For my final walking project I decided to do a walk with my mom. My family is from Sarnia and I have lived there since I was a baby. When I was about 10 my parents split up and I have been moving pretty frequently ever since. Eight times to be exact. My mom has just found a house and has said that this will be her last move. With this in mind I decided that I would like to do ‘a walk through time’ from my childhood house to each house, in order, to this new house that my mom has bought. In total this walk was almost 40kms and it took us about 10 hours to complete. My mom and I aren’t exactly the athletic types so I knew that this would be a big and difficult task to overcome for the day. As it turns out it was more than I even expected. I told my mom about a week before what my idea was and convinced her that she should come along. As soon as she said yes, she obviously regretted it and basically complained about it every time I talked to her until the day of. This didn’t give me much hope for the walk. We drove to my first house growing up, parked and got out to start the walk. The energy was high at the beginning and we had some interesting conversations about the neighbourhood and how it has changed. This was my house growing up. It was the only house of the eight that my parents lived in together. It was also the first time that my mom and I have been back in that neighbourhood since she left my dad. It was a strange feeling being back there with her and we both commented on it. We walked to the rest of the houses in order stopping every once and a while but for the most part trying to keep a good pace to get it finished by dark. There were many ups and downs throughout the walk and there were even times when I had no choice but to turn off the microphone because my mom was not happy. When we finally got to Corunna (the small town outside of Sarnia where my mom’s new house is) the mood lifted. We were hurting and exhausted but we were almost there. We looked around at the new place and talked about our excitement with the new house and new beginning. For the great finale as we were walking up to the driveway my mom started crying and said that we were ‘home’ (she’s embarrassed about this now). This was a big deal because she was worried about moving there and if it was the right decision, over the course of that weekend, she decided that she was sure of her decision and that day, during the walk she got the call from the real estate agent that her offer had been accepted. The journey had more meaning to my mom and I than I could have ever planned for.

Now for the technical stuff:
I filmed the whole walk using the Ipad app that Nathan found for me to make videos out of stills. I also recorded most of the conversations that my mom and I had on the walk. I have a few ideas for what to do with this and anyone reading if they’d like to give me feedback I would appreciate it!
The video jolts back and forth and makes you feel a bit dizzy. It’s, in my opinion, almost dreamlike. My original plan was to record some of my thoughts separately and add them in with some of my mom’s comments. Sort of like she is talking through the walk and I am thinking but not saying things. The video is shot from my perspective and only shows what I see. I am wondering if I should be focusing more on the experience of the actual walk itself of my feelings towards what the walk means and memories. Or, I could combine the two. I also wonder if anyone has a suggestion of how I could add my thoughts without it sounding too negative. I’m somewhat torn. The problem is that I have grown through most of the tough times that I revisited on this walk and I am happy and have an amazing relationship with my mom but, in revisiting these things my thoughts are somewhat negative and I don’t know how to convey this while still showing that I’m in a better place now and I am thankful to my mom for doing the walk with me. Any input would be appreciated! It was definitely an interesting and growing experience so far for my mom and I.