For this project, I chose to walk the four block chunk of East Northfield from 5th Street stretching down to 9th Street, constrained on the sides by College Street to the West and Winona Street to the East. Shortly after 11 am, post-class, I walked down to the start of my area at the corner of 5th and College. It was a lovely morning, sunny and warm, not yet sweat-inducing. I passed two people walking dogs on my way down, also enjoying the lovely morning.

Some common sights throughout the neighborhood were empty bird feeders, wintry (read: dead) garden plots, yard signs, fenced back yards, lots of trees (large and small), and secular Easter decorations. One of my favorite things about this neighborhood is the range of house colors. Some of the colors I noted are as follows: purple door, blue door, blue door and trim, green house with orange trim and garage door, yellow house with green trim, red house. This is certainly not exhaustive, just some of the more strikingly painted houses.

At he first house I encountered, I was struck by the sign by the front door indicating the security system in place. This neighborhood has always felt very safe to me. The bird feeders were empty, not yet caught up with the rapidly appearing spring. Another sign of spring were the many still-melting piles of snow. Behind me lay a pile that had melted a circle straight through the middle.

It must have been garbage day; the bins were all rolled out on the street, and nearly every house had a recycling bin out as well. The next corner house was huge, and as I rounded the corner onto Winona, I realized it had two screened porches. The next house was smaller, and had a Black Lives Matter and a This Home Composts yard sign, along with a Ukraine flag.

I then came to a very tall, strange-looking tree. It is the same width all the way up, but it must be self-pruning since it’s so tall.

As I kept walking I came to some fun decorations. In one yard was an Easter tree, and behind that a wheel sculpture, with a particularly imposing lion in the center. There were more sculptures as I broke off to go along 6th street.

Along 6th Street, I came across one much smaller house with an American flag and a Trump-Pence sign in the window, which in all my wanderings of this neighborhood I think was a first. The next house had a more common Black Lives Matter sign, as well as the first wildflowers I’d seen this season. The next house had cars with Georgia and New York plates parked in front of the garage, making me think students probably live there. I came to an interesting new-fangled fence. This house presented a dichotomy between this new technology and its sign reading “Built 1878.”

I then came to a house with a mostly vine-covered garage. Behind the house was a stoic older man staring at the ground, the first resident I’d seen. I noticed that though all the houses have yards, they aren’t all very large. The larger houses especially compromise much of their yard for square footage.

The house on the corner of 6th was a different style than most of the houses. It was more of stucco-inspired, if not actual stucco, with the windows placed at the same level as the walls.

As I went along, I saw a house with lots of toys and decorations in the front yard, as well as a sizable collection of wind chimes. Many of the decorations appeared to still be up (and fallen down) from Christmas, a phenomenon that seemed not so unusual in this neighborhood. As I turned the corner onto 7th, I saw another person outside, fixing his car. Another man was outside, too, tinkering in his car, perhaps packing for a trip. There was a lot more traffic on this street for some reason. The house at the end of the block was one story, and a roof of solar panels loomed up behind it.

As I headed back to Winona, I stayed on the same sidewalk because there wasn’t one on the other side of the street. I spotted a yard sign across the street that read “Someone in my life is making a difference: Marines.com.” Another cute house advertised that they attend Trinity Lutheran Church.

As I reached Winona again and turned right, I ran out of sidewalk and instead picked my way along the crumbled asphalt at the side of the road. I had only ever biked this far from campus, so I hadn’t thought too much about the lack of sidewalks. When I’m on a bike, I tend to notice the lack of stop signs more. There was a pretty, blue house along the way, in a fairly typical style for the neighborhood.

Another house had a garden plot out front. Though there was still no green, it retained its sign from summers past: “Free Food: help yourself!”

A fun winter pastime that I inherited from my roommate is crushing the ice along the edge of a path. I did that on the side of the road, but the ice crushed into a puddle, and I splashed icy water into the hole in my shoe and up my legs. That was probably to be expected, but the satisfying crunch was worth it.

There started to be more houses in need of a paint job as I walked further from the college. The houses closer to campus have more faculty or people associated with the college. The infrastructure was noticeably different the further I got from campus.

The train honking a few blocks West startled me. It was louder than I expected because I was farther away from it at that point than I would be on campus. When I reached the end of the block, the sidewalk suddenly starts=ed up again. Looking back the way I came, I thought I could see where a sidewalk used to go, or perhaps was started and abandoned.

As I turned onto my last spur, 8th Street, I noticed two things. First, some perennials were shooting their new growth out of the brown leaves on the ground. Second, the sidewalk here was much older than previous sidewalks and falling apart.

I saw another American flag on this block, a symbol that could represent many different things. When I reached the end of the block, I again doubled back on my sidewalk due to a lack thereof on the other side. However, the house across the street was too intriguing to not investigate closer. Though I was drawn by the couch that was being given away, I also saw a stake with a hard hat and a homemade sign warning “Careful, Tree Falling”. A man came out of the house and tried to have me take the couch. As much as I want a couch, especially a nice-looking couch like this one, I would lack the space to put it or the means to get it back to campus.

Coming back to Winona, the Trinity Lutheran Church, which I saw a yard sign for earlier, lay across the street, with a bit of bustling activity in the parking lot. The lack of sidewalk continued to this block. One of the large houses on this block had an imposing, new, wooden fence around their back yard. I rounded the corner of 9th street, looking forward to walking back without any spurs in my route. A house near the end of the block had two milk jugs tied with a string to a large tree. Though I found this strange I was ready to write it off as a kid’s science experiment or something. However, as I turned onto College Street to head back North, I was confronted with many more milk jugs hugging trees. When I got back to campus, I talked to Austin, our professor, and another student, Sammie, who both suggested that they could be collecting maple sap. Looking more closely at the pictures, there is about an inch of liquid in some of the jugs, even though the lids are on, so this seems like a good theory. This was not something I’d ever seen or even imagined possible in one’s front yard growing up in Mississippi. It’s such a wonderful process to contemplate doing at home, however.

Walking back up the final stretch, I saw another sign with a blue and yellow heart, sending love to Ukraine. I passed the house that had the couch again, and the man was still outside. We talked for a bit about the falling tree. He said it was seriously damaged about 15 feet below the top of it, but since it belonged to the city, there was nothing he could do. Apparently the city had said they would come cut it, but for now, he had to just wait. As he advised me to not walk under it, I made a wide berth around the tree and continued along, seeing many houses that I had already seen from a different angle. I came to the solar panel property, with an impressive number of solar panels lining their house and garage. They also had some cute chalk drawings along their driveway and sidewalk, the trace of a child who was probably in school at the time. This house also had a sign like one near the start, saying it was built in 2013. This destroyed my theory that only very old houses displayed their building year. I am still curious why only a few houses have this sign.

I reached a point that had the same sidewalks as many around campus, with quotes imprinted into some of the cement blocks.

I then came across the best yard sign of the day, urging people to clean up their dog’s poop with the slogan “There is no poop fairy.” I also discovered the only gnome of the day, hanging out on a front stoop. I passed another house with many yard signs, including an Amanda Gorman quote; the car parked out front boasted many bumper stickers, too. As I reached the end of my exploration, I noticed that there was a security sign on this side of the first house as well as the other side. This was the only house I saw with a security sign while on my walk.

I enjoyed this adventure greatly, and I couldn’t have done it on a nicer morning. Perhaps it will inspire me to go on more walks in the future unplugged from my phone and my music, just to seeing what I see. I will probably leave out the spurs, though, and just amble a nice circuitous route.

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