Rebecca Diederichs | commentary

Trail Hitch

On our first visit north, I found myself sitting on a granite outcropping deep in the terrain of the Tree Museum. As a hopeless navigator, I kept my eye on small waving strips of coloured plastic. Tied to tree branches to indicate the way back to the cottage, these tiny markers in fluorescent green, bright red and sky blue were the only things (were I completely on my own) that would prevent me from becoming irretrievably lost in the forest. To make sense of this dense wood, I required the punctuation of those wind-whipped flashes of red, blue and green to communicate my connection back to open space.

Acknowledging my sense of claustrophobia in the overzealous embrace of the trees, I brought along my clothesline when I returned to the forest. Not only might it prove useful in the event of inclement weather, the brightly painted clothes pegs could come in handy as trail markers! Arranged in a repeat pattern like a musical score or poem, my densely packed line of pegs formed a visual response to nature's call.

Rebecca Diederichs

< back