Dust & Shadow Fieldnotes

Abstract

The Dust & Shadow Fieldnotes were collected over the course of two years during three fieldtrips in the deserts of the North-American Southwest. They are written as a panexperiential travelogue through the landscapes of the Anthropocene. As fleeting impressions encapsulated in impressionistic writing, the fieldnotes invite a sensual reading. The words and sentences can evoke sensory responses and the echoes of visceral contact with things that were or that might be. The fieldnotes are simultaneously descriptive, reflective and suggestive. They include contextual information alongside direct experience and observation, facts and anecdotes wrapped in critical questions and speculative scenarios. They deliberately incorporate the subjective vantage points of the authors as engaged participants in the process. Resemblance to persons living or dead may be uncoincidental.

Excerpts from the Fieldnotes in the Anarchive: As Rocks Behave like Fluids