To Walk This Land

Paying my respects to Beatrix Potter was the intention behind my walking trips to her area of Near Sawrey in England’s Lake District. I admired this woman beyond the way the larger world knew her, as an artist and writer of children’s books. Because of my own experiences, I admired the next part of her life, the sensitive and heartfelt way she dealt with personal loss and re-created her life in a place she loved, learning to farm and preserving local land from development.

Beatrix was a walker. She walked on all the property she owned, and she walked most often on trails around her home, Hill Top Farm. She knew this territory intimately. So walking felt the right way for me to experience the place that encouraged and provided her with new purpose and direction.

I planned to approach this land through photography, but I had no preconception of the potential for images. I walked the trails around New Sawrey over and over, at different times of day, in different weathers and with different energy levels. Each variation led to its own way of responding, from actively searching out images to sitting and letting them appear. As the landscape started to unfold I saw more and experienced more.

Back at home and working on the images, they gradually felt best as a book idea. A personal, physically small book that expanded the visual ideas and ways they could be taken in by the viewer. A book creates a permanently available world one can enter at will. The back story of my experience gets flushed out and personalized. The images can be viewed in natural light and the viewer can have solitude to feel within the space.

All walks, any walk is a personal entry into a place and time and space. It is my hope this small book can provide that for you, wherever you are.