As a child, I was blessed to have a wonderfully active and adventurous grandmother mined from the hard rock of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Born in 1910 in Bodie, CA, the daughter of a miner and a seamstress, Doris contiguously broke barriers her whole life as a strong willed and independent woman. Since one of her later life pursuits was as a volunteer and amateur archeologist associated with the Nevada Historical Society I often found myself a happy stow-away on trips all over the high desert that comprised the great basin of California and Nevada. My grandmothers' frequent story telling imbedded in me a rich sense of personal history with the lands that surrounded my upbringing. From the Welsh's first adventures in Virginia City as Silver Miners to Great Grandpa George's days as a buckaroo in the cattle lands outside Yerington. I saw the arid landscape that filled my days as a giant family album. These images represent an ongoing survey of the spaces where my family was born, lived and died and serve as a visual accompaniment to an ongoing oral history I am collecting from my grandmother and the amazing friends and relatives still surviving from this generation . I hope that by preserving the imagery of my past I will continue the story of our amazing heritage as a gift for future generations.