OUR ROOTS

"With gratitude, optimism is sustainable..."

Born along the brackish shores of Bellingham, WA, on the Salish Sea, where the mountains meet the bay, I was raised to live life outside the comforts of home. I was taught to turn the TV off and go live the life we were gifted. We were left to our own devices to discover the wonders of the forest and Salish Sea. Mostly unsupervised and untethered, we explored the world my father once knew as a young man himself, learning its smells and tastes and feeling the world outside the confines of one's home.

I was not raised in the life of packers or horsemen. Instead, I was raised around motorcycles and boats as my vehicles to explore the world I was to cut my teeth in. Nevertheless, the teachings of my youth were still the same: “Where we put our intention is how we manifest the life we want.” Our hands and free minds are the most important and powerful tools we have. They will ultimately shape the world we and others will live in. It is our job to find the medium they work best in to create our art.

Dad was robbed of the ability to continue to live the life he saw fit for himself, and so, I believe, he lived through us in his later years. He lived for the days when he would sit there in the wheelchair that ataxia put him in and watch us as we would pull out of the driveway on his Harley to ride as he once did. He could no longer ride, but he could in his heart and spirit. So I'll go on living for him and, in turn, hope to tell his story so that people might understand him, his teachings, and his prison. I hope that I might inspire just one person to ask plenty of themselves and live an intentional life.