A few days from this day, we’ll once again honor those we call, or have called Father in our lives. Be they of biological link, be they of symbolic beauty, it’s the time we reflect, we celebrate, and we aim our hearts back at those that helped create us.

I find the lessons from the fathers to be poignant ones, I find them to feel different, to carry a flavor unique to those taught by the mothers in our lives. I find them shaped in stranger ways.

Perhaps you do, too. Let’s do this…

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Living through Summer in Montana means living with the ever-present threat of a natural disaster that could realistically destroy everything you love at any moment: Forest Fire.

I tell you this because when contingency planning for the possibility of one ravaging the mountain we live on, we’re constantly forced to assess what items we’d want to grab q…

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In the immortal words of Justin Timberlake, “It’s gonna be MAY.” Or at least it was gonna be May, and it was May, and now it’s gone and it’s mid-June somehow and I know absolutely nothing of time.

Another month, another 31 days wandering with a little Fuji x100v attached to my hip. Another meander through my days clicking away at a bunch of very ordinary moments that I still find about 200 miles beyond extraordinary because, well, they are.

I love sharing these with you, just what I saw, what I did, what I loved. I love that you love them too, these little behind-the-scenes glimpses into my simple life in the mountains of Montana, or wherever I happened to roam that month.

If these little peeks into the (extra)ordinary mean something to you, and you want to make sure I can keep making making them, the very best way to do that is the simplest one: a paid subscription costs less than a genuinely good cup of coffee each month. It’s what makes all of this possible. No pressure, ever. But if you’ve been thinking about it, now’s as good a time as any.

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Click to view on the website, which lets you view these bigger and scroll through the gallery.

We got home from Ireland right at the end of April, and it felt like the Emerald Isle here with all the moisture we’d been getting. Greens everywhere, fog, chilly mornings and evenings with heat in the middle. Back quickly to our nightly walks with Gilly, to sunsets and moonrises and the simplicity of our little mountain home.

The Vigilante Parade came next, and Addie and her friends did a float to commemorate the Archie Bray Clay Arts Guild, a local ceramics and art community. The Vigilante Parade is one of the longest running parades in the United States, this year marked its 102nd year, and every float is designed, built, and run by students from the local high schools. Kids get to miss 2 days of school to research and build out their floats, and it’s a rite of passage for every kid here in Helena. I did a float all 4 years of my high school many, many years ago.

We discovered that a massive forest thinning project had begun by the Forest Service while we were gone, in an attempt to reduce fire risk as well as make the overall health of the forest better. The mountain behind our house now gets far more light, and looks a lot healthier, but it was a bit sad and strange to see the big piles of trees they had to cut stacked all over the woods. Gilly, for scale.

The walks we share are one of our most favorite things in our days, and very, very little can stop us from going on them each evening. I love seeing the different light, I love taking a million photos of Sarah IN that light, and it’s always rad to look back over a month and see 1) how many times we did them, and b) how stylish somehow she always is on them. Gilly loves them too, and the three of us absolutely adore all the wildlife we see every single time out. They know us as intimately as we know them, and I wonder what they think of us when they see us each evening.

Sarah then hand-painted some cards for our recent bespoke destination elopement clients friends that we were so lucky to meet, travel with, and work with photographing (and officiating!) their weddings all over the world. We sent a print of our favorite image from their day, just as a little thank you for trusting us, for becoming new family. What a gift, this job we do. Speaking of, you can hire us too, you know?

Part 1 of our month wrapped up in fantastic fashion, with the arrowleaf balsamroot flowers exploding into existence like they do every year. They are everywhere and it always astounds me how quickly they sprout up from nothing at all to be these stunning, mountain-blanketing forces of nature that just glow. I love when they come back, and I love when they dry and the whole mountain is alive with the sound of their leaves rustling against one another.

Traveled to Bozeman to the final track meet of Henry’s freshman year at the University of Montana. He did amazing, ran the 1500 in a stupid fast time as always. It was rad seeing him race one final time, and then I taught little Remy (Henry’s little half-sister on his Dad’s side) the ancient art of finding beautiful rocks in the little dividers you find in parking lots. We found some beauties, and she had a blast collecting them, and it reminded me that there’s a hell of a lot of beauty in all the places people don’t ever bother to look for it.

We also saw a CyberTruck that was in front of us a lot of the drive through Bozeman, Montana, which just made a lot of sense, and we giggled and took a photograph of it. They just are so damn funny. Oddly, a day later once back in Helena, we saw it again parked at the grocery store and realized it either followed us, or the person driving it was not, in fact, from Bozeman at all. Perplexing, but still, we giggled again.

May storms rolling in ended the first third of our month, and set the stage for the rest of it to come.

Come back next week and you’ll get to see even more.

Finally: HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY LITTLE SISTER McGRAW! We cannot wait to celebrate with you tonight in Spokane! WAHOO!!

I Love you all.

Be good.

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Today we’ve got a change of scenery, we’re down in little micro-bakery and Sarah is going through the motions of baking up 12 delicious fresh loaves of her bread. You even get a little ASMR of the bread being done and ready to go. Holy banana puddin.

I read 2 poems again today. Hope you dig em.

Also, if any of you wanna watch the FULL video series each week, AND keep this silly place alive and well (it’s a lot of work), you can do so by clicking the button below!

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If you’re at all like me, even a tiny bit, you have a weird fascination and attraction to those little lists that sometimes spill out across the internets where people offer up their life hacks, their simplification tips, their “didn’t you know this already!?” hints on how to have a happier life.

Some truly changed my life once adopted. Some were ridiculous and made me laugh and I never bothered to even attempt. Still, I Love them, and anytime people make them, I tune the F in.

Our turn. Let’s do this…

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A fly buzzes around you, endlessly pestering you by landing on your hand, your cup, your neck, and without thinking you swat it against the table with a bit of rolled up magazine. A mosquito sits on your leg ready to drink, instantly you smash it against your thigh, tiny little blood stain where it sat. Ants crawl across the threshold to your home, so the spray comes out. Without warning a spider crawls across the floor, startles you to your feet and you stamp it into the floorboards as an automatic reaction. I ask you this, a simple question:

When was the last time you killed something without thinking about it?

Answer honestly, answer true. When was the last time you took the life of another living thing, and did so almost casually, on auto-pilot? The last time you squished a spider or swatted a fly against a windowpane? The last time you trapped a mouse, poisoned ants, sprayed a hornets nest?

I’m not going to judge you on your answer, I promise you this. I won’t think less of you, I won’t look down my nose and secretly shift my thoughts. You’ll be precisely as you are to me, loved, if you care about that, but answer and answer honestly. Just for you.

I cannot remember the last time I killed a single living thing. Genuinely.

Sometime in my youth I cannot precisely remember, I made up my mind I’d never take the life of another soul if I could possibly help it, I’d never place my life, my short existence, above anyone or anything else’s, and forced myself to hold to this. I say what I’m about to say with all honesty and not at all lightly, I say it truthfully because I owe you that: It changed EVERYTHING about my life, Everything.

Somewhere along the way, we humans were taught a very distorted view of the hierarchy of things on earth. We were given a pyramid, and told it was true. Humans on top, everything else in descending order below, mostly based on size or sometimes our perception of their intelligence or physical prowess, until the smallest and most seemingly insignificant are represented at the bottom. Humans first, humans most important, humans most worthy of living a life free of unnecessary threat or potential extermination. I ask you now: What if this is wrong? I ask you now, what does the world look like from anywhere else on that pyramid? On the bottom, on the ground?

Even from a different place on that pyramid, something remains true: in the simple act of being alive there is an ‘unavoidable harm’ that exists. That to stay alive means that somewhere along the way, something must perish to sustain us. The grain we cut and the microorganisms, the bugs, the rodents that die in the harvesting, the vegetables we pull from the earth, the meat we eat (should we choose to do so), it all means the death of a lifeform to sustain ours. The animal kingdom knows this, it survives on this same principle, though they know not the excess we know, they share not the greed we hold. The Dalai Lama, and the Tibetan Buddhism I follow has always championed in this, and in all ways, the “Middle Path,” and falls back, as it always does, on the intent behind our actions more so than the actions themselves.

There is unavoidable violence in our eating, in our sustaining of life. We cannot live without taking life, and this, this is the central grief and central grace of our lives. It’s a balance, and it always has been. I wish every day I could eat no meat, but with my health and intolerances, I simply cannot. Even as vegetarian, as the Dalai Lama always says, we must end life to save it. This is not what I mean. When I speak of taking life, I mean not the necessary consumption, I mean not the feeding of ourselves. I speak of something else, I speak of the frivolity of ending life that we deem unnecessary, that we deem extraneous, that we think matters less than ours. The unconscious and automatic taking of life that comes when we view ourselves as the shining gold beacon on top of the pyramid.

This is where I see the distinction between killing with presence versus killing by default. Again I go back to intention, and I think of Indigenous food traditions, the prayers offered over the bodies of the animals they take to sustain their families. I think of the energy shifted when tenderness and care are offered in exchange for the life-granting sacrifice. I speak only today of the ending of life by default, by that pyramid-granted hierarchy.

Something changes in us when we no longer live by this flawed belief. When we stop believing we’re more worthy of an unthreatened life than any other creature we share this place with. Yes, we cannot walk this earth without killing some creatures, but Yes, we can aim for consciousness of the act, not simply perfection of it. It matters not if you believe in reincarnation, as I do, it matters not if you believe in Heaven or Hell or Purgatory, though I do think those things push you even further into thinking the way I think. Here’s what I believe:

I believe somewhere, sometime, something will eat you. You will return to this earth and you will be consumed by some organism smaller than you can imagine right now. Your hierarchy will, inevitably, collapse. I believe this. We cannot stop death, we cannot stop in things shuffling off their mortal coils, but we can make changes, here, now.

We can choose to change our intentions, and in doing so, reap the rewards. We can choose to be a more active participant in the lives we take, but more, in the lives we save by refusing to place ourselves above them. This is not a loophole to the situation, it’s the entire spiritual practice that’s waiting, with no religious affiliation, that I advocate for. Intention, cautiousness, grace. What does this look like? Usher a spider onto a piece of paper and move it outside instead of stomping it out of fear. Catch the housefly or bee in a cup and usher it through a window, use humane deterrents like peppermint oil to keep mice from your spaces. Offer a small prayer, not to any god or goddess if you don’t wish, just to the animal itself before you eat, when eat you must. Be intentional, be purposeful, be mindful, and be connected.

By now you’re probably thinking, “Ok, you lured me in by saying that stopping killing things changed everything for you…how?!” I’ll do my best to explain.

The moment you stop placing yourself higher on the pyramid, the moment you refuse to see any life form as lower than your own, something truly shifts. I don’t know what else to call this other than Connection. True connection opens, and you start to feel something that almost feels like an electrical field between you and the creatures around us. It feels tangible, it feels real, and the longer you do it, the longer you honor them. You begin to notice more, you begin to see, and feel life around you. You see the trust grow in the creatures around us, you see them feel safer, you see them come nearer, stay longer when perched on fingertip or hand. You begin having interactions with larger and larger things, and maybe then a deer eats from your hand, a bird lands on your shoulder, maybe squirrels start coming to you to say hello, maybe you feed a muskrat, pet a timberwolf, or even feel the fur of a fox that feels safe enough to stand beside you. Maybe, just maybe, it grows so big that a baby deer, lost from its mother for a time, trusts you enough to follow you for hours, to take selfies with you, to snuggle into your legs and trust you to find it a safe space, hidden amongst the bushes and bramble, to wait for its Mom to return when you finally must part ways.

Life changes. You change. That’s what happens. You become something more than you were before, you become part of something bigger, part of something stronger, instead of some elevated piece high above the rest. You feel the great pulsing hum of everything and you understand, you truly understand, that beauty IS everywhere, in everything, and once everything sees YOU as part of it all, you’re connected and on the same damn team and it’s terrifyingly stunningly perfectly sublime. Life changes. You Change.

Every spider becomes a friend, a little buddy that takes care of the little insects that annoy you, without you even knowing so. Every housefly a visitor there to remind you of warmer days that are ahead, every bee a bringer of life and the only reason we’ve all that vegetarian food to even eat. Every creature, big or small, becomes a shipmate on some great Ark we can build every day to sail us through these often shitty times.

Stop ending the lives of things that spook you or startle you or ick you out a little bit. Try, for a week, for a month, see how you feel. Look closer. See the beauty in all you share this world with.

The deer will come and will feel safe by your side. You will finally understand.

I love you all.

Be good.

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Navigating life for 30+ years as an undiagnosed Autistic person means a few things: You have a lot of feelings that don’t have names.

These are, not surprisingly, highly specific, entirely vivid, and completely real emotions, reactions, and feelings that usually lead to a particular blankness in faces when you try to describe them to other people. Especially neurotypical people. So, today, I decided to do what any rational and reasonable poet with an Autistic brain would do when he doesn’t have the proper words or definitions that accompany them:

I made them up myself.

Here are some.

• Overknowing - Everyone always thinks I am wrong. Always. I am doubted, ignored, I am flat out told I am incorrect when these strange gut feelings hit me so loud and pronounced that I cannot breathe with the certainty of them. “Reads” when meeting new people, predicting outcomes for future events, it matters not. Call it advanced pattern recognition, call it a literal psychic 6th sense I was born with, this is the feeling of overknowing, and it’s knowing more than I possibly should, and the weight of knowing that I will be doubted for it. Eventually it’s proven right, and I say this not with ego but with data to back it, had I bothered to actually keep a proper record.

• Spiralfall - Something new pops up, always at an inconvenient time, and you then fall so deeply into it that you spend the next few many hours falling through the emptiness of its space. Learning about it, fixing it, working on it, obsessing over it. This is the passing of 6 hours without bothering to eat, drink, or even get up to pee until you’re finished. You’re never finished. This is at least 4 times per week.

• Waitlessness - Not gravity or the lack of corporeal heft to keep you grounded, but something worse and even more cruel: the hyper-specific feeling of being unanchored in time. Your schedule demands you be somewhere, but you’re not sure how long it will last. You’re required to show up for something, but the duration is left vague. This is the feeling of being somewhere and having no idea how long you’ll be there until you’re allowed to leave without seeming rude or hurting someone’s feelings. It’s always longer than you think it will be, but you’ll never be told that, so you’ll probably activate the wrong Waiting Mode and then feel very, very discombobulated.

• Crulety - The experience of being punished, disciplined, and met with disbelief and anger for doing or saying something you had not the foggiest inkling was wrong. Apparently a Rule Book is handed out to neurotypical people sometime between puberty and 40 that outlines all the secret and unspoken social mores and laws people must adhere to. We’re never given that book, so we are bewildered at the response that comes from the masses when we are convicted, sentenced, and punished for a crime we never knew was one. The worst part: No matter how many you try to learn and memorize, there are always more.

• Routigue - We NEED to do the same things the same ways at the same times. We NEED to eat the same foods in order to avoid distress, be it gastrointestinal or emotional. We NEED to follow some very particular patterns. Until we don’t. Until the adherence to these routines causes a very unique and intense form of burnout where we’re so sick of the routine we created, the routine we need, that we are almost willing to dramatically spark the lighter, toss it over our shoulder, and walk away from the resulting explosion in slow motion just to break the cycle. When the fire dies out and the ash falls like snow, we’ll be there, soot-covered and worn out, doing the same things in the exact same order we used to do. Probably because we have to.

• The Smush - You walk into a room, an event (you didn’t want to go to), a gathering, and all at once you’re being compressed from all sides. You’re the thing on those viral YouTube videos where the hydraulic press squishes down against an everyday object until in super-slow-mo, the whole world gets to see what happens when all that weight is concentrated onto one tiny thing. You’re the everyday object. You’re the tiny thing. Small talk, people’s perfume, fluorescent lighting, onion breath and the smell of their garlicy dinner last night leaking from their pores, the throbbing hum of the speaker in the corner, the feeling of strangers hands on your shoulder when they ask you a question or the stabbing of their fingertip in your arm or back when they try to get your attention. This is THE SMUSH, and it will implode you if you allow it. Out, is the only way to survive it. Just out. Where doesn’t matter, as long as it’s out.

• The Great Barrier Weef - Life as an Autistic is hard. Very. After the Crulety, the Waitlessness, the Routigue you will experience, after the doubt that comes with Overknowing, and the hours lost to Spiralfall, it might feel hopeless, it might feel terrifying. Alas friends, not all is lost, there is hope still. There is one feeling, one emotion that if you are lucky, truly lucky, sneaks in and somehow protects you (mostly) from all these. That insulates, that takes the brunt of the forces of the sea of struggle around you. This is The Great Barrier Weef, and it’s a person, it’s the person that makes it ok to be you, exactly as you are. That is patient when you break the rules you didn’t know existed, that fixes the same 3 meals over and again so you don’t get sick or overwhelmed, that defines the time you’ll be required to be somewhere before you even walk out the door. This is the person that will (with time) believe you when your Overknowing kicks in and you get a bad ick about someone you meet, but cannot clearly explain why. This is your Weef (the word I use for wife), and the form they take can be anyone, a partner, a friend, a person who showed up. If you’re lucky they’ll come. They are home, and they make you feel like wherever you are, you’re home there too. I found mine, and it’s why I’m here, doing this, and not somewhere else freaking out. Thank goodness for that.

A field guide of sorts, and I hope it’s helpful, I hope it educates, illuminates, and hell, entertains. There are more, trust this, and maybe one day I’ll compile them all into a book.

I love you all.

Be good.

That said, we contemplate this, starting an OnlyFans, the logo-changes and branding I’ve been working on for Signal Fire (special thanks to and Berto (Chile B) for all your help and p…

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I have long held a fascination and attraction to hands. I love photographing them, I Love watching them spin as people speak, I love tattoos on them for the stories they tell. I love anything that draws attention to hands that isn’t violent, and I always will.

Our hands are our wands, and with them we spin spells. I love the magic that comes from them. All this got me wondering…

Let’s do this…

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A simple truth: Conditional empathy ain’t empathy at all. It’s just pattern recognition all gussied up as compassion. It’s a beautiful lie, a delicate deceit. I think we forget that sometimes. I think we lose our way.

They say the first step in fixing a problem is admitting we have one. This is that.

This is me trying to simplify, as I so often do, trying to explain what I felt should probably never had needed explanation, but clearly does. I’m explaining it here, to all of you who I’m entirely positive don’t need this explanation in hopes that by doing so, it’ll reach so many others who so clearly do.

Empathy is not Memory, it’s Imagination.

That’s as simple as I can get it, so I’ll back up a bit, and I’ll explain what I mean just a bit, the heart of this little essay this final day of May. Somehow, we’ve forgotten the simple truth above, the gussying up, the false narrative. But it’s not, and it never will be. It’s just your brain being able to say “Hey, I remember that feeling,” rather than your entire soul being able to say “I haven’t, but I can imagine yours.”

Somehow, we’ve fumbled ourselves into a world (and you can blame whomever you wish here, I won’t be pointing fingers at the usual suspects today) where the endurance of a specific suffering is almost the admission ticket to actually having or displaying real compassion. A world where only those who have served can care about veterans, only mothers who have gone through childbirth can care about other mothers. We’re fragmenting ourselves like doomsday preppers into all these isolated silos of a grief that’s been sanctioned off. Isn’t this the driving mechanism behind so much divide? Isn’t this the battery that powers all the cruelty—both political and societal—that seems to surround us?

I think empathy, true and lasting, is a defiant act of creativity, more than anything else, a force driven by our own creative wills. It’s imagination, not experience, that drives this by stretching our boundaries. Literature, cinema, poetry do this. This community does, too. Witnessing a single act of kindness given from someone who has no possible motivation to give it is more transformative than a thousand essays about it. Empathy, like art, is created only when we think bigger than ourselves, we imagine worlds that do not exist for us, and we conceptualize a life inside it.

I’ve been paying closer and closer attention to this world lately, I’ve been noticing more than ever. I think we’re in such a unique position to witness first hand so many things we cannot possibly fathom living through, that it’s been a constant sparking of emotions for a long, long time. Times are hard, things are rough, there’s more uncertainty and divide than at almost any time I can remember, and still I notice the staggering lack of empathy on display. I wonder, when I sit and ponder all this, if there’s just a convenience to the cruelty that makes it so much more appealing, and I realize that there is quite possibly no cruelty more convenient than “I haven’t been through it.”

Isn’t this just a strange little moral escape hatch? Isn’t this an ejection seat out of the spiraling jet that’s just been hit by a missile and will certainly crash? Unfamiliarity as permission to not truly care, ignorance to ache as the mechanism that deflects responsibility. THIS is what is broken, this is what I ask all, what I invite everyone, to recognize when they see it, whether that’s in themselves or in all those around them.

It’s never been shared experience that defines empathy, it’s always been the ability to imagine someone else’s reality. This is what’s been lost, this has been tossed and turned and thrown wildly into the rubbish bin of history as we’re surviving a world together that bombards us all with people who compare suffering, who infuse themselves into other’s misery, who put a hierarchy on hurting. When this happens, when suffering becomes a competitive sport, when people stop listening, stop leaning in, and somehow compassion becomes something more isolated and tribal, everyone everywhere will retreat into their own realities, their own personal lived in experiences, and it all shuts down. Emotional fragmentation on a scale we’ve never before seen, but are starting to. I believe a world in which empathy requires proof, is a world where compassion just completely disappears.

Empathy begins where experience ends, but they don’t tell you that.

I chirp on and on here on Signal Fire about the power of imagination, hell I just wrote an entire article on it LAST WEEK and talked about The Neverending Story and how it’s literally imagination that built Fantasia, but then it dawned on me: We don’t need imagination to rebuild just Fantasia, we need it to save THIS world, THIS earth, THIS time.

I’m here, screaming at the top of my lungs, for a world in which compassion doesn’t require credentials, that we don’t have to experience the suffering of another to feel it, to care, and where we use imagination as more than just a tool to invent new worlds for new stories, but to create a bridge between lives that might not have anything in common, at all.

I try my hardest to live this way, to empathize not only because I have experienced what I have, but mostly because I haven’t, and imagining it hurts so much. I use that imagination to put myself in their shoes, and then when the world snaps back and I sit where I sit with the privilege I sit with, I fucking ache because to be where they are, sitting with whatever pain or grief, is horrific, and I want to help in any way I can. I empathize without experience, because I believe the most powerful form of understanding comes not from sharing a pain, it comes from a simple decision that someone else’s suffering matters just as much, exactly as much, as our own.

That we are all one thing, and we always have been.

That’s all I wanted to say here, that’s all I wanted to talk about. I just wanted to voice it, put it into the world where it’s real and it’s tangible and it sticks. I wanted to say out loud something simple, that empathy is not just the ability to recognize ourselves in someone else’s suffering, it’s refusing to look away from it even if you can’t. I believe, fully, that people want to be people that are capable of compassion beyond their own personal experience, and I hope you feel the same, I want you to believe the same.

Have the courage to find what isn’t yours, the ache, the weight, the sorrow, the grief, and hold it like it’s yours. To embrace another’s hurt, though you cannot understand it.

I think of those who huddle from bomb and missile, those who have lost someone to violence, and though I’ve never been there, never felt that stinging ache, I sit with it in my imagination until it burns, until it hurts, and that hurting tells me every truth.

I love you all.

Be good.

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As April was a month divided, so too was our Ireland adventure. Half in the rolling green hills and lush forests of the East and Central parts, and another on the Wild Atlantic Way. A place National Geographic has called one of the most beautiful spots on the entire planet, with Slea Head Drive being one of, if not the most beautiful road you can ever drive down.

Our trip was filled with more laughter than you’d know what to do with, more stunning vistas and sights than you can count, and great friendship.

Onward to the last half of such a fantastic trip, and the ending of a month.

Ice cream, wildlife, swans, ancient yew trees, castle ruins, church ruins, sunsets, sea spray, fog, local music in trad sessions you cannot possibly forget, fading blue hour light, reflections, Guinness signs that have withstood the weather for decades, little bunting flags that criss-cross a town center, and four friends navigating it all. The final photo, the reflection in the glass globe light of our Airbnb was taken only an hour or so after Anna was proposed to on top of a majestic short hike on the Dingle Peninsula, the furthest Western point on mainland Ireland, Cruach Mhàrtharin. Danny did amazing, he asked in the perfect way, and we were so lucky to be there to witness it, to capture it with our zoom lenses. Below is just a single image from that moment, the rest are theirs to keep. :)

The trip continued, Anna and Danny on cloud 900, and we were able to take them even further up the Wild Atlantic Way to Doolin by way of Bunratty and Quin. So much to explore and there was almost never anyone else there, just us, just wandering, just letting the day unfold as it wished to do. Doolin maintains every drop of it’s perfect mysterious beauty, and we got to listen to another amazing trad session whilst Danny and Anna enjoyed their first Irish Stew with Guinness soaked meat and perfect Irish potatoes. Anna probably stopped to stare at her new ring 20350 times, and we loved it every single time she did. I am so glad she got that experience, and to get it here, a place that means so much to Sarah and I, was pretty outstanding. To watch one you love so much be loved so much in turn, what a gift.

We braved the busy-ness of Galway for Anna and Danny who’d always wanted to see it, and after so many days of completely quiet and rural removal, the contrast was stark, it was shocking, and it prompted us to leave very, very quickly. I’m just not made for cities, and while I know there are many world cities I still need to visit, I know how my soul will respond once there. It will wish for release, it will wish for space, it will wish for precisely what we got in Ireland as we stopped in the haunting Doolough Valley, and the edges of Westport where in the far sun-soaked distance you can see Croagh Patrick rising up like ancient volcano. The trip was winding up, we knew it, but we still had one final bespoke elopement to photograph at Ballynahinch Castle in Connemara National Park, and my goodness, what a doozy it was.

The bespoke elopement was perfect. An abandoned castle ruin, flocks of starlings and jackdaws, the ocean, the sky, the Ballynahinch Castle as backdrop to their stay. What a job this is, to give people the insane gift of their own dream wedding and honeymoon, and to do so at a tiny fraction of what they’d have spent on a normal traditional wedding back at home, is just a joy, and to be there to officiate and share in those moments is an honor that I don’t know how to properly articulate. Just thankful I get to do this, to see this world with the love of My life, and to share it with you in photos, in stories, in poems.

We got home just in time to celebrate my Mom’s birthday, less than 14 hours after getting off the airplane. Sarah made an insane cake for her and everyone that made me wish I could eat chocolate. Alas, it was fun to watch, and to photograph, and to finally breathe HOME air after 2 weeks away.

Now we’re here, working, rounding the corner on finishing our YA Novel in verse that I am more excited to share with you than you’ll ever know, and just waiting for more adventures to begin. Trying desperately to book more weddings and elopements just like these by trying to learn Pinterest Ads hahah. IF anyone is an expert, let me know.

Thank you for watching, thank you for supporting this Signal Fire and this journey to sharing authentic, real, and honest art with all of you. It means the world.

I love you all.

Be good.

Join The Friggen FAM!

Do people eat these for fun, just on their own? Or are these baking only? For reals, someone smarter, or better at healthy eating, please ring in here. How the hell do you make them more palatable? I tried raw. I tried baking in the oven and adding sea salt. Neither make them not taste like bitter buttholes. Help?

Watch the video for the other fun stuff, and to hear me read a poem.

Also, if you wanna join the familia, we’d love to have you, and it keeps the lights on. If not, no worries too, I know money sucks.

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The Chasers of the Light book poem I read in the video is below, for anyone who wants to see it.

ALSO ASK QUESTIONS SO THAT EVERY WEEK WHEN I GET TO THE END I WILL HAVE FUN QUESTIONS TO ANSWER! Please.

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I love you all.

Be good.

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To remember is to honor, is to hold, is to refuse to forget. To memorialize is to cherish, is to respect, is to pay back what was paid forward.

Yesterday was Memorial Day, some honored fallen soldiers, some honored fathers, sons, mothers, daughters, heroes, all.

Today, I want to continue. Let’s do this.

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A steady rain pelts the window to the dark attic, wax drips down the pillar candles you’ve lit to keep yourself reading. Dust hangs in the bits of light that remain, you sit in a pool of the glow that remains, alone, but for the story you brought with you. There’s a weight to the loneliness before you crack that book open, befor…

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Ireland, as you well know by now, has always been one of Sarah and I’s favorite spots on the planet. It was always this mystical and magical someday place we hoped to visit when we first met, some far away dream we didn’t know would ever happen. In 2018 it finally did, but only because we forced it to, adding it on to the end of a wedding trip on the border of France and Belgium. Europe in mid-June, we decided, was far too busy, why not book a cheap flight to Dublin, drive a circle around most of the island, and then fly home?

That decision changed our lives.

Now, somehow, some inexplicable how, we’ve been to Ireland 9 different times, and we’ve shared it with multiple people—from my sister and her husband in 2023, to our dear friends Danny and Anna this time around. EVERY single trip has been for work, and we’ve been blessed to photograph over a half-dozen weddings and elopements on the island. What a gift.

This trip, we tried something new, only using our Fuji cameras for our day-to-day photography, and what a gift it was. Here’s Part 1 of our Ireland Adventure, in Fuji glory:

Click on the first and it’ll let you see them bigger and scroll through each one :)

Touchdown in Ireland and we were exhausted from travel but elated to be back. A stop at Powerscourt Estate for a tea and a scone was revitalizing, Sarah was in heaven getting her clotted cream and jam, and we found a rad bag that we wanted to buy but didn’t. I missed driving these rainy, windy, tiny, foggy roads. I missed the light in Glendalough, I missed the ancient headstones, I missed the smell of damp earth and the feeling all things were alive. I just missed it. We didn’t have time to rest, not yet, as we had our first elopement shoot that night, hours after traveling 28 straight to get there. The day was magical, the wedding was stunning and I hope I performed and officiated it with the gravity it deserved. The photos we got were stunning. We finally crashed into our beds after a shared dinner with our new friends and newlyweds in a pub, and then woke the next day to Danny and Anna arriving later in the afternoon all the way from Arizona. Ready to share this stunning Isle with them.

That day of rest proved perfect. We just re-explored a spot we’ve been lucky enough to visit 5 or 6 times, and seeing it through the Fuji made it even more unique. It forces you to find new perspective, it forces you to act as the zoom lens with your body, moving yourself instead of just turning the lens. You have to think, you have to plan, you have to really see with fresh eyes. Sarah sat in that windowsill HOURS just soaking up the light, the smell of fresh rain, and the view of this 1400 year old place. That evening, right before twilight, their bus finally arrived.

We shared Glendalough with them before they too crashed and could hardly stay awake. The next morning we took off and headed south and west, stopping in Kilkenny, showing them the oldest medieval city in Ireland, getting them some much needed pastries (and a sausage roll that we quite literally never stopped smelling in the car the rest of the day) and taking them to some of our favorite little local shops where we even got to watch a ceramics artist make his art. What a place, what an eye-opening, shockingly simple and alive place, and for Day 1, I think Danny and Anna were already starting to feel the slower pace of life, the simple joy of being there.

Rock of Cashel is a breathtaker, every time, and it’s so fun seeing people who’ve never seen it first spy it across the rural landscape in the middle of the country. It towers above everything, and you can almost imagine what it would have been like to ride up to it on horseback all those years ago. Game of Thrones stuff friends, truly. We stopped at Blarney Woolen Mills, then woke early to venture into Killarney National Park, Torc Waterfall, and take some very needed forest hikes in.

The first half of our little trip together was amazing, and Sarah and I were so excited knowing what was coming up on the back half…the Wild Atlantic Way, and a surprise proposal that I think we both couldn’t possibly wait for.

More next week, the 2nd half of our rad Irish Adventure, told out in Fuji Photographs.

If you wanna help support this place and keep it alive, I really truly would love if you joined the family. I cannot keep doing it without the help of some of you paying it forward. For those who have, THANK YOU from the bottom of my silly silly heart.

I love you all.

Be good.

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I don’t understand the machinations of my bizarre brain, but it just makes me write and write and pour and pour and say YES before I know I can even do something. That’s this, that’s what it’s always been, just a confident Yes, that I’ll figure it out along the way.

We did, and I’m so proud of this, and I cannot wait for you all to read it.

There’s more in the video, there always is, so give it a spin and let me know how you like it. Also: ASK QUESTIONS! The more you ask, the better these videos are. Also, stick to the end for a special guest. :)

Poem for the paid folks just below. Please join us, a lot of subscribers have jumped ship, and it’s making it real hard to keep this place afloat. If you can, do. Please.

I love you all.

Be good.

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More than so many things, I believe we are creatures shaped by the art we consume, the art that consumes Us.

I believe the sharing of this art is a love language, one of the strongest as it’s a vulnerable thing to share something that moved us. To tears, to joy, to fear, to hope.

Let’s do this…

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Wisdom comes in the strangest places, doesn’t it? Sometimes the strange nuggets of insight come not from the sages you’d expect, but from portly little bears living in a Hundred Acre Wood that happen to really, really love honey.

I was re-reading The Tao of Pooh the other day and stumbled across wisdom I’d long forgotten, as I think it’d been years since I’d read it. Pooh was talking/learning about “Inner Nature” and a story from the life of Chuang-tse was used as an example. Here was that story:

Alive in the mud, not dead within the palace. Me too tortoise, me too Pooh.

The entire section is about each person’s Inner Nature, the way they are truly born to be, their natural proclivities. It’s about how everyone is different, everyone has different needs (remember last week’s Signal Fire?!), different wants, different music played by different drummers that they walk to. When we betray this, when we fight it, our lives dissolve.

Haven’t we all been there? Haven’t we all felt this? Haven’t we taken jobs that we knew didn’t satisfy our souls just for a paycheck? Haven’t we stayed in relationships that we knew were not good for either person, just to keep the peace, just to maintain the illusion of happiness to others, or to ourselves? Haven’t we all felt some measure of success that secretly felt like suffocation? We’ve all been the tortoise, haven’t we?

I think of this often, I think of this when I write about it as I did recently in the piece below, and I realize how dead on the damn nail both Chuang-tse and Benjamin Hoff, and Pooh by proxy got it.

I think so many of us spend so much time aiming for the palace, often at all costs, that we forget what we lose in doing so. I know there does exist a small subsection of our population that have somehow hit the Life Lottery and managed to end up in the palace, enjoying all its riches, whilst somehow still maintaining every ounce of their joy by following their true Inner Natures, but dammit, they are rare, rare creatures. Most of us spend so much time trying to get to that palace, or hell even within the outer streets of that mythical walled city, that we forget the beauty of being completely alive in all the mud outside.

Last week I spoke about the shortcomings of the Golden Rule, the idea that it missed the mark simply because it assumed a sameness that just doesn’t exist. This is that too, but instead of being about some moral code or compass, it’s about the “Dream” I think we’ve all been taught for so many years. American Dream or otherwise. For so long we’ve been taught that money is the goal, that having more means being more. We’ve been taught that fame is another, that the more people that recognize us in the streets the happier we’ll be, the more we’ll be able to do, amass, enjoy.

These are the palaces of this fallacy, these are the lies the American Dream has been selling us all this time. It’s propaganda, and while we don’t need to get into who is pumping out all that rhetoric (*cough*corporate capitalism*cough*), the fact remains that it is rhetoric after all.

How many creatives are stuck in the endless slog through corporate metrics? How many introverts are being constantly forced into some strange extroverted role, just to get by? How many gentle souls tossed and tumbled in competitive industries that suck the tenderness from them? What of wanderers who are building stable lives that bore them to tears? What of healers, sages, mystics, and rare geniuses forced to become influencers on social media just to get by? What of writers who have to beg their followers to upgrade their subscriptions just so they can make ends meet and feed their families?

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Bottom line, not every environment is perfectly suited to every nervous system, and not every kind of success works for every kind of soul. We’re wired different, all of us, and we have to stop spending our lives betraying our own Inner Natures just to fit into some shiny ideal they tell us we’re supposed to fit into. Simply:

The right life is not always the most impressive one, it’s the one that lets you truly breathe.

It’s ok if the life that everyone else aims for doesn’t feel like yours. It’s ok if you can’t keep up with the endless toil for more. It’s ok if you don’t want to. It’s ok if you’re sick of posting schedules for social media or trying to market yourself on LinkedIn. It’s ok if you don’t have a million followers that you’ll most likely never have a single conversation with. It’s ok if you’re in the mud, as long as while you’re there, you’re like Pooh, enjoying the hell out of it on a hot summer day.

We’re surrounded by ‘sacred’ tortoises living in silk and brocade, kept perfectly safe in a perfectly fancy box in a perfectly stunning palace. We’re told that’s the life we should aim for, the one of privilege that protects us from the scuffs and scratches, the dust and debris of another kind of life. We’re told that’s the point of all this, better silk, better wood to build those boxes from. Only I think it’s all bullshit, and I think there’s something bigger waiting for us. Only I think that it takes quieting all the other voices in order to actually hear our own, the real whisper from our own Inner Nature.

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I don’t know what yours is, I won’t pretend to, but I’ll just close in urging you to lean in, to listen, and to figure that out. It should be the first question we answer, THE question we keep asking until we really know.

Would you rather be alive in the mud, or dead within the palace?

Ask yourself, and listen to the answer. I have a suspicion that you, like me, like Pooh, and like that poor tortoise, would feel the same. I have a suspicion that you, like Pooh, would simply say:

“I like mud, too.”

Like he said, on the hot summer days that we call a life, there really is Nothing like it.

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To put it simply, April was divided into two very distinct halves.

The first was one of stillness, one of Montana and her gorgeous skies, of big life events for Addie, of the normal spinnings of a simple life. The second half was Ireland, and it was stunning and spectacular. Those images are coming up in the next two weeks.

I love doing these Fuji roundups, and my goodness I hope you still love getting them. To share these intimate peeks, these little bits of beauty that I find from toting around my trusty Fuji camera everywhere I go. It lets you see what I saw, as I saw it, and I think it’s rad to shrink the distance between us.

Here goes, the first half of a very busy month, the story of April in images and memories.

Click on the first and it’ll let you see them bigger and scroll through each one :)

You’ll be shocked, I’ve no doubt, to hear that April included many, many walks again with Lady G and Gilly. The weather was fickle, it went from very hot to very not and back multiple times. My Mom was also so rad and put together a short Easter Egg hunt for Sarah and I, which I think was our first since we were kids and it was rad and Sarah found way more eggs and way more surprises than I did. Also, I learned that there are years, about every 7 or 8, where pine trees produce far more cones than at any other time. This year is that year, and it’s been astonishing how many there are in our forest right now. Some, like the one above, have the most unique and beautiful patterning. Then, as mentioned, Addie finally got to do something she’d been wanting to do for the last 2 years, get her first tattoo to honor our dear friend JeanAnn who passed away a few years ago. She would always say to us all “Love you miss you” to end every text, phone call, email, or any correspondence. Both Sarah and Addie got them together, in each other’s handwriting, and it was a really beautiful and special day. As always, Jami (our family who doesn’t share blood but shares spirit) was amazing and did them perfectly.

More stunning skies from what I believe is a town that gets more ridiculously beautiful sunsets than almost anywhere I’ve ever been, a fact I honestly will debate anyone on. Sarah being lovely, the bread shed being full, first forest fires coming far too early, and the magically mundane machinations of a normal day were Sarah tends to her dough, stretches and folds it, prepares it for proofing, and then lets it chill in the fridge so it ferments perfectly and becomes the tasty massive loaves of joy it’s born to be. Somehow, April was filled with the rare and lovely golden light I usually associate with August, and it was so fantastic seeing that glow.

The first half of April wrapped up nicely with the extremely tear-inducing splashdown of Orion and the Artemis II project into the ocean. It made me sob, and I don’t know precisely why, but just something about watching these astronauts do something together that we haven’t seen done in so many, many years. That we CAN still pull together, that we CAN still find hope, that we can explore and open, rather than restrict and contract. That we can believe again. This world has been far too filled with the opposite for far too long, and this was magical. The light on the deck was the same light pooling through the windows as they floated in that ocean after returning from the Moon. Beautiful.

Addie also had her first tennis match, a sport she’d never played once until a few months ago, and in true Montana fashion, it got rained out before she even finished her first game. A wander downtown with the lovely Lady G, and a surprise visit from Henry from college before he dove into finals and wrapping up his Freshman year quite clearly made Sarah’s ENTIRE month. Look how happy she is.

Stormy clouds to end things, to remind us that our takeoff from Bozeman International Airport would be a rocky one, and then we packed, prepared, and got our trusty Fuji’s ready for Ireland.

Thanks for watching, for listening, for being part of this magical community.

I would love for more of you to join the family, if you’re willing, if you’re able. Click the link below.

I love you all.

Be good.

Join The Friggen FAM!

We talk about a few random and weird things, I rant about technology and how it sucks, and then I offer up a fun new paid subscriber gift for the next 10 paid subscribers to sign up! WAHOO!! Who loves SNAIL MAIL!?

Then I read a poem. A sexy, saucy one. Who doesn’t love that?

Give it a watch, upgrade your subscription to win a prize and keep this place afloat, and I’ll see you all Friday!

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Poem after the jump…

I love you all.

Be good.

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