Our story starts in the mountains…
Growing up
in Colorado, I was always immersed in the outdoors with my family. The mountains made their mark on me from a young age, beginning with a backpacking trip with llamas into Wyoming’s Wind River Range before I could walk or talk. That was followed by countless outings into the Rocky Mountains and the nearby Utah desert. But what that have to do with woodworking? Well, like most things in life, my line was not a straight one. We all imagine a direct path to an end goal, but it rarely works that way. My dad had a small workshop in our garage where he crafted furniture for our house. I remember playing in that workshop, the smell of fresh wood chips and the way the tools looked so cool, almost ancient on the walls. I did my best to dull every tool my dad would let me touch, and eventually he built me my own little workbench when I was about seven. I built things, but mostly I just wanted to be in the shop with my dad, listening to jazz on the radio. Fast forward a few years, and my love of the outdoors led me to college in Durango, where access to the mountains and everything I loved outside seemed endless. I pursued a degree and eventually a career in geology, a field that let me be in nature, observing, exploring, often climbing, and learning to understand the natural world. For a while, that little workbench stayed behind in my dad’s shop.
Then there was a Woman…
I could go on about the goddess I may not have so gracefully stumbled upon in the desert, and how our paths crossed and parted many times, but that is its own novel. Suffice it to say, I was swept off my feet and moved from Salt Lake City to a farm outside of Mancos, Colorado, to build a life with her. On that ranch, we bred, sheared, and cared for a herd of alpacas, and I traded geology for farm life. Every farm needs a barn, so I built one. Then came old buildings, storage, house additions. During one of those, a friend asked for a bathroom cabinet. That was the turning point. Dovetails, hammered metal, inset panels. Something old and ancient woke up in me. That focus feels like where I am meant to be. It led me to start my cabinet shop, and it still brings me joy to build work of functional beauty 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.