land of sun & stone. what inspires me.
Living in the desert of Utah has been the best decision I have ever made for myself. For my mental & physical health…for my creativity…for finding community and myself.
Sitting on the edge of a sandstone canyon. The silence is so loud that my ears are ringing. I’m straining to hear anything at all. It’s disorienting at first… so my heart starts to race. I look down…my feet are dangling into a void so vast it makes my stomach lurch. Vertigo. The sensation that happens when your body wants to jump off into nothingness but your mind is fighting so hard against it. I realize all of a sudden I can hear something — it’s my own voice. It’s been so long since I’ve listened to it so it sounds unfamiliar. It’s telling me things about myself that I’ve tried so hard to push away. It’s forcing me to look at my life and how I’m spending my time. For once…silence…stillness. I’ve spent my whole life moving quickly to the next step - a hustle and bustle that never offered the chance for true reflection. This disorienting void of the desert is absolutely terrifying…and completely necessary for my survival.
It’s here in this disorienting orbit of sensations that most people decide they dislike the desert. They think everything looks the same. It’s all just a bunch of rocks…no life. It’s too hot…the sun too harsh. I don’t blame them for pushing it away. Maybe they felt that vertigo too.
But it’s that same disorienting void that some people fall completely in love with the desert. Maybe they needed to hear themselves like I did. And even though they were terrified…they listened.
It is within the desert’s harshness that so much beauty and life is found. The fragile ecosystems of organisms so highly adapted to the range of extremes. The cultures that have spent thousands of years working with this unforgiving climate to survive and thrive. And the water…winding it’s way down from the islands in the sky - the volcanic mountain ranges that burst up from the red rock into high elevations and feed the dry desert below them. The precious resource trickles its way down into the sandstone, or over it - carving the most breathtaking patterns into the rock for miles until it hits a muddy river. Oh…and these muddy rivers…they’re nothing short of a miracle. To float opon their turbulent, unpredictable currents is where I’ve learned to surrender. To step into myself yet simultaneously let go of so much of self that I no longer needed.
This is why I create. I will continue to sit on cliffs and float on rivers. I will continue to listen, learn and grow in that disorienting space of nothingness and everything. And this website is where it will live. It will also live in physical handmade goods that I will create while immersed in this landscape. It is through my art that I will give back to this place that I found myself. If creating means I can donate to organizations conserving, protecting and educating about this incredible place…then that is my life’s mission.
all original photos copyrighted by Coyote Crafted LLC, 2022.
