The Long Walk is a time-based, “open-source”, and participatory event that grew out of a collaboration with Stokley Towles as part of 4Culture’s Trails Project. For this third iteration, I will take a group of fifty trail trampers on a journey along the King County Regional Trails System (RTS) in Western Washington. Over the course of four days and forty five miles, we will travel from Puget Sound to Snoqualmie Falls. Along the route, participants will experience a shift in their sense of time, a new understanding of the local geography, and the creation of an interstitial culture.
This socially engaged work places those involved in an essentially human situation, one where walking and talking effortlessly claim their positions as fundamental sources of connection. As participants travel in an organically shifting line down the trail, strangers meet and friends deepen their knowledge of each other. Maybe it’s the passing landscape that allows just enough input, or that somehow, in looking around at our surroundings, we relax and open up. Perhaps the rhythm of our bodies synchs with some kind of cognitive function? I don’t have the answer, but the simple act of walking over an extended period of time grabs hold of a primordial space inside us and something autonomous, authentic, and exciting happens.
– Susan Robb
Long Walk Polaroids, Susan Robb, 2010