My father’s lands and those of his father & his father’s father are still in my family.  We own mountains, rivers and trees as much as men can own nature and our name echos thru the history books of those wild places.  We were pioneers in the forest and explorers in the rugged, rocky landscape which surrounds the little patch of mountain dirt where I was born.  It is a place where a child can run free through the cedars, where seasons are strongly defined, and where everyone who knows anyone, knows us.

It is a legacy we struggle to hold onto~as we venture out of the shadow of the mountains and scatter throughout the rest of the world.  Yet, that untamed terrain has shaped us, and the same pioneering spirit which sent my great grandfather trekking across a dusty wagon trail flows through all of our veins, sending most, if not all of us, on our own twirling adventures across this great earth.  Yet that piece of mountain, that patch of blue, that dash of green holds us all captive and inevitably, we all return.  Whether that’s for a lifetime, a day, a month, a year or only for a fleeting moment, there’s something in that mountainous breeze which heals us, for it’s the place our blood calls home.