Friday, April 3, 2026

Three Beautiful Things 04-02-2026: Urban Walking, Urban Fossils and Shark Teeth, Debbie Fixes Chicken Dinner

 1. It could be called anarchy walking. I prefer "anarchy walking" to its more high-minded name, "psychogeography". Basically, this idea challenges us, when in an urban environment, to resist walking the ways the city (legitimately) lays out for us, to resist the streets and routes that, by design, lead us to where money is transacted (shops, banks, restaurants, etc.) and seek out other routes where non-commercial surprises exist, like small swaths of wild vegetative growth, birds and animals we might not think of as city dwellers, micro-ecosystems existing in the midst of discarded concrete chunks, abandoned cars, and other examples of urban blight. We might follow Christopher Brown's lead and explore empty lots in urban areas. (As a reminder, I'm reading Christopher Brown's book, A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places.)

The aim of this kind of walking is to widen one's range of observation and to marvel at the wildness that exists and survives in unexpected places. 

2. Christopher Brown's bushwhacking in creek beds and peering closely at areas on the edges of Austin, TX that were once at the bottom of a a pre-historic sea results in him finding fossils, shark teeth, and other evidence of prehistoric animal and marine life in amongst tires, soda bottles, beer cans, concrete chunks, and other 21st century trash heedlessly cast to the ground or in the water. 

3. Christy joined Debbie and me for a delicious dinner of baked chicken, baked yams, and steamed kale. I joked and asked what kind of ice cream we'd have for dessert and Debbie laughed, bemoaned that even though she'd thought of ice cream while at Yoke's today, she didn't buy any.

Suddenly she rose up, grabbed her keys, and dashed to the Camry, barreled to Yoke's, and before Christy and I knew it, she arrived back with a half-gallon of Extra Triple Fudge Brownie ice cream, served us each a small bowl, and my evening and its culinary pleasures were now complete. 



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