Printed walks for real streets
Thewalkappthatstays home.
Paper Trail folds the streets around you into an eight-page paper zine: a hand-drawn map, things to spot, a riddle and a box to sketch in. Print it, leave your phone, go. When you’re back, one photo and Gemma reads your pencil.
One sheet of paper.
Every trail is a single page from your own printer, laid out as eight small pages around one cut.
Drawn from your actual streets.
The map, the stops and the things to spot come from OpenStreetMap around where you start. Nothing is made up.
One cut, a few folds.
Crease it along the lines and it becomes a booklet that fits a back pocket. No glue, no stapler.
Then the phone stays behind.
Everything you need for the next half hour is on paper. No battery, no signal, no pings.
- a golden hydrant
- a bench with a view
- the red library
- a heron by the pond
- a mural with a face in it
- the rose garden
- the farthest thing you can see
- a post box
- the bandstand
- a palm tree, waving
What’s inside
Eight small pages. One whole walk.
Every trail is written for the place it starts, so no two are alike. This one begins at Dolores Park, San Francisco.
- i.
Cover
A title written for your street, the day’s weather and your name.
- ii.
The map
Your real streets, drawn by hand. The loop, the stops and which way is north.
- iii.
The route
Directions by landmark: left at the mural, not left on 18th Street.
- iv.
I-Spy
Things that are really there, each worth points. Tick them as you pass.
- v.
Listen
One stop where you stand still for a minute and write down what you hear.
- vi.
The riddle
The answer is somewhere on your loop. You’ll know it when you see it.
- vii.
Sketch
A box and a prompt. Nobody grades the drawing, though Gemma will describe it.
- viii.
Back cover
How to bring it home, and a note on who wrote the words and where.
How it works
From your street to your pocket in about a minute.
The screen part is short on purpose. Four steps, and only the first two happen on a screen.
- 01on screen
Pick where you start
Share your location, search an address, tap the map, or try one of three example parks. Choose 10, 20 or 40 minutes and who’s coming along.
- 02on screen
Gemma writes the pages
An open model plans a loop through real places nearby and writes every page for it. Each answer is checked against the map and the page it has to fit. If anything fails, a template built from the same streets takes over, so you always get a trail.
- 03on paper
Print, cut once, fold
Any printer and any paper. Black and white is fine. The fold guide walks you through one cut and six folds.
- 04on paper
Walk, then one photo
Tick, scribble and sketch in pencil. Back home, one photo of the sheet gets you a Field Report and a stamp in your Trail Book.
I-Spy · page 4
7 of 9 ticked
Listen · page 5
“pigeons arguing”
Riddle · page 6
the drinking fountain ✓
Sketch · page 7
a palm tree, waving
When you’re back
One photo. It reads your pencil.
Lay the sheet flat and take a picture. Paper Trail finds the four printed corner marks, flattens the page and cuts it back into panels. Gemma reads your ticks, your handwriting and your answer to the riddle, while a tick-counter checks every box a second time.
- 01Corners found
- 02Page flattened
- 03Four panels read
- 04Ticks double-checked
On screen
00min
Outside
00min
Every Field Report ends with this count. The screen should be the small number.
The Trail Book
Every walk ends up on the shelf.
Read a sheet back and The Trail Office stamps it and files it in your Trail Book: a shelf of the places you’ve walked, kept in this browser and nowhere else.
Open by design
Your street is nobody’s business.
Paper Trail sees a map of where you live and a photo of your handwriting. So it runs on an open model, keeps nothing on a server and asks you for nothing.
- 01
An open model
Gemma’s weights are public. Run it on your own computer with Ollama, or use Ollama Cloud or Google’s Gemini API if you’d rather not install anything.
- 02
No account, no tracking
There’s nothing to sign up for. Your trails, photos and Field Reports are kept in this browser, not on a server.
- 03
Paper needs no signal
Once it’s printed it works anywhere: in a park with no bars, with a flat battery, in light rain if you’re careful.
Free · about a minute · any printer
The best part happens off screen.
Pick a starting point and a length. We’ll draw the map and write the pages. You bring a pencil.