I used to keep these stories in my pocket –
notes, loose lines, unsettled memories.
Not shy. Just unfinished.
Waiting for a place to land.

This year, the pages found a home.
A door. A room. Rooms with names.
A small, steady way of paying attention
when staying quiet no longer felt honest.

I learned to carry less and mean more.
To let a photo breathe.
To let a line end early.
To make space for silence
so the truth has somewhere to sit.

And the landscape shifted at home, too.
The house got quieter.
The family got wider.
Just enough room to hear
what the year was saying.

Off-screen, I followed a few long lines myself.
I returned to the Winds to finish a line
first walked with Dad
and completed with neighbors,
and walked the spine of the Bear River Range
until a boundary stopped being an idea
and started answering back.

I waited in the dark for a once-a-year moment.
I’ll show you… eventually.
I kept posting blooms.
I started naming bulldozers.

And somewhere between the two,
the work began to feel alive.

Underground Echoes is out there now –
not a finish line,
but a first cairn on a longer route,
made the way it needed to be made.
Ahead: an illustrated print edition,
ink and light woven into the same map,
the story becoming something you move through.

I’m grateful for what taught me to pause and prepare,
and for those who walked beside me
even when the path wasn’t marked with my name.

Here’s to the next ridge.
To the rhythm that keeps us moving.
To the quiet work of noticing,
and the long arc of getting home.

Still blooming.
Still paying attention.