Field Trip: A Color Walk
Have you ever taken a color walk?
I’m not sure when I first heard about the idea of a color walk, but the concept is simple: as you walk, look for certain colors.
It’s so simple it sounds a bit childlike and basic—but childlike things should never be dismissed, there’s often magic hiding in the simplicity.
The photos here are from a color walk I took last summer. It was just a small portion of my longer dog walk, but I challenged myself to see how much purple I could find. (I picked a less common color, one I don’t actually love).
All these photos come from a few blocks I have walked down countless times before, but looking for a certain color made me see so much more of it. I was honestly surprised by how much purple I found. It made me appreciate what was always there, though I had never taken the time to see it.
And therein lies the lesson:
The world is full of so much of what you’re looking for.
I truly do believe this, and see it play out every day. If you look for beauty, it is there. If you look for garbage, it is also there. (Which may be useful at times, because by picking up garbage we can make things more beautiful).
But mostly, by sharpening our eyes, and taking a bit more time, the world opens up.
I want to show you how it works. Here are some shriveled Oregon grape berries—a bit more blue than purple, but it still counts. I never would have seen them in this bank of greens alongside the road had I not been looking. They’re tiny, they’re well hidden (on the right side, halfway down the center photo), but because I was looking, I saw them.
On a more practical level, a color walk is something that can be done anywhere—you don’t have to be in the suburbs of a leafy city, as I am. You can do it downtown, in alleyways and on street corners. You can do it on a bus. You can do it waiting for the bus.
Yesterday, when I was stuck in construction zone traffic and on the verge of getting irritated, I challenged myself to see how many orange things I could find. I hit 27 items before the road workers motioned my car forward—and I will forever have a deeper appreciation of the Holman and 85th Street intersection, because I’ve seen it in a way I never had before.
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
—Marcel Proust
If you have kids in your life, or bored teenagers, or even elderly folks—get them to look for colors. It could be a focus on one color, or all the colors in the rainbow (once you find red, move on to orange, etc.). Take photos if you want, or not. Make it game, make it a race, made it a meditation, make it whatever you want. It’s simple, but it’s also magic. (It’s an especially magical way to entertain and tire out toddlers, FYI).
Because, once you train your eyes on color, you still start seeing other things—beauty, when you least expected. Small acts of kindness that restore faith. Hope in a somewhat broken world.
Give it a try, see how it works for you (and let me know if you do) 💜
And finally, speaking of hope in a broken world, I wanted to mention that World Central Kitchen is back in action serving meals in Gaza (as well as Lebanon, to released Israeli hostages, in Ukraine, and more). WCK feeds people in disaster zones and I have a lot of faith in their program and mission.
There are also so many GoFundMe accounts to donate directly to families in Gaza trying to flee or rebuild their lives. A friend recently described these crowd-funded resettlement efforts as akin to an underground railroad, trying to get people to safety, and that’s worth thinking about. This world is heartbreaking and beautiful, sometimes in equal measure. (And yes, I want all the hostages home too).
It’s hard to balance the pain I see in the world right now with any sense of hope or beauty. These practices I’ve developed help me resist the hopelessness that might keep me from trying to be helpful. It’s about taking care to be able to support, help, and hopefully move forward together.
delightful!