Walk 1: Mapping Senses

 My walk took place close to my house. I chose this area because it surrounds where I live, just off Corona Rd, right by the airport and the aviation school, near the train tracks and the south Nogales highway, a middle school, and the Desert Diamond Casino. Even though I’ve passed by all of this before, driving or glancing through a screen, I have rarely ever walked through it. Never really noticed how it all connects. 

Before stepping outside, I drew my own map of the area using Google Maps as a guide but forcing myself to translate by hand. That process alone shifted how I understood this place. I began to realize how certain streets link to others, how the aviation school sits right across from neighborhoods filled with fenced yards and sun-faded cars, how close the train actually is to the back of the middle school field. It became more than a dot on the screen. The walk deepened that. 

I started with sound. There’s a constant hum of planes overhead, some of them climbing into the sky from the aviation school, low and loud. Every once in awhile, a train horn punctures the air. The desert doesn’t echo, exactly, but the sound rolls. I passed many barking dogs throughout the neighborhood, a few kids biking or skating on the neighborhood roads even through the heat, and the unmistakable murmur of swamp coolers working overtime. Everything mechanical, humming or moving but around it, stillness. The kind of quiet that makes the noise feel even louder. There were many speeding cars though travelling down the highway, it was a bit difficult to walk by it as there’s no proper sidewalks but just gravel people have been traversing through.

Then came the smell. The streets smelled like warmed pavement. If it had rained recently, creosote would’ve filled the air, but today it was dust and sun-baked asphalt. Familiar, but I’d never stopped long enough to really name it.  

What surprised me most was how disoriented I still felt, despite living here. Even though I had drawn a map, walked the streets, and stared at the area through Google countless times, walking it made me rethink how I’ve been navigating. The digital age gives us instant access to directions, to pinpoints and blue dots, but it doesn’t always offer a sense of place. Not like this. Even through my car it tends to feel like point A to point B rather than traveling around with no purpose. 

 I felt like I got a better understanding of the area in a new way. I could tell you what direction the train tracks bend in, or how far the casino sits from the neighborhood school.