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So when I came up with the idea for this project I had this really romantic and quite frankly ridiculous vision of myself “WALKING THE LAND.” I imagined myself strolling peacefully through a wilderness landscape: holding aside brush, walking along creek banks, and scrambling up rocky embankments re-tracing the first steps of my ancestors, and searching for discarded materials I could use to make my shoes.

Of course this is the kind of romanticized, Eurocentric view of land that only a Settler would have.  A view held, embarrassingly enough, until I smacked right up into the cold harsh reality of Private Property as I stood there considering the pros and cons of trespassing to make my art. It turns out that I had to mostly “drive the land.” As for materials I had to scavenge a lot of garbage out of the ditches of the highway. That’s where I found this Miracle Gro Bag. Was it used as crop fertilizer on one of the fields?

I know Robert walked the Nutfield Tract collecting rent as the local Indian Agent. I wonder if he noticed the changing seasons.

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