Step One: Come up with some ideas.

I find that if I spend time outside, alone, for any length of time, words and phrases start to surface, and if I spend time writing, unexpected things will come together. The illustrations were not created at the same time as, or in correlation to the texts; but mostly during time spent in the library, and drawing the things collected on my hikes. It was not important that the images connect literally with the text on the facing pages, so I was at liberty to collect and collage many different things together until I came up with images that I felt were symbolic. (One unfortunate butterfly was even laid on a photocopier bed). Some of the illustrations are paired with fragments of text, as though they were removed from a previous context, reinforcing their ‘symbolic’ nature. Some have likened the resulting images to an Edwardian field journal, or to a memory.