ground. Here are some ideas to get you started:
Explore the architectural wonders of your local area. Literally just walk around, looking at buildings, crossing streets where you wouldn't normally. Look up. Take pictures. Draw the buildings. When were they built? Why?
Explore what kinds of trees grow around you. If you're suffering from tree blindness, start small. Draw three different kinds of leaves, one from each tree. Take bark rubbings. Look at the trunk of the tree from different angles. Is there moss growing on one side? Are there mushrooms? What bugs can you see wandering around? What kinds of bird songs can you hear? Can you record them to playback later? What might the birds be telling you about the trees?
Talk to people you've frequently seen but never interacted with. This is not something I necessarily do myself, though, to be honest, because I get really shy talking to strangers. Yes, I'm a toddler in a 37 year old person's body. Luckily (or unluckily) for me, people in this town just stop and talk to you whether you want them to or not. Yay?
If you don't know what you don't know…do the 21st century equivalent of spinning the globe and travelling to wherever it stops and you blindly place your finger. Load up Google maps, zoom out a bit, close your eyes and point. Search for any info about that little area online that might exist and then set off to discover it. Or… even more deliciously, don't look up anything and just go there.
Let a famous painter or writer be your ‘guide’ and visit the places that the artist or novelist captured or wrote about.
A microadventure in the making
Cuesmes, in Mons, is a place I've always wanted to visit because Vincent van Gogh lived there and decided that screw it, he was going to be a painter and not a preacher after all. It's down near the French border, about a 2 hour drive from my house here in the north of Belgium, by the border with Holland.
Leading a itinerant life of suffering, Van Gogh spent time considering what purpose he could give to his life, and was drawing and painting his way through his confusion. "I felt my energy return, and I told myself: whatever happens, I'll get through it, I'll pick up my pencil which I abandoned in my despondency and I'll return to drawing, and from that moment, everything changed for me." The painter was born!
Small explorations: a mini photo gallery
Thank you, dear reader, for your time and attention. Buy me a digital coffee if you feel so inclined, or buy some zines.
ádh agus grá,
Jessica