Some places stay with you.
I grew up in Ketchikan, Alaska, surrounded by mountains and water, on an island covered in temperate rainforest…A place that was always beautiful, even when the weather wasn't perfect.
The September Ridge inspiration photo is one of me with two childhood friends, taken at the start of a wonderfully exhausting adventure that seemed like a normal day at the time.
We were picked up by helicopter almost directly across the road from our house and flown to the top of Deer Mountain. As we hiked down the mountain together, their dad rationed out mini candy bars at intervals along the way to keep us going.
The evening ended with a movie at the theater, and by the time it was over, we were so tired we slept the entire ride home.
We didn't realize how extraordinary it was.
We were just kids having a good day with our friends.
That's one of the strange gifts of growing older: realizing that some of the moments that seemed relatively ordinary were actually the ones worth remembering.
What I love about this photograph now is not just the landscape, though growing up in Ketchikan's beauty will always be a part of my story. It's the feeling of being completely present in a moment without the need for perfection to experience joy.
Life isn't perfect. It never was, and it still isn't now.
But there is a simple beauty in being exactly where we are, with the people and places that are part of our story.
September Ridge is a little homage to the place where my own story began, and to the kind of joy that doesn't require a perfect moment—only that we are present for it.
