Brian Borrello has just completed his third month of a year-long tenure as Artist in Residence for the Regional Trails System (RTS) in King County’s Department of Natural Resources and Parks. He recently took a 4 day, roughly 100 mile solo trek on the RTS by bicycle. Here is his report from the field.

 

During my travel I intended to document sites and existing art and special trail features, look for art and amenity opportunities on the trails, and determine how the qualities of the sites could inform the potential aspects of future artworks, efforts, and attractions. I felt it necessary to experience the trail as a system, and to travel the trail alignments in a continuous fashion in order to compare and contrast the unique qualities of the various trail segments.

 

My purpose was also to try to explore and analyze the trails as a connected system, and I pointedly began and ended my travels from the same spot.

I started downtown at the King Center (my weekly workplace) early Tuesday morning, July 26, 2011, under ominous heavy gray clouds, and a prediction for days of rain ahead. From there, with my bicycle fully loaded with camping gear and provisions, I pedaled a few blocks west to the Elliot Bay Trail and rode north, across the locks in Ballard to the Burke Gilman Trail, then east to the Sammamish River Trail to the Tolt Pipeline Trail, to the Snoqualmie Valley Trail, then south to visit Snoqualmie Falls, continuing west to the Snoqualmie Ridge Trail, down the backcountry Whitaker Trail, to Preston-Snoqualmie trail, to Issaquah-Preston Trail, (including a new section at High Point, just created in partnership with WASHDOT), west to I-90 Trail, then back to downtown Seattle. I returned to King County headquarters Friday at sunset on July 29.

 

The journey was not without its challenges. As the trails do not necessarily connect one to the other, this found me discovering those connections on private roads, shoulderless country highways, aggressive traffic crossings, and unmarked trail entrances. Existing maps did not always convey the nuances of trail locations. Availability of creature comforts was tenuous and my overnight accommodations were improvised along the way.

 

During the trip, I took hundreds of photographs of existing conditions and possible art and design sites. With a GPS unit attached to my camera, I geo-tagged each picture for mapping and analysis. I conducted numerous interviews with trail users, and filled a journal with notes reflecting my observations on the trails.

 

Along the way, I absorbed an enormous amount of information and perceptions.

 

I noted the traits of different trail alignments based on their previous and present uses-  utility corridors for water or electricity, “rails-to-trails,” freeway embankments, and flood-controlling levees. Sometimes lonely gravel paths abruptly transitioned into perilously busy concrete roadways, and back again. And it seemed that most use patterns involved variations on labor and recreation, work and play.

 

I catalogued a “hit-list” of the variety of trail users that I encountered- pedestrians, equestrians, and bicyclists; skateboarders, scooters, and roller skaters; a traveler in a wheelchair zooming by and slow families pushing babies slowly in their prams; marathon runners and aluminum can collectors; bike groups off for a distant destination and an elder woman stepping forward in focused contemplation.

I found the trail system also to be an interesting network of transportation corridors, that also exists as shared public space, and unique in that its linear qualities offer a narrow yet extensive series of connective passageways through a variety of municipalities, ecologies, social and cultural strata.

 

Most importantly, I perceived that each trail possesses and expresses its own unique identity and personality.

 

For example, the Burke-Gilman Trail- beginning near the Puget sound, asphalt and concrete paved, conveying a large commuter user population, with its mediated, transitional qualities of culture, industry, and utility, meandering through dense urban and suburban human habitats, sometimes frenetic transportation corridor, sometimes quiet natural immersion, with views to Lake Washington, possessing cultural and artistic artifacts that are reflective of its use patterns, constituency, and terrain…

 

 

…to the remote Snoqualmie Valley Trail, with its rustic, unpaved, elevated gravel pathway that shoots a straight line through natural areas, has views to valley farms and grassy meadows and wetlands, is devoid of “art” and “high culture,” but in its mostly serene and silent elegance, sometimes offers sporadic encounters with weathered vestigial farm and railroad artifacts.

 

These trails allow travel through this region in a very different way than one may be accustomed to. They are a great undiscovered pleasure, an underutilized asset, and although they are owned and managed by King County, they belong to us.

 

They are our trails.

 

 

Now inspired, and with a richer, deeper understanding of our Regional Trail System, over the months ahead I will proceed to construct my comprehensive art planning, mapping, and creative recommendations, with intention to optimize the RTS in its design, stewardship, and most importantly- its user experience.

 

Photos by Brian Borrello