Barbara Schneider
"Walk My Way"
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| (Photos by Patrick Fraser) |
The Way is Made by Walking, written by Arthur Paul Boers is about his pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago in Spain. The title alone defines me. Walking has long been my salvation. It is my way of meditation, escape, and problem-solving as well as being my preferred way to observe the world. I have done walks across England, New Zealand, Italy, Japan, the Alps, and in the San Jacinto Mountains.
Almost everywhere I walk I see cairns -- stacked stones placed there by the human hand that serve a variety of purposes: to mark the beginning or end of a trail or a significant spot along the way. In the ancient past they marked burial mounds and ceremonial places. In the arctic regions they are used extensively as there are few other natural landmarks. In England I saw huge cairns that were built to warn invaders from Scotland that they were at the border.
My cairn reminds me of all the wonderful walks I have taken. It reminds me of beautiful vistas, places where I had a moment of inspiration, resolution of a problem or an overwhelming moment of grief. It reminds me that there are walks to come, places to explore, and more time to think and imagine.
I painted, needle-felted, and stitched representations of lichen onto Fosshape, a material that was heated and wrapped around rocks to assume their shapes, then stuffed and assembled each on top of a real rock base to create my cairn.