This image began by photographing myself moving underneath a silver emergency blanket during a very long exposure. I edit the photograph digitally to produce a transparency that I use to create a photopolymer gravure plate, which I ink in an intaglio-style method and print on a traditional etching press. The marks I make on the plate - created through an overly vigorous wash-out process - engender a sense of the land as vulnerable, aged, distressed, and intractably mysterious; haunted by its own past and part of a present where its ecological stability is continuously threatened by the actions (or inaction) of humans. I hope the purposefully damaged plate encourages viewers to feel the image even more than they might "see" the image. The title of this work refers to my feeling of sorrow at knowing these trees, which I have known since childhood, have been marked for destruction in order to widen the narrow gravel road.