10/07/2026
Sometimes you take a photograph, and sometimes a photograph takes you somewhere else entirely.
I had been photographing the horses when I turned around to see what was happening behind me. And there she was.
The light was catching the edges of this cowgirl’s hair as she stood quietly looking out over the horses. I lifted my camera and captured it.
But the more I look at this image, the more I see myself.
When I graduated high school, I so badly wanted to work on a ranch. Back then and we won’t say exactly what year that was 😂, the world was a whole lot smaller. There was no internet where I could search for ranches out West, find job openings, or figure out how a girl from Pennsylvania could pack her bags and go learn ranch life.
I would have loved to have been someone's ranch hand. To learn. To work hard. To become useful. To learn the horses, the cattle, the chores, and all the little things that make a ranch run.
But at that time, at least in the world I knew, you graduated, got an education, found a job, and went to work.
Not long after high school, the guy I was dating, who happens to now be my husband of 36 years was serving in the Navy. After Sean spent six months in the Gulf War, we were stationed in Hawaii, where we lived for two years.
Paradise? Absolutely.
Horses? Not so much. 😂
We went to one rodeo while we were there, and I remember how much I missed riding and being around horses.
Eventually we came home to Pennsylvania, back to our families, and this is where we built our life.
And I wouldn't trade that life or the family Sean and I created for anything in this world.
But there is still a piece of me that wonders about that ranch girl I might have been.
I envy ranch life. Not just the horses or the wide-open land, but the sense of family that seems to come with it. The meals after a long day's work. Wranglers sitting around a table joking and teasing one another. People working side by side, tired and dirty, but belonging to something together.
Maybe that part means even more to me because of my own childhood. My parents divorced when I was young, and my sister lived with my dad while I didn't. We were separated, and I think a part of me always longed for that feeling of belonging, to have friends who became family and a place where everyone had a place at the table.
Maybe that's why the ranch life has always pulled at me.
And maybe that's why this photograph stopped me.
Because when I look at her standing there, quietly watching the horses, I can see a younger version of myself.
The girl who wondered what it would have been like if she'd known there was another path she could take.
So now, through my photography, I get to experience little pieces of that life. I get to spend time with incredible ranch families, photograph their horses, listen to their stories, sit at their tables, laugh with them, and document a way of life I have admired for as long as I can remember.
And I will treasure every single opportunity to do it.
Because every once in a while, I will turn around, see a moment like this, raise my camera…
and catch a glimpse of the girl I might have been.
A different time.
A different place.
A different life.
And yet, somehow, still me. 🤎
