2004 - Kelso

It's always funny how words can have the power to move people into action, and to motivate people to try and see for themselves.

If It weren't for Lewis and Clark going on about some pretty mountains, America wouldn't be the great, strange sprawling landscape that it is for us today. The American landscape is a gift to be opened by all of us, but not the kind of gift that belongs to us... it's the kind of gift that let's belong to it.

It's so quiet here in Kelso it makes me want to cry the way you do when someone does something so selfless you're at a loss for words, or when you realize how much you love someone. The sand is cold from the night before and the sun is hot- and together, these sensations combine to form an experience of indescribable comfort.

It is the quiet that allows me the privilege to hear two crows laughing in the distance while they play. It is the boom that you hear as sand cascades below your feet on the dunes that allows you a sonic manifestation of the relationship between your body, and the earth.

I saw a tree, and its branch had grown too long, and too far out and it had broken off. As I sat on it, I thought about how the breakdown of this tree had sort of just- occurred- and that this was neither good nor bad, nor meant to be- just that once it was a certain way, and not it's not anymore.