“Each place on Earth goes deep. 
Some vestige of the old, now seemingly eclipsed place
 is always there to be had.”
 — Barry Lopez

Today we pass much of our lives in relatively homogenous physical environments, and in the non-places of the internet. Searching for real experiences in real places, we travel to far-flung destinations, where we make photographs of ourselves to prove that we were there. Yet it’s increasingly rare that we are fully present anywhere, and the knowledge that we truly belong to any place eludes many of us.

Crossing Open Ground is an invitation to listen to the older, deeper resonances beneath our feet, a ceremony of rediscovery and re-consecration of place—wherever we may be— and an invitation to practice walking as a form of resistance and hope.

From religious pilgrims to refugees seeking asylum around the world, from the freedom marchers of the civil rights movement to present-day marchers against autocracy, walking is an expression of devotion and an assertion of freedom —a transgression of the borders we construct to separate ourselves from one another and from our shared status as citizens of the earth.

In a performance of Crossing Open Ground, each musician and each listener are free to follow their own individual path through the physical and musical landscape of the work. Out of the experience of walking and listening together, a renewed sense of community and place emerges. 
The title is borrowed from a book by my dear friend the late Barry Lopez, to whom the work is dedicated.

— John Luther Adams