"This activity you began as a means to combat boredom has blossomed into a day-to-day adventure."”

DENVER — As the cold finally creeps over Denver, I find myself spending more of my post-work afternoons inside than I’d like to admit.

In an effort to dispel my winter blues, I fired up my summer 2025 playlist last night. In some act of fated reminder, “Walking” by Chris Acker came on first. The song was introduced to me this summer, amid my unending trek across the city by foot. Its opening lyrics go as follows: “I like walking cuz I don’t need a reason.”

Did I walk about 500 miles across Denver in 2025—through crowded alleyways and over jagged sidewalks, on paved park paths and through trudges of snow—for no reason? What was I looking for? Am I overthinking this?

I ultimately decided that Acker was half-correct (a great trait for any songwriter). I started walking the Mile High City because it was something to do, which is hardly a reason at all. What I found during my journeys, however, was thousands of reasons to continue, and a nucleus for it all—Washington Park.

Walk with me for a moment.

The center of one of Denver’s first proper neighborhoods has remained relatively unchanged since German landscape architect Reinhard Schuetze carved out a 165-acre plot between Downing and Franklin Street in the late 1800s.

There are two paths that circle the perimeter of Washington Park: One newer, asphalt paved multi-purpose loop, and a wider, original dirt track. If you want to get the full experience, it’ll run you 2.2 to 2.5 miles, and thirty minutes to an hour, depending on your pace.

For some, the appeal of Washington Park lies in its two primary bodies of water, Smith Lake and Grasmere Lake. But there’s so much to see, especially if you adapt a true active walking approach to your adventure.

I first learned about this in Frédéric Gros’s A Philosophy of Walking. Pick out a spot hundreds of yards away—a dot of color in Washington Park’s garden, a marking on a tree near the main plot of grass, or a sign near Grasmere Lake. Focus all of your attention on it. Walk slowly, and with intention, toward this point of interest.

It will become increasingly clear, until finally, that dot of color reveals itself as a hummingbird on a sunflower. That marking is a heart, carved into bark by knife, and that sign is telling you that you can’t and shouldn’t jump into the lake. 

Tomorrow, you’ll come back and find new things to focus on, while revisiting that heart or that sign or that bird on that flower. And pretty soon, Washington Park, or any park, street, or place deemed walkable will become a feeling, rather than a spot on a map. It manifests as a canvas in your mind that may cloud as you drift from it, but it won’t disappear.

Then you branch out. Historic homes lining Washington Park become familiar: their stained-glass windows and notches on the wooden steps are now key points in your web you’ve spun. You try not to buy coffee if you can help it, but you feel like a regular at the shop a few blocks down from the park—the “C” in cappuccino on their outdoor menu is a different color from the rest of the chalk. You’ll notice these things. You’ll appreciate the mundane. I think that’s amazing. 

Gradually, something beautiful will start to happen. This activity you began as a means to combat boredom has blossomed into a day-to-day adventure.

I can’t say for certain if this is a story about Washington Park, or lyric theory, or active walking. What I can say for certain is you absolutely do not need a reason to go for a walk, but finding reasons to go on a second walk, or a third, or a seventieth will turn that park near your home into something special. 

From Nederland, head east down Boulder Canyon Drive towards Boulder, then take U.S. 36 toward Denver. Take I-25 South and take any exit between Alameda and Louisiana to get to Washington Park.