Arizona Views

February 20, 2022 by

I’ve been away in Arizona! We had such a wonderful camping trip just north of the Mexico border in the sky island ranges that rise up out of the desert like stone crowns. I love this trip so much, we’ve been taking it for years! It feels so good to be in the sunshine after the deep dark icy cold of winter. We stayed in many beautiful campsites and, as always, we ate fresh on the road by hunting quail over our dogs which is such a pleasure and adds so much depth to a journey across a landscape — to take a place in with ALL my senses leads to such a deep understanding of an ecosystem. I highly recommend it. Go out, discover a place with all five of your senses and belong to it — breathe, touch, smell, see, hear and consume that biome. Nothing strengthens my heart and soul like belonging to a piece of land beneath a fathomless sky and having the memory of it pulsing in my veins and feeding the marrow of my bones. Too beautiful.

The highlight of this trip for us was seeing the sandhill crane migratory flocks just North of Douglas, Arizona, at a place called Whitewater Draw. We stayed the night and reveled at the miracle of thirty thousand cranes leaving a slough at dawn. Telling you about it, recalling the memory here with words, invokes awe and wonder. If you find yourself in Arizona in February next year you must take the time to experience this phenomenon! It’s spectacular.

I’ve been settling back into the studio while Robbie has been outside working hard to pull the farm online for the spring planting season. I’ll give you an official farm update in a couple journal posts wherein I’ll share with you some of our big goals for the 2022 growing season. It’s going to take an immense amount of planning and work but I think we’re going to shoot the moon! Robbie says by this fall he will be able to legitimately call himself a farmer.

I missed sharing my journey with you!

It’s good to be home and I hope you are all better than well.

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Continuing With Jacks

January 16, 2022 by

Jacks in the sagebrush racing the shadows of their own beating hearts.

Jack of diamonds.

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Winter River

January 10, 2022 by

I went walking with my camera and my wolf this afternoon, after I finished shipping out jewelry orders, after I went for a quick ski on the wintering grounds, after I did a good many things. I haven’t walked with my camera and a dog in a long while. It’s one of my favorite things to do. It’s relaxing. I take my time. I photograph whatever catches my eye. I look closer at what others might find mundane. I live in a spare landscape. Most don’t care for the steppe country. What I like about it is how I must wait for the beauty to emerge from this landscape. It is secretive, mysterious, it steps forth with caution and reluctance, like a jackrabbit emerging from a slanted sagebrush shadow. People who seek beauty and create meaningful lives in this landscape are patient and sharp eyed. Nothing is obvious here.

The riverbank is rich with color and texture this time of year. I see a blood red berry clinging to a slender branch, just hanging on, hanging on. I see the spent milkweed pods shaped like stocky canoes, soft still with the rot of fall but not quite ready to drop from their stems.

My wolf is sniffing around. When he disappears, I call his name, and so immersed I am in gazing at layers of delicate minutia, I am surprised when I look down and he is standing there at my hip, ready as a pistol.

I listen. To be near the river is such refuge for the soul. The color of it. The look of it frothing and writhing and endlessly flowing. The sound of it thundering relentlessly. Refuge.

The swans come in, elegant and elongated, drifting down to the eddy behind the big island. The wolf and I watch quietly from where we sit, in a stand of rickety brush, with our toes in the edge of the river water so we can pick up the pulse.

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Alpha Earrings

January 10, 2022 by

The smallest wolf pack with boulder turquoises, star sapphires, rose quartz, dendritic opal and ametrine. Bound for my shop shelves on January 10 @ 9AM MST.

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On the first day of the new year I had jackrabbits on my mind.

January 6, 2022 by

Happy new year, darlin’s!

I hope you all had a great Christmas and holiday season. This was our favorite Christmas we’ve ever had together. We spent it here at the farm with all our critters and managed to make the most of the meager daylight hours by xc-skiing, riding our horses, hiking, bird hunting and sledding on a 100 year old runner sled every single day. We’ve had days and days of beautiful snowfall here and brisk temperatures, proper wintery weather. The quietude of winter and the precariousness of driving on roads has been a catalyst for truly slowing down and resting. This is the first time in 15 years that Robbie and I feel like we have time, like we aren’t racing against an April 1st fire season start date and we’re thankful for the sense of spaciousness we feel this winter.

I haven’t yet taken much time to think about my goals for this new year but I do have a few projects on the go already. I’m in the midst of a behind-the-scenes website rebuild here. I HIRED SOMEONE TALENTED TO BUILD IT FOR ME and she is worth every penny! We’re talking about building me a studio building which I desperately need. I’ve never been able to fit all my big tools in my current studio — I have a couple big machines in the garage and a couple more across our yard in our big outbuilding. I need everything in one place. Desperately. My current studio space has me feeling like I’m too big a fish in too small a bowl. Which brings me to what I wanted to share today:

I’m deeply dedicated to living like I’m going to have thousands of tomorrows. This mindset causes me to invest myself in my work, in my ideas, in my crafts every single day. I’m building a life over here! This mindset also prompts me to buy the fruit trees and expensive perennials, to develop the berry patches in my gardens, to build new structures on the farm and replace old fence lines. I don’t have time to hide beneath my bed and be afraid of everything bad in the world that may or may not be out to get me. I have life and living on my mind. There’s a chance we might sell this farm and buy a different one that suits our needs more someday but I’ll never regret the time and energy and money and love I poured into this place. I’ll never regret building it up and increasing the beauty and functionality of this little farmstead. That’s a fact. If you are wondering if you should build it, if you should buy the peach tree, if you should expand, if you should hire the assistant, if you should construct the greenhouse…DO IT. DO ALL OF IT. Build. Learn. Grow. Fail. Succeed. Make it more beautiful than you found it.

The last thing I have to tell you today is this: I was going to do a big shop update at the end of the month but I already have a bunch of necklaces and earrings made and I think I’ll go ahead and prepare to list them in my shop on January 10th @ 9AM MST. Jackrabbits and wolves! Turquoise, rubies and labradorite! Mark your calendars and thank you so much for your amazing support in 2021. I look forward to serving your souls in 2022.

XX

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