I draw inspiration from walking the land. I follow old paths and new. Human paths, animal paths, and paths bound to no biological histories at all. I express these experiences in writing, visual art, and other mediums.
I look for various methods of asserting that land is not merely soil, but rather a symbiosis of interdependent parts resulting in the gestalt we call the ecosystem.
In my visual art I exaggerate the movement of these parts or elements to imbue them with a sense of agency. My renderings of the observed ecosystem highlight the important roles of stone, rain and sunlight among the more obvious flora and fauna, while also including the human histories that run through individual places.
In my writing and music I consider other-than-human viewpoints. I let the deer, the clouds, the rock, the mountain, and the juniper all be centers of consciousness. This I do as a ceremony in adulation of intelligences beyond my own. But also as an effort to allow my own center of consciousness to shift to points outside of my own head, that false center of self.
I believe that the effort to view the horizon or a tree as observers themselves is a critical step towards developing a healthy relationship with the land.
The upcoming publication of “Connection Prayer: Tracing One Deer’s Path Across a Fragmented Landscape” will be my most in-depth effort to distill these concepts. Stay tuned for updates.
Through this process I have become more familiar with backpacking than I ever expected. As a result, I write trip reports, gear reviews, backpacking how-tos, and other related articles. I intend to emphasize the ways that backpacking can initiate the experiences outlined above. A good trip, for example, is one that blurs the boundaries between land and self. Good gear is gear that functions so well as to remain unnoticed by the user, opening them up to more important experiences. This sort of writing can be found here in my blog and in other various publications. Some of my favorite pieces have been published by Backpacking Light where I have a column called The Overlook.