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Paper short abstract

The paper explores two autoethnographic walking narratives— in Finland and Latvia—in forging familiar and magical routes of belonging. I apply concepts and methods of attunement, attentiveness, and noticing through embodied engagement with place and more-than-human encounters.

Paper long abstract

For several years, I have embarked on two significant types of walks on a daily and occasional basis. One is my daily well-being walk, which involves wandering in the close surroundings of a suburb in the South of Finland. I take the occasional walk when I visit Latvia and my parents in the little seaside town in the bay of Riga. The first walk embodies my attempts to forge the routes of belonging and to emplace myself in a land where I always feel a slight stranger. The occasional walks in Latvia are a boost of familiarity and belonging through my embodied presence on the land I descend from.

In this paper, I unravel two walking narratives based on auto-ethnography. It is an experimental wandering and storytelling through the experience of places and routes we thread to forge identity and a sense of belonging. I discuss the rhythms, organisation, flow, and tempo of both types of walks that are part of the art of noticing and the art of attentiveness towards the surroundings of the walks. I show how attuning oneself to the diverse sensorial experiences, by engaging with a broad array of more-than-humans (plants, animals, rocks, waterbodies), opens space for creating and re-creating stories of the familiar and the magical. More broadly, I ask how and if the immersive walking narratives can contribute to the mindful practices of belonging and becoming with more-than-human and environments against the backdrop of uncertainty stemming from the doom of polycrisis.