02/27/2026
Home Still Whispers My Name
There’s a piece of Texas land that raised me.
Under the big, open Texas sky the kind that feels endless I learned more than I ever could in a classroom. I learned how to swim in the pond, how to bait a hook and fish beside my dad. I learned how to hunt. How to start a fire with nothing but sticks and a ferro rod. How to sleep under the stars while the coyotes sang and the crickets hummed.
I learned how to walk the same dirt my ancestors walked before me.
I remember my grandpa rocking on the porch, the slow creak of his chair keeping rhythm with the wind, while I climbed the big trees out front. I remember watching fences being built and fields being farmed. Riding in a wheelbarrow my big sister pushed as we laughed until we couldn’t breathe. Learning what it meant to have to walk to the outhouse. Learning how to read animal tracks like they were stories written in the dust.
I listened to my dad tell stories of his childhood even the hard ones. I watched my grandpa, a Vietnam Veteran carrying burdens most never saw, find peace in that soil. He rarely left the farm. It was his refuge. And sometimes, when the wind moves just right through the trees, I still hear his whistle the one he used to call the cattle in.
Time moves fast everywhere else.
But out there?
It stands still.
The trucks haven’t moved in decades. The tractors and brush hogs rest where they were last used to cut hay or prep a garden. Wildlife runs free. The land is untouched, unbothered. Peaceful.
And yet my heart aches when I walk it now.
Because one day, taxes or time may take it from us. And I may not be able to give my children the childhood that land gave me.
But today…it still stands.
Still wild.
Still sacred.
Still home.
And maybe that’s why I photograph the way I do.
Because I know how quickly moments pass.
And I know the value of holding onto what roots you.
