Monday was a glorious day for a neighborhood stroll, and I began exploring by heading south on Maple Street from 2nd Street East. I passed lots of beautiful houses on my walk, and a few of the ones closest to campus had Black Lives Matters or We Believe yard signs. The houses in this part of Northfield are an eclectic mix of several different styles, colors, sizes, and layouts that give the area a charming sense of history, unlike a typical suburban neighborhood. Some were single-story ranch homes, while others looked Victorian and had three stories. Some had separate garages or other secondary buildings on the property. Many had screened porches and chimneys, and several were painted in vibrant, unusual colors. Almost all of the trees were enormous and look old, which also gave the streets more character. Birds and squirrels were out and about as I walked, and I even heard (and saw) a woodpecker!

The sidewalk ended at the corner of Maple and 3rd Street East, so I walked in the road past more houses. Maple Street itself ends at 4th Street East, so I couldn’t walk the west side of that block. As I turned east onto 4th, a FedEx truck pulled up for a delivery (I also saw the mail van a few blocks later). One of the houses I stopped to look at on 4th had a plaque on the front of it which said it was built in 1918! It was also trash and recycling day, so most houses had blue bins by the curb, some with yellow lids for recycling.

I turned right onto Elm Street, which also doesn’t have sidewalks and ends at 5th Street East. I passed a beautiful light yellow house with huge windows on the east side, a smaller purple house, and a white house on the corner where a little girl watched me from inside. In front of the little girl’s house, two men were using a leaf blower on the driveway and collecting fallen tree branches near a big red vehicle. At the corner of Elm and 5th, I crossed over to some quiet open space (Memorial Park) with a path winding through. A sand volleyball court and net sat on my left as I walked south and saw the Northfield Memorial Pool (closed for the season) and the Northfield Skate Park. There was a man sitting near some trees to the north of the pool, and I passed a man on a red bike. In the parking lot of the pool, there were a couple of cars, and it looked like a group of teenagers was trying to fix one of them. I also saw a shirtless man riding a bike with a dog in the front basket and a brightly dressed older couple going on a walk. Although it was technically outside my area, I biked along 7th Street East to check out the pool, then went up the park path to the cul-de-sac of 6th Street East, which faced the back of some 5th Street houses. The park area was a bit hilly and had a lot of small trees and reeds.

After exploring the open space, I backtracked to 5th Street and went down halfway (since Maple doesn’t continue that far south), and back. There was a fantastic little lending library in front of one of the houses that was shaped like a barn and opened in an unexpected way. Then I headed up Elm until I got to 3rd, which I went down and back. There were no houses on the north side of that block; it was lined with some very big trees instead. I then headed north on Elm one more block to get back to 2nd and on the corner, another plaque indicated that the house there was built in 1885. Across the street was Carleton’s Faculty Club, student housing that I didn’t even know existed until this walk.