For this module our class was instructed to pick a route to walk for 30 minutes. I chose a quiet neighborhood street behind my home. Throughout this module we did many assignments and after doing all of those we were instructed to write about our experience throughout the walking module.
East Side Drive Walk
East Side Drive is a quiet street filled with houses, apartment complexes, parks and trails. It starts from St. Edwards Drive and ends when it hits Alameda Drive. The reason I chose this street for my route was because of its quietness. It seemed like a relaxing walk to take, where I can let my mind wonder. There isn’t much in this route except for trees and houses. The times I have taken this route I have not seen a lot of people. On my first walk I saw a few people walking their dogs. It was a warm day compared to the rest of the week, so people took this as an opportunity to walk their canines. The next time I saw more than one person was on a weekday. I saw a couple of kids skipping school from a high school nearby.
When I take my walk from East Hall to Monroe Street I sometimes reflect over my day and my decisions. At times my mind is just blank allowing me to relax without worrying about life. I haven’t really done this since freshman year. Usually my walks would pertain to getting to class, which I would not consider relaxing. During my first year at St. Edward’s I didn’t have my car so I would usually walk to places. I’ve walked to the Barton Springs pool, Regal Metropolitan 14, IHop, the Whataburger on Oltorf, and the flea market on Pleasant Valley Rd. Some of those walks weren’t so relaxing due to pouring rain or the day just being way too hot. Nonetheless, my walk on East Side Drive has allowed me to remember some memories of my friends and I walking to different places. Reminiscing about back then brings a smile on my face that makes me enjoy the walk even more.
I have driven and walked many times through East Side Drive to get to Oltorf. However, I have never been on the other side of East Side Drive passed the intersection. I was curious if it was any different from the side I knew filled with houses and trees. I didn’t know that the free Big Stacy pool existed or that there was a trail that connected the two Stacy parks. So this route was familiar yet unfamiliar to me.
As I said before this route was a street in a neighborhood so at first I didn’t know what to catalogue. There were too many plants, doors, cars, red things and blue things. I randomly picked signs since there once one right in front of me and I didn’t really think there were many of them. I was wrong. I started to lose count when I started to see too many and my mind would start to wonder. For my second walk I wanted to catalogue something that was harder to find so that I could put more effort into looking for them. I didn’t see a lot of yellow things on my first walk so I decided to go with that. This one was a little harder; they weren’t as obvious as the sign were. I had to look for them and at times there were gaps in my route where I would not see a single yellow thing.
For my third main walk I had to do an audio tour. I didn’t know what to do at first. I reflected over my walks and kept remembering how my mind would randomly wonder throughout my route. I decided to do an informative audio tour, where I would talk about East Side Drive. Throughout the tour I would put music to break up each thing I was talking about. I did this to represent my wondering mind. When I talked about the history of the parks in a professional voice I was trying to make the listener’s mind wonder off and stop listening. The music that would suddenly appear was used to grab the listener’s attention back to the audio tour and then slowly wonder off again while the music played in the background. I don’t know if I successfully did this and I didn’t enjoy listening to my voice numerous times when I was attempting to edit the audio.
East Side Drive is a street full of colorful doors, trees, and cacti. It goes through a quiet neighborhood filled with families and dogs. I chose this route because of it quietness where I could take a relaxing walk.
Vanessa Fuentes 