Héen Táak (in the water: in the river)
Chilkoot Trail, Summer 2019
During the summer of 2019, in partnership with Parks Canada, the US National Park Service, and the Yukon Arts Center, I spent three weeks as an Artist-in-Residence hiking the Chilkoot Trail – a 33-mile trek through the Coast Mountains from Dyea, Alaska, to Bennett, British Columbia. The trail is now synonymous with grueling stories of prospectors traveling to the Yukon during the Gold Rush in the late 1800s, but originally the trail was used as an important trading route for the Tlingit people.
In Tlingit, Héen Táak literally means “in the water” or “in the river.” During my residency on the Chilkoot, I spent time observing and recording the many bodies of water I encountered along the way. As we hiked upriver from the ocean – past lakes, rivers, glaciers – I explored how these bodies of water are part of the larger hydrologic and geologic systems in the area, and considered the ways in which humans have been traversing the same trails and part of the same hydrologic systems for thousands of years.
