Walking then, as now -

"Coyote Walking the Fences"
digital collage by Mick Mather

Today's post is based on a real event experienced well over a decade ago on a series of walks at Beaver Lake Nature Center in Central New York. While making the 3-mile Lake Loop one late, spring morning I spotted a coyote standing in the middle of the trail, staring at me while holding his ground. Not flinching from my end of the quarter-mile gap that separated us I ran straight for him. Soon enough he turned and hightailed it into the deep woods without so much as a by your leave. As I continue to go back through old files, virtual - hard copy - my memory, I realize just how long the act of walking has informed my artistic life as an unrecognized presence for much of the time. Well, more on this later I bet, I'm still collating data.