Climbing Mountains, Swimming in Rivers, Exploring Deserts

Many years ago, someone told me we are creatures that need physical grounding: feet planted to earth. Even in the midst of winter, to carve below the ice to expose a patch of grass and stand there until you can feel movement internally – until you can feel a sense of grounded-ness. I remember my mother would always tell me to go stand in the tiny square of earth next to the dying maple tree during the winter. She’d watch from the window as the earth soaked up my spilling molecules and I’d come inside a different creature.

When I was young, there was no explaining this – the earth was the earth.

And now, I understand the earth holds us all, heals us all, and teaches us everything if we seek to listen. The earth has always been my greatest teacher. Historically speaking and looking to the humans that have lived here long before us, the earth is and will forever be our greatest teacher, holding every bit of wisdom we need that withstands time.

We often forget this notion and move through this land without noticing the miraculous gift that we are here together, at the exact same time, surrounded by millions of organisms – wholly alive – breathing the same oxygen as me, as you.

Everything on earth is cyclical. Reciprocal.

MOUNTAINS

The combined collection of color and place, of earth and geological force – thousands to millions of years of collision, creation, erosion, compaction, compression, foliation, precipitation, deformation, metamorphosis… they stand tall, through it all, despite it all.

I crave the solitude of the mountains – the way they make you feel so small in the most powerful way against the grandeur of the towering peaks. Insignificant and simultaneously a part of all of it. The mountains hold stories of life – of the tree standing all alone at 10,000 feet, the birds soaring above with the wind, the wildflowers that persist year after year, the lichen that makes a home on the rock, and the largest root system in the world. They also hold our stories, our footprints, our memories, our pain, our questions. We can chase the light with our head in the clouds, heart beating faster as the air gets thinner, and begin to question perspective, find inspiration, and dig for strength. This is the innate form of humanity, of living; we, too, are colliding, eroding, compacting, compressing, foliating, precipitating, deforming, and metamorphosing as the mountains do (perhaps, with them simultaneously).

Explore Mountain Forged Collection

RIVER

The river always moves, even winter after long, cold, winter, living in the moment of presence, the flow of now. Spending time on the river, the days blend together, and life becomes as simple as rising with the sun. The deep canyon walls tower up toward the sky and the water moves below in all its power, all its calm. An endless contradiction. The riparian zone holds swaying cottonwoods – their green leaves following us downstream – along with the ache of curiosity for everything else that lives beyond. For every river that carves through this earth.

I’ve come to understand that even the rivers flowing through Southeast Asia, Oceania, Europe, and beyond all hold and invoke many of the same feelings as those that flow through the places I call home – the red rock canyons and mountain streams of southern Utah and Colorado.

Perhaps they all feel an essence of home because they all lead into each other, eventually. And perhaps because the river is always the river, endlessly moving, endlessly free. Banks we can always find our way back to when it hurts; when we need openness, freedom, presence, and flow. When we need to remember that we, too, are endless contradictions.

Explore Way of the Water Collection

DESERT

As I come back to the desert season after season, I am always reminded of the harshness and resilience among every element. How the land holding onto the little water that comes, the little resource, feels so alive - while only taking what it needs to survive. There is never a lack in the desert; everything keeps on breathing.

There is a deep sense of belonging here, standing on the shoulders of our ancestors, their lives carved and painted into the red rock walls. Structures of earth still stand and pottery shards remain among the sand- reminding us of the reciprocal nature of earth and humanity - working together, not against each other.

The rock and sky melt into each other, creating a vast horizon that we begin to melt back into as well. A horizon of endless possibility, clarity, complexity, strength, balance, and solitude.

Explore Desert Born Collection

Through an attempt to trace the topography – the forms of land surfaces – by climbing mountains, swimming in rivers, moving through deserts, and stepping our bare feet onto the earth, we can understand everything better - including each other and ourselves. Because we are all made of earth - not separate from it. As is everything else we share this planet with. May we always remember that and may we always have wonder-filled eyes and plant our feet into the dirt. May we keep on climbing mountains in search of the spaces where spirit and body meet and mind expands. Where connection grows among all of us. May we keep on making memories outside - together - and tell the stories of the wild places that shape who we are. May we listen as the earth holds us all, heals us all, and teaches us what we, too, are made of.

by Zoë Harbertson