79 Squares – Day One

As you likely know, I read a lot and always have. Some books I forget days after I finish them while other books stick with me for years. Some of those are there because the story is just so big. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or The Lord of the Rings triology were like that. They were so different, so much happened, and to my childhood self (and let’s be honest still!) it was a big deal. But others stick for other reasons.

When I was a kid, maybe 6 years old, I read a book called The 79 Squares by Malcolm Bosse. In this, book a kid gets gets caught trespassing in the yard of an old man’s house and instead of calling the police or even his parents, he tells the kid he won’t tell anyone if he comes back daily for the whole summer. Don’t worry, it doesn’t go anywhere creepy.

When he comes back the next day the man tells him to take some string and dowels and mark the back yard off into equally sized squares. Then, for the rest of the summer, the kid’s job is to spend one hour in each small square, examining it closely. What’s there – plants, insects, hard dirt, sand – and pay attention to it. While the book goes lots of other places, what stuck with me was how the kid learned about how we can experience places in breadth or in depth. When we travel or even when I go on long bike tours nearby, I experience a small fraction of space and time. Take my bike trip in India. It feels like I saw a lot on my bike but here’s what I actually saw.

This plus three little squares in Jaipur where I rode around the centre of the city and that’s it. What did I miss in the squares next to these? What did I miss by passing through only in the daytime?

During the pandemic I rode all over the place, almost every day. It was one of my biggest years distance-wise and I did not do one tour. That year I would go to random locations selected by a computer app. This time, as you might’ve guessed, I’m using Squadrats to identify places I’ve never been. The resolution is high enough that each square is less than 200 x 200 metres so even in my own neighbourhood there are places I’ve never seen. Now I’m working to fix that and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Let’s see how many of the gaps I can close in. Here’s where I stand now:

Check it out – not only are there lots of white squares where I’ve never been, on the outside of this there are loads of green squares. These are larger 1.5 km by 1.5 km areas where I’ve never been inside at all. That means completely new stuff to see.

Today I set out a few minutes early and went out of my way to get six more squares. It took me through some quiet suburban streets I didn’t know existed. This time of year is extremely pretty so it was a good day to get out.

What I noticed today was just how many small parks there are in this city. Some are tiny – not much bigger than someone’s back yard. All of them seem to be well used.

Today I was running late too so there was a little more traffic but most notable were that there were so many kids waiting for school buses with their parents, many of whom were chatting with one another.

On the way home I had a more ambitious route planned, dipping across the northern border of Toronto into Thornhill. Here I was able to get 15 more squares – though you can see I missed a few (my new spots are the blue ones, orange I’ve visited and white I’m yet to see.). Some might require me to push the bike a little bit to get in the boundaries of the square – especially those close to the train tracks that you can see as a dotted line there.

Like me this flower is trying to hold onto the last bit of summer sunshine.

What I noticed about the route I took home was that while most of the new squares were on the east side of Yonge in the morning and there were more mature trees. The area on the west side that I explored today had younger trees and more sky. It all felt a little bleached after a while.

Can you see the bike in the second photo off in the distance?

Also along the way I did learn a quiet way to get to a bakery that sells Montreal style bagels. I knew of the store for a long time but it’s at the corner of Bathurst and Steeles which is quite busy. Steeles is not a great road for cycling and by bus it would be an extra stop on the way home. It’s way easier to make a stop with a bike than have to stop, give up your seat on the bus (maybe you won’t get it back) and then wait for another one to come.

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Other random things:

I am currently addicted to Biang Biang noodles. They are very wide, chewy noodles served with crushed red chilli (For my Indian friends – it’s not as scary as it looks – this is more like Kashmiri chili than actual hot red chilli). There are lots of scallions and a big scoop of minced garlic on the top. Where I go they serve it with baby bok choy which I don’t usually like but this is perfectly cooked. Definitely my current favourite thing:

After many years, Sage now has a bike. She got it to ride mostly on paths though she can also use it to fetch groceries. Saturday morning we went out early and rode 10 minutes to get breakfast. It was a lovely way to start the weekend.

And Sage is no longer the only one enjoying that she’s making clothes. She made me a fantastic shirt.

Especially cool and a bit seasonal too as not only does it have a bit of orange, it also has secret spiders on it.

I can’t wait for the next one.

What’s new in your world. What new inputs are you putting in your brains?