Wild Moon
Get out there, and get some altitude
This year, to challenge myself to write more regularly, I send out dispatches around each new moon to reflect on the personal and collective themes I feel pulled to share for each lunation.
If you like what you see and read and you’d like to get onto my custom art piece commission list for this year (2026), please fill out this form.
A content warning: this month’s moon dispatch contains mention of family death, and musings on ecological devastation. Take care of yourself. If you are here for studio updates, please scroll to the end!
Hello and happy new moon in Cancer, beautiful people. Wild weather we’re having! It’s raining as I type this, thank goodness, but every previous day this week the all-time heat record was broken.
You survived it, you are here. No small feat, surviving. It’s not all about our merit, either, in fact it rarely is. The fragility of our precious life has been extra pressing on my consciousness lately. Both because of gestures wildly around and because…this past month, my cousin passed.
A heart attack in the middle of the freeway, family in the car. Thank God no one else was hurt. They were on their way to Gettysburg, to see the fireworks. He was an attorney, a father of 3, a two-time cancer survivor, and a kind, generous man. I wish I got to know him better. We were born over 10 years and a state apart, and though our parents did their best in our early years and I went to his wedding, I don’t know his favorite color or even what specific kind of law he practiced. I don’t know what position he played on his high school football team, but I do remember he was really good at it. I am reminded once more that we are strangers to most, even those we love, even family. Not because we want to be, but because we are caught in the flow of living our unique and always somehow busy lives. I wish I could speak to him again, let him know how much I respected him, how much I appreciated the cards and fresh family photos he would send me at Christmas.
Hey cousin: We are never guaranteed our days, nor time, and I deeply appreciate all the times we got to share together. I promise I’ll keep in touch with your wife, your kids. I am thinking of sending them some paintings I have made this summer…do you think they would like that?
This summer, I have been hiking and backpacking all over public lands. My husband and I are celebrating our 10 year anniversary by hiking over 100 miles together, spending nights snuggled in our light-as-a-feather tent, peeking out at dark to see the Milky Way. I am not a fast hiker, but I am good at savoring scenery, and I know how to talk myself into going just another mile or 2 when I must. 10 years ago, as the budding romance that would become my marriage began, I hiked 165 miles with my Dad. My partner drove “food drops” out to us that sustained our pace and mileage. This summer, my husband and I are hiking parts of that same trail. It is a joy, sharing these peaks, valleys and alpine lakes with my sweetheart, but it is also a grief, because so much has changed.
How do I speak about the world I remember, and the world we are losing? When I hiked this whole trail the first time, I remember more water. More fecundity. More bugs, more LIFE, fed by the high mountain snow pack that still hadn’t melted deep into August. Just yesterday, it was announced that two great national monuments would be cut to less than half their size. Just last week the endangered species act was gutted. Just last month, it came out the extent to which the fed has cut the U.S. Forest service and the National Park service. When I went to Yosemite earlier this summer, there were active logging operations happening within the park. I know, I know, it’s all too much to hold in one’s head and body at once. At yet, here we are, here we continue to be. These attacks on our collective lands hurt everyone, but these threats feel especially personal to me.
My parents first met working National Park Service jobs, one a ranger, one a seasonal woodland fire fighter. Public lands are inherent to my very conception. I literally wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for them. Water doesn’t flow in the summer here if the mountains don’t catch it as snowfall first. I feel most myself when I am out there in the high-altitudes walking. It’s such a fragile and profound privilege to be able to walk on these lands, and make little sketches of these sacred places.
Making low-stakes art and being outside are the best things I know how to do for myself when I feel griefy, sad, and overwhelmed. This summer, I made a little watercolor kit out of a small notebook a stranger gave to me, some paints I’ve had since I was a teenager, and these awesome brushes that John Muir Laws, naturalist, author, and illustrator recommended at a workshop I took from him, also as a teenager. It’s been fun to work at such a small scale, while painting humbling mountains, lakes and trees. It’s also been a challenge, to render astonishing beauty in just a few strokes. I know it’s been good for me to paint like this again.
This is what I feel drawn to this moonth: rewilding my mark-making. Tending to what hurts. Finding shelter in well-engineered gear and the wild, high places where the wind sings. Fighting back, claws out, and paradoxically, being a little less hard on myself and those closest to me, in proximity and heart. Softening into rich browns and deep greens and clear azure water bodies. Keeping it silly simple, in as many ways as possible.
May you take care of yourself and your wild animal body as the moon turns New again. May you find something to do with your hands that feels fun and easy, but enticing. Get outside if you can, and get some fresh air. Inhale and exhale deeply, grateful for a moment for oxygen passing through your airways. I am grateful to be able to share this breath with you.
Studio Happenings this Month
Thank you for reading this article and supporting my work with your attention and time. If you’d like to get onto my custom art piece commission list for this year (2026), please fill out this form. This form is an interest list only-there is not obligation to purchase custom art from me if you fill out this form. First come, first made. Please be aware that my commission process is slow and handmade; your interest and patience is deeply appreciated.
In the spirit of these little nature paintings that I shared above, I want to tell you about my dear friend and sometime artistic collaborator Naomi Di Vine. Last year, she invited me to The Lodge to create landscape art using a unique process of incorporating actual found natural materials (like pine cones, needles, leaves, etc. ) into the artwork. I loved how mine turned out, and it’s thanks to her inspiration. This month, she is hosting more events at The Lodge, including a market on the 18th and a glass etching class on the 28th of this month. Join us for tomfoolery and art making if you can! I will be there as an enthusiastic participant. More details at the links above, and here.
I can’t let this newsletter end without sharing one last image with you. Many moons ago, I had the privilege of doing a live-painting and poetry event at The Green Room. This painting was mostly finished that night, but not quite. It’s been hanging out on my easel, staring me down, but now 2 years later, I finally realized how to finish it. It feels so good to finish something! This painting is not of a real place, but it is inspired by a real feeling: saudade.
