Occupying Ross's Landing on the Tennessee River at Chattanooga – an early point of Cherokee and European interface in the area, as well as one of the departure points for the Trail of Tears removal of the Cherokee to Oklahoma – The Passage invites immersive contemplation of history and place, as well as individual and cultural resilience and their relative timestreams. This permanent installation designed by Oklahoma Cherokee artists opened in Spring 2005.

Visitors descend through a passage between the Market Street Bridge and the Tennessee Aquarium through (or beside) rushing water and a series of ceramic medallions interpreting the cosmology and history of the Cherokee people to the aluminum figure of Little Water Spider mounted in the reflecting pool at the bottom of the piece.

The aluminum interpretation of a Mid-Mississippian period figure of Little Water Spider is visible at the midpoint of this video. In Cherokee cosmology, Little Water Spider carried the Sacred Fire of the People, and for this deed received the gift of prophecy from the Creator. She foretold that one day all the Cherokee would go west and suffer death, which came about in 1838-39 when nearly one-fourth of all Cherokees perished on the Trail of Tears. The Sacred Fire was carried west where it still burns today.

Many days during my Hurricane Katrina evacuation to Chattanooga, I rode my bike from Chickamauga Dam to The Passage, pulled off my shoes, walked contemplatively down and up The Trail of Tears, then rode back to the Dam. I kept up my ritual even as the October and November mornings turned chilly and the water turned cold. On many days in Fall 2005 when I got on my bike so raged out and horrified about what was happening in New Orleans that I very well could have imploded, I cured myself for the day by spinning around and marching back up those flowing stairs.

"The Passage" closed in 2006 for safety repairs – designers and architects never expected visitors to get *in* the water, it turns out, and we might have been electrocuted.

The artwork re-opened in Summer 2010.

I have observed that most visitors seem to miss the lesson and ride entirely, regarding it as a strangely compelling splash-park for kids, but a few do stop to read the signs and the medallions.

This is video of my first walk since Fall 2005.