Inspired by Erika Owen’s upcoming book, “The Art of Flaneuring,” I took a nice walk at Cheesman Park, in my nearby metropolitan area, Denver.

Thankfully, Denver is a mostly safe city, which I have spent many weekends in the past exploring so I familiar with it. It made this trip into my nearest urban area a fun outing to go solo and to flaneur through.

Her guiding comments about flaneuring in a big city (Denver is pretty small compared to other big cities in America), were as follows:

• Start at one end of the downtown area and work your way to the other end
• Don’t limit yourself to just one activity
• Take a rest on a bench
• Find a local library to flaneur through
• Take notice of all of the sights, sounds, smells you may have never noticed before
• Journal about the experience

This blog post is my journal:

I went to Cheesman Park today to flaneur around at the Cheesman Park Art Fest. It was a great place with lots of sights, sounds, and things to notice. There were food trucks with smells of fresh food. There were dogs happily playing. There were people playing all kinds of park games. The art at the show was so varied. From photography to fine art paintings to glass sculptures there was a little bit of everything. I took in a stirring rendition of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World,” and a guy who sang and played the harmonica.

Along the way I stopped under trees, at park benches, at picnic tables to scribble some notes and poems to share here in the coming week. The intriguing art work and bustling crowds were an excellent source of inspiration. Some things light and uplifting, other things more somber. I had a great outing flaneuring around the park without any agenda.

– Jason