Plot, and its smaller sister drawings, are meant as windows into the infinitesimal complexity of a land where mature willows may grow to be only inches tall.

These graphite pieces grew out of an experience at the Kluane Lake Research Station in the Yukon. Tagging along with biologists in the mountains near the world’s largest nonpolar icefield, I was struck by their practice of meticulously observing small plots of land, and using that data to draw conclusions about the larger world. Their methods gave me an idea for how to approach Kluane’s sublime scale: how better to approach such a vast place, I thought, than through a microcosm? I chose my own square meter of ground to observe and document to scale, using the tools of my trade.