March 19, 2025
I incorporate jackrabbit motifs in some of my jewelry designs, and riding my horses at the dunes is where that design element was reborn or reimagined for me a few years ago. I say reborn or reimagined because I’ve used jackrabbit forms in metal for 16 years. Things change and grow and fall away, but the jackrabbits seem to stay.
I like to ride my horses at these dunes with the jackrabbits and the countless grains of sand because it’s a mystical location, and I find I am sensitive to the oldness of this place, to the timelessness of it. Time does seem to stop here, or at least it seems to move differently. The strength of the elements is augmented — exhausting, desiccating, scorching, parching, unyielding — yet there remains an abundance of life. It's remarkable and it smalls the self which is a healthy thing for we humans. When we start to get too big for our britches we need to go someplace ancient and get smalled.
If I am still not small enough once we have circumnavigated the dune, if the sun and wind and sand have not whittled me down to size, I like to park my horse on the edge of the lake, hock deep in sand, and listen to my beast of burden breathe, hear the quail call, watch the jackrabbits race, feel the cranes flying in for the night. I like to take in the thrumming rhythm of creation and let it set my heart right before we ride out through the portal into the rest of the world.
I take the jackrabbits with me when I go, and I recreate them in sterling silver and send them out to you to tell the story of all this sand and wind and sunshine, I suppose, and the importance of being smalled from time to time and all the good that does a soul.
