Sometimes we find ourselves alone and isolated from the world. This isolation can be either chosen or involuntary, or both at the same time. Each morning, I choose to be alone, by myself, on my bike. The day's coolness gets me out of bed and onto the saddle. The morning light and its beauty, the quiet within the forest, bear tracks padding down a dusty trail. And when there is a moistness in the air, there is a particular smell that triggers the memory of my Father, sitting next to him in the old Forest Service pick-up as we rock side-to-side to go fishing at "no tell'um lake" or hunting pheasant or deer.

And although my Dad has now been gone for over two years, I will still round a bend in the trail or drop down into a ravine, and, there it is. I inhale the earthy fragrance embedded in the fibers of his denim hunting jacket, a smell so overwhelming it becomes registered inside my brain and absorbed into my bloodstream, reaching into every cell within my body. The memories come flooding back to those days some fifty years ago. It is at these times, both then and now, that I miss him and acknowledge his presence in each of the installations I create.