Created during a period of medical recovery, the artist book Somatic Mapping emerged from a daily ritual of slow, attentive walking. Each route, drawn from memory in ink on delicate kozo paper, charts both external movement and internal transformation. Along the way: two yellow tulips in a neighbor’s yard, a man lifting a canoe atop his car, two rabbits paused mid-lunch. These fleeting encounters become quiet notations of presence. The invisible paths my body traced across the Earth’s surface mirrored the subtler, unseen work of healing within – a process unfolding not in linear time, but in the layered, patient rhythms of healing in geologic time.
As I walked, I found myself returning to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s question, “Does Earth love you back?” With each step, the answer felt like yes. These walks became gestures of planetary kinship – acts of reciprocal attention between body and land. The book’s meandering, map-like folds echo the temporal and spatial drift of recovery, offering a tactile meditation on memory, embodiment, and the quiet generosity of Earth.
