I recall asking a ninth-generation chair maker for directions to his place, over the phone, just after we moved to Western North Carolina in 2001. Instead of telling me to look for certain street signs and go certain distances, he navigated by churches – telling me to pass a certain “Primitive Baptist” church and then a “Missionary Baptist” church, then a Methodist church, or whatever. He also told me what rivers and streams (“branches”) we would cross on our way. It speaks well to the kind of navigation that is so important to developing and sustaining a sense of authentic community, and a sense of place – for old-timers and newcomers alike – and the lesson has been an important one for me. Though now I navigate using a GPS in my car, making a connection with the human landscape in my photographs has remained vital to my sense of orientation. It occurred to me recently that this idea of navigation – finding the way from one known place to another – shares some of the qualities of editing and sequencing photographs, especially photographs of the human landscape. It is a kind of route finding. The place I am trying to get to has, I’ve decided, much to do with photography itself, but also something to do with a yearning to find a meaningful and authentic place to be – and looking for hints to that direction within the landscape I’m traveling through.