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When I was 21, I boarded a one-way flight from Boston to Zurich to spend seven months working at a school in Switzerland. I arrived heartbroken from a breakup and unprepared for the loneliness of living abroad. But the experience ultimately taught me how to be alone, independent, and comfortable in my own company. Introduction…

DJing, facilitation, and landscape painting as relational art forms rooted in presence, energy, and trust. Landscape painting as a meditative creative process Landscape painting – my forte – is a fairly contained art form and a deeply personal creative process. I decide when I paint, what I paint, and how I go about it. I…

As a landscape painter living and working off-grid in Arizona, I’ve learned that being a full-time working artist is about returning, again and again, to my work. Even beyond income, I didn’t realize how much I needed this until spending too much time away. When I’m away from painting, like any work I feel the…

I am, as my stepdaughter Reesa would say, a New Year’s Resolution girlie. I enjoy the process of reflection and intention-setting heading into the arbitrary marker that is a new year. If my 2025 had a headline it might be “The year that I turned forty”. And my 2026 preview is something along the lines…

In 2015, the year I turned thirty, I trained for and raced an iron-distance triathlon. Why? Well, thirty’s that first milestone age where women tend to start in about age, wrinkles, etc. But I didn’t want to focus on that. I was more interested in pushing and celebrating what I can do. Ten years later…

Pictured: A November afternoon about six years ago at our home in Palmer, AK. Wes riding his fat tire bike out of our driveway for a final sunny ride before the sun disappeared behind the ridge for the rest of the winter (not exaggerating: we lived in the “shadow”). We’ve been slowly removing items from…

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking and churning recently – more, even, than normal. You might know me as extroverted and enthusiastically sincere, and that’s true – sometimes. What’s also true is I’m a brooder. And it’s brooding season – here in fall, and here in the United States. What I want in…

That’s a bit of a misleading title. This was the phrase that popped into my mind when I was asked if I am feeling ready to leave Reno after another summer here. Bailey and Becky – our friends and summer-landladies whose basement we rent – were sitting next to me and I could see them…

One year ago, I walked into Nevada Sunset Winery on 4th Street in Reno. I’d never been. Going into a new environment alone always gives me low-level anxiety: I don’t where where I will sit; are there norms I’m unaware of; what if I say something stupid, etc. And this time, the stakes were higher…

People seem to get uncomfortable when I say it: 40’s a weird one. It’s an age other people turn, not me. My parents are (were) 40. As the Fleet Foxes put it, “So now I am older / than my mother and father / when they had their daughter / what does that say about…

Last year I was on the phone with my early 20-something stepdaughter Reesa, catching up on life things like we usually do. She brought up a new Internet idea she’d caught wind of – a “medium distance relationship”. “What’s that?” I asked disdainfully, ready to hate the idea of anything new to me. She told…

Before we moved into the Airstream, I had this loose vision of what it would be like based on – shocker – stuff I’d seen online. You’ve probably seen the video: there’s a frame around a beautiful beach scene. You quickly realize the the POV is from the open doors of a campervan, and you’re…