The downtime of the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 led many to discover the sacredness of a neighborhood stroll.
Melinda Morang, who at the time lived in Redlands, California, took that a step further.
“I decided to walk every street in Redlands during the height of the pandemic when I got tired of walking around and around my own neighborhood and had nothing else to do,” she said. “I always saw something interesting, even in the boring neighborhoods: a pretty garden, a friendly cat, a hideous architectural feature or an unexpected nice view.”
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Morang moved to Wisconsin’s capital in 2023. In June of that year, she took inspiration from her walks in Redlands and formed the Madison Methodical Meanderers.
“I wanted to repeat the project as a way to get to know my new city. I decided to make it a group activity as a way to make friends,” she said during a walk near Lake Monona on Madison’s east side.
It’s a small group with the ambitious goal of walking every street in Madison’s city limits. About two to six people meet up to walk about 3 to 5 miles once a week. The group explores a different area of the city each time, with Morang mapping all the routes.
“I plan the walk route in advance, attempting to create a route of the appropriate length that minimizes backtrack and doesn’t leave awkward little segments that we’ll have to collect later,” she said. “I try to move the walks around the city for the sake of variety, and I try to choose meet-up locations that have parking and are near a bus stop.”
So far, the meanderers have covered roughly a quarter of Madison streets. At the rate the crew has been going, Morang said it will take about eight years to clear all of them.
“It’s nice for me that we jump around, because I live way in the southwest corner of town,” said meanderer Moraine Shore. “Madison is just endless square miles of suburbia. But this way, I can see it’s a quaint, lovely city.”
Duane Hansen has attended most of the walks with Morang since the beginning.
“I prefer these older, well-established neighborhoods. They’re just more interesting to me than some of the suburban neighborhoods,” he said. “But you know, if you’re trying to walk the whole city, you have to take the good with the bad.”
Morang actually makes mapping software for a living with ESRI and uses those skills and tools for the walking group.
“I have my whole data set on my computer in my company software, where I mark down everything that we (Madison Methodical Meanderers) did,” she said. “And I mean, using my company software for this project is kind of like using an aircraft carrier to go for a lazy afternoon boat ride on Lake Monona. But it’s what I have.”
The group walks 12 months a year, canceling sometimes due to weather. In the winter months, Morang said, walk times are moved to be earlier in the day when it’s the brightest and warmest.
Morang organizes and announces walks through a Facebook group and an e-mail list. She also coordinates with neighborhood organizations to get the word out for each walk.
The group enjoys chatting about architecture, urban planning, nature and wildlife as they stroll. They point out plaques, maker stamps in the sidewalks and pets perched in house windows.
Morang passed along this list of memorable sights:
- A homemade bike ramp painted to look like a whale
- Surprisingly beautiful prairies with sandhill cranes in the suburban light industrial zones on the east side
- A broken-down fire truck
- A friendly neighbor who just happened to have a historic plat map of her neighborhood on hand to show us
- A house with a large spherical rock in the front yard that the owner brought home from Minnesota
- Roadside underpants
- An astroturf topiary
- All the lovely little dead ends along the isthmus that go down to Lake Monona and have little benches at the end
- A double-sided dead end
- A tree decorated with shapes and riddles…a “geome-tree”
- A house with seasonal inflatables…of all seasons
- A little kid who gave us all fresh strawberries from the garden
- Interesting businesses we’d never thought about, like rooftop grease removal
- Bunnies, bunnies, and more bunnies
- Turkeys, turkeys, and more turkeys
“Wisconsin Life” is a co-production of Wisconsin Public Radio and PBS Wisconsin. The project celebrates what makes the state unique through the diverse stories of its people, places, history and culture.
