Our story starts in the mountains…
Growing up
in Colorado I had always been emersed in the outdoors with my family. The mountains made a mark on me from a young age with a trip backpacking with Lammas into the Windriver range in Wyoming before I could walk or talk, countless outings into Rocky Mountains and near by Utah desert. But what dose this have to do with wood working? Well like most things in life my line was not a straight one. Even though we all fantasize about a efficient straight path with a end goal in mind it rarely happens.
My father did have a small workshop in our garage where he crafted furniture for our house. I remembering playing in the workshop and the smell of the wood chips and how the tools looked so cool almost ancient on the walls. I did my best to dull every single tool that dad would let me use and he eventualy built me my own little workbench when I was about 7 years old. I built things but mostly just wanted to be in the workshop with my dad spending time listening to jazz on the radio.
Fast forward and my love for the outdoors led me to go to college in Durango were the access to the things I loved outside was endless. I pursued a degree and eventualy a career in Geology as it would allow me to be outside in nature observing and often climbing to help understand the natural world better. My small workbench stayed in my dads workshop for the time.
Then there was a Woman…
Yes I could go on and on about the goddess that I not so gracefully stumbled upon in the desert and how our paths crossed and parted many times over the years…. but that would be a romance novel unto itself. Needless to say I was swept so swiftly off my feet by this woman that I found myself transported away from Salt Lake City where I was working onto a farm just outside of Mancos to court, live, marry and raise children with my beautiful wife on her family’s ranch.
On this Ranch there were many different kinds of livestock but one of my favorite were the Alpacas…
So we bred sheared and managed a heard of alpacas and during this time is when I stepped away from geology and into farm life. And every farm needs a barn for your livestock. So I got to designing and building a simple barn with what materials we had on hand. That was the start, first a barn, then fixing old buildings, adding storage, helping put on additions to houses. During the house addition a friend asked if I could make the cabinets for the bathroom and I said yes. That was the turning point and honing in on the craftsman aspect of creating. Dovetail joints and hammering patina metal flat to make inset panels for the cabinet doors. Something old and ancient comes alive when I get to be in a creative place of focused intention. There was a understanding that this is what I should be doing and that is when I started my own cabinet making shop doing furniture and small custom woodworking jobs. It has and continues to grow expanding into new skill sets and larger projects. This all brings me joy knowing that I can create things of functional beauty in the world while supporting my family.
The Drought
When I moved to Mancos on my wifes family farm I thought it would be our forever home. We planted trees with the hopes of watching them take root to shade our kids as they grew up and learned how to drive tractors, raise animals, and be kind humans. The year our son came, the water never did. The irrigation ditches that fed the farm and our way of life were dry. The water that feed our dreams had to be put on hold because it just wasn’t there. The pond by our house dried up, no frogs sang us to sleep at night, the water needed to be trucked in for the trees and animals. The wind blew dirt during the day and things were hard. I was working helping build a house and i remember coming home at the end of a day and sitting with the three generations that lived on the farm and hearing the first mutterings of moving...
All things happen for a reason
The amount of times things have circled back in life are to numerous to count. Often my lives path looks more like a two year old’s first stab at a piece of paper with a pencil than anything one could make sense of. We moved and it was exactly what we all needed in the end. Three generations going from one ranch to a smaller one, this time in the heart of the animas valley. No more livestock, no more massive acreage, simplify was the idea, so we did. The new place had a old horse barn that I setup shop in. It needed some love but I needed something to throw myself at after such a big transition. And as the years pass the shop grows, we plant more trees and we play with our kids in the mountains. My parents moved closer and our family’s work towards shared dreams. My dad brought me many tools from his workshop including my small workbench. My children come and visit me out back while I work on furniture or other architectural pieces, listening to Jazz or Bluegrass often chatting with family and freinds who stop by. This is where we are now, in our new forever home enjoying the journey and breathing in the fresh mountain air.