We are having such a spring here on the steppe, I’ve never seen anything like it in this part of the country and the old timers are saying the same. The desert is luminous with green growth for the first time in forever. I’m seeing incredible lupin displays where I’ve never seen a single lupin before. It worries me for this summer and fall since all this tall grass will become fuel load that will lay as tinder until someone or something sparks it up and we’ll find ourselves contending with ripper sagebrush fires. I always have fire on my mind. It’s an old habit.

We’re working long days — 8am-5pm in the studio for me, Robbie outside running errands, fixing things, building things, moving water, tending critters, seeding hay, planting our garden. Then a run and/or horse work, then dinner, then to sleep at 10pm. Like clockwork. It’s amazing how much more I can milk out of a day with a little commitment to discipline and routine.

I’m waking up every morning right before the rooster crows. I love to beat the roosters. My bed is warm and cozy but I’m excited to begin the day, to live the day. I wake Robbie up and I tell him, “I’m so excited to live this day. I must get up!”

It’s hard to say what the best part of my day is. I’m having so much fun in my studio right now and running the steppe with the dogs has been magnificent but being on the back of a horse under this big Western sky and riding through this sagebrush sea where I can fall in love with a landscape and feel my sense of home and my sense of belonging and tether my mind and heart to gratitude for my good fortune and my ability to work hard with passion — to live here in this wide open, liberating space, to be gleaning my inspiration from a well crafted and well lived life, to be living in reciprocity with land and animals so that there is balance in my life (I take but I also give)…to be in my own mind thinking about all of that while I ride a horse through the wind in this special place…it can’t be beat. It’s the best. It’s transformational.

This is the first spring in years that I am not on contract with any companies for modeling jobs or catalogue shoots or influencer/ambassador work and it’s been great. I’ve been torn for some time now over working for these companies, lending them my name and my story to represent goods that are being manufactured overseas. It’s something I’ve struggled to reconcile with my personal values. A “Made in China” label seems like such a badge of shame to me these days for so many reasons I’m not going to get into here. I’ve been tapering off my work in this realm for years, saying no to all the projects and jobs that came my way, until finally everyone stopped asking. This spring I am totally free to do my own thing and it comes as a relief to me to immerse myself in this season, to be traveling on my own terms, to be fishing and hunting just to fish and hunt (and maybe write about it), to be pouring myself into my studio work and other creative efforts, to be using my cameras for the joy of it…to have realized that I do not need to monetize everything I do. What a great transition out of one thing and into another. I’m thankful for all the experiences I had, good and bad, while working in the outdoor industry and now I’m thankful to be out of it and focusing on simply developing my own crafts, growing and hunting my food, and having more energy to spend on my friendships, my horses, and my burgeoning interests.

Anyway, I’m just thinking aloud this morning. I mostly wanted to say howdy to you and tell you I’m thinking of you. Have an amazing day where you are. Eat great food, hug all the people you love, spend some time breathing fresh air and moving your body, smile at lotsa strangers.