Hill Walks: A local creative project
I haven’t published any content on my website in a very long time. At the beginning of 2026 I struggled to maintain a consistent creative routine: some drawing, little photography, barely a line of writing. In mid-February, while out on a run, I had an idea for a long-term project: Hill Walks, a quarterly booklet about ‘my’ backyard hill, Kraví hora.
Hill Walks is a way for me to document my local nature for a year and do so through my favourite creative media: photography, writing and drawing. The plan is to release four issues of the zine, one per quarter. The January-March issue is out, and I’m now working on the April-June one.
All photos in this post are of the January-March issue. The text below is a slightly adapted version of the Introduction to issue #1.
This is a trial run. ‘I’ve started a new creative project’ is something I hadn’t said in a while, but now I have one and I intend to keep at it for its entire duration till the end of the year.
For months now I’ve been struggling to unravel a tight bundle of creative knots. A few intensive courses I took over the last few months of last year left me drained and empty. They all made for such enriching, insightful experiences: I learnt so much from all of them. However, being busy with online lessons, assignments and homework, I had no time left to produce anything of my own.
The third and last course ended right when the Christmas holidays began. By then I’d forgotten all about my creative habits, and I was burnt out to the core. I wasn’t sure how to settle back into a daily routine: I didn’t know where to start. So I spent the holidays drawing: no agenda, no plan, just drawing. I finished two sketchpads: page after page filled with birds, landscapes, gouache attempts, more birds, and virtually any other animal that sprang to mind.
When January came, it was time to resume my regular weekly tasks. I expected the festive break would help me ease back into it, that it’d just happen on its own. It didn’t. I tried and tried, but to no avail. Not only was I constantly chasing tasks I had set for myself – I did have those, I had -have- so many ideas for series and projects. I was also not able to manage all of my creative practices on a regular basis: while drawing came easy, writing and photographing didn’t. I felt tired and lost. Anxiety swept over me, because what if I couldn’t find a way back to myself?
It took weeks of frustration and hopelessness to spot a crack in the code. It was barely visible, but it was there, so I made a dent and started unravelling the bundle of creative knots. I was out on a run one Saturday in February. I followed my usual route around the hilltop path of Kraví hora (Cow Hill), just behind my place. I’d just taken a right turn behind the observatory building when the switch flip happened.
I’d been meaning to create a project about Kravák (as Kraví hora is known among locals) for years, yet for a number of reasons I’d never shaped the intention into a plan: either I didn’t know how to develop the idea, or I had other priorities, or I was about to start a course and I had no time to devote to it.
That morning on the hill, though, I knew I had it. It was still rough, but it could amount to something. It felt exhilarating to have an idea I could work on. It was real and I had to finish my run fast so I could get back home and jot down my thoughts on my notepad. So I did.
I would produce a quarterly journal about my hill. A log, a diary, a record – a way for me to document all things nature about my local nature: birds, trees, flowers, seasons. I’ve been doing that for years, but more out of habit than with a plan.
I aim to work on this project for the whole of 2026 and publish a dedicated booklet every three months. The whole content of the booklet, which I’ve called Hill Walks, will be related to Kraví hora and the almost-adjacent forested area of Wilsonův les (Wilson Woods). The zine-like format will set the framework for the media I use: photography, writing and drawing. The quarterly frequency will allow me to work on the project at a slower pace, while also leaving time for anything else I may want to do on the side.
For months I’ve pressured myself into making progress, but the sheer impossibility to make room for everything paralysed me and pushed me down a Catch 22-like rabbit hole: ‘I don’t have time to go out for photos, I have to finish that drawing’, but also ‘I don’t have time for writing, I have to wake up early to go out for photos’. I hope this booklet project will help me restore a method to my creative process, while also recovering some of the joy I seem to have lost along the way.
While there’s an inevitable personal level to this project, Hill Walks is also in line with a core notion within my creative practice, that of ‘backyard nature’. Backyard nature is the nature we walk through in our everyday life, often without appreciating our closeness with it. It’s my favourite nature to explore and uncover: it comes with lots of stories, but its quiet beauty often hides in plain sight.
Kravák has been my everyday backyard nature for years, so this project is also a way for me to celebrate a familiar place that means a lot to me. This hill is my safe haven, my escape from anxiety in a city that feels too often too estranged. Through Hill Walks I hope I can give back at least some of the love I’ve been receiving on each and every one of these walks up my hill.
