A Meditation in Borderland

On January 1, 2026, I came to Borderland the way I come here most days, as if it’s a quiet room inside my own life, and I wanted to start the year the same way I try to live it: by making something, slowly, on foot, paying attention. A snow squall rolled through like a gift, turning familiar paths into a new world for a few minutes at a time, and the act of photographing became its own kind of meditation: breath, steps, seeing, letting the mind settle into what’s actually in front of me. Borderland State Park sits on the former “Borderland” estate of Blanche and Oakes Ames, centered around the stone Ames Mansion they built in the early 1900s, and it still carries that layered feeling of time, craft, and intention.  In a year that will inevitably ask for speed and output, these images are my reminder that a creative life is less about chasing inspiration and more about returning, again and again, to a place that teaches you how to look.