Trace is a document of an experience moving from west to east. An exploration tracing in reverse the routes and passages to the early frontier of what was once known as the Northwestern Territories. Old maps and an 1811 river guidebook, The Navigator, served as my compass in exploring a landscape now distant from these early interpretations and representations. The use of these as my tools turned this journey into an exercise in exploring the discontinuity between expectations and the in situ experience of a place.

This discontinuity continually led back to my inability to identify and feel the sensations so inherently bound to the idea of a frontier. The sense that land extends days beyond the horizon, is one that has all but been cinched up by the modern speed of travel in planes and along interstates. With space so expansive the expectations could only have been at a high point.

I live at the western boundary of what was this frontier, the trailing edge of land that last provided anyone with that fleeting glimpse of the unknown slipping into the familiar. My life and experience would perhaps be unimaginable to early westbound settlers, and despite my ability to read their letters and journals - I too cannot truly grasp their experience. The sensation of being on the peripheral boundary of your cultural and geographic world, confronting a wall of nature, is not a sensation that I can ever access.

I view my travels alongs these routes in some ways like an inverted and transmuted historical reenactment. My intention was not to recreate experiences of mythologized moments in time. I was seeking my own experiences on the near side of the historical bell curve. A view of the present through the lens of all that has occurred between my experiences and the experiences of those that first followed these routes.