Site as Thesis

Site_ The site no longer exists as a three-dimensional landscape, rather it is an occupation of memory.  Site is a continually evolving memory of experience, an alternate, reconstructed reality.  The memory is the instance which continues to be activated and recalled- not the topography lines of the changing land.  On the trails the terrain is rough and always changing. Individuals are no longer occupying merely the immediate visceral space, but their mental reconstruction of space.  For the guide a series of moments exist where memory is relied on, the site becomes the immediate view, the smell, the pattern of vegetation.  The walkers are going through the motions along a mountain trail, but their thoughts and memories are what keeps them moving and are what are occupying their minds.  The memory becomes the site for continual growth.  The knowledge of the guides is not documented in a map or special book which they carry with them.  The migrant trail infrastructure relies solely on the memory of place as the continual path of movement. Each walk north is different every time as following the same path is impossible without a gps.  The agents rely on the surrounding atmosphere, the sun and mountains, to point them in the right direction.  The experience is not one of a singular place rather a journey of the memory through time and space.