The visual-verbal narratives of the Van Dyke prints were inspired by a rereading of Thoreau’s Walden. They were my first attempt to create...perhaps participate is a better word, in a complex dialogue...between images and words, between several voices, between nature and culture. Each piece includes a quote from Walden, a quote from Stanley Cavell’s The Senses of Walden, and a folksy story by me. The digitized images and text are both personal (I used to think of them as “letters” to my friends or family)—but they are also symbolic in a general sense. I often empasized the digital nature of the images by using low resolution scans and like the "Reinvention" series, never tried to "fool the eye." In this work nature... my relation to it...our attempts to domesticate it...is occasion for mediation, and conversation...with myself, and in Thoreau’s words, fellow travelers. The work tries to reconcile conflicts, and tells simple little stories about instances that seemed important, that in recalling, I might learn from. My earlier work often suggested that man was a survivor, of knowledge, as well as events. This work is more holistic, and seeks to put the world back together again.