We would plan expeditions during class…hiding folded maps of the high desert inside our algebra books. Sometimes we drove half the night to get over the Cascades and out to where we could throw our sleeping bags in the sagebrush under a billion stars and soft shadows from the rimrock.

Today, in the midst of so much craziness, sorrow and witty demands for attention, I wander that desert still. And the same longing I felt as a kid fills me: for brothers around the campfire, for the first cold light of dawn to touch high canyon walls, for the smell of sage to come in on wind that has traveled for miles and miles.

This is the hope I now bring to my studio: for connection, for beauty, and for the exhilarating creative energy that waits beyond words.