desert

The Luminous Steppe

January 10, 2021 by The Noisy Plume

The other day while bird hunting in the fog I said to Robbie, “Doesn’t it seem like the ocean has been drained away and we are standing in the middle of a coral reef?” There is nothing more magical than the steppe draped in a heavy blanket of hoar frost. IT. IS. EXQUISITE. Whimsical. Crystalline. Delicate. Holy holy holy. Otherworldly. I live to be out on the land on these impossibly beautiful days. I break my own heart when I brush past a sagebrush and ruin the perfection of one million tiny, clinging crystals.

The lichens and mosses have turned plump and electric in the damp and cold of winter. The spring creeks rustle beneath sheets of thin ice. The hawks hunt. We see chukar tracks in the snow. We hear the quail call from the willows.

It is such a relief to go outside, to walk in these wild places, to see the way all things come together and exist here in a swirl of life and death and energy. The same and different. Like all things.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: desert

Happy New Year

January 10, 2021 by The Noisy Plume

Happy new year, wonderful people! It seems to take me longer and longer to emerge from my Christmas break with each passing year. By the time I shut my studio down and finished packing and shipping orders on December 20th I was past the point of exhaustion. Though we both would cherish a visit with our families, it was a blessing to not climb into a truck or sit down in a plane on December 20th to travel home to Saskatchewan or Northern California for Christmas. We stayed home and filled our Christmas holiday with bird hunting, cooking wonderful food, baking, visiting with neighbors, watching old movies (is it just me or has hollywood scriptwriting mostly gone to pot???), riding our horses, and enjoying our pointer puppy, Son. I have only now emerged from my hibernation feeling deeply rested and hungry for life! I hope all is beautiful where you are. There’s so much to be grateful for every moment of every day.

Yesterday we were out bird hunting and I found myself crossing a boulder field at a good clip which is precarious work. The volcanic rubble I danced over was draped with slick patches of lichen, snow, ice, frost, and every now and again a big stone was unseated and wobbled beneath my boot adding a little haste to my stride. But old lava rock is gloriously textural, it has teeth that bite into boot soles like coyotes on cow femurs and when I maintained momentum, kept my legs flying fast, I begin to almost float over the rocks. It’s a wonderful sensation, moving like that with grace and speed and effortlessness.

I love to move through the broken lava spills as fast as I can, daring my legs to hammer harder while I balance with my shotgun in one hand. I don’t look right at my feet, it’s dizzying, instead I fix my eyes on where I want my feet to go. Yesterday I felt a welling up of thankfulness for the strength and agility of my body — that I can continue to go outside and function at a high level in hard country. Sometimes I find myself acutely aware of my aliveness. Does that happen to you? I think about the billions of pieces that make me and how they all work in concert. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. As is all of creation. Step outside, breathe the air, watch the clouds, get the sun in your eyes, move your feet, imagine your nerve endings twinkling like the lights of a city at night beneath a descending airplane. Feel it all and be thankful for it all. Beauty is still here, rich and abundant, behold!

Lastly, and importantly, Robbie and I celebrated our 17 year anniversary at the end of December. I can’t believe we’ve been married for so many years, we still feel so young. It’s been so much fun growing up together, even during the long stretches when the fire season keeps us apart. I am most thankful for Robbie’s love and friendship in this life (and Tater, I’m thankful for him, too).

I’m always thinking of you all, praying your hearts will be filled with peace even in the midst of turmoil, and that my own would be ever ready to serve you in any way I can. Happy new year.

Love,

Jillian

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: desert, hunting, new year

Not Afraid of the Dark

February 10, 2016 by The Noisy Plume

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Honestly, I can hardly believe this photograph turned out so well. It is magic. Rob and I had been hunting all day and when we arrived back at camp, I looked out at the moonrise and the delicate palate of the sunset in the sky and I had a vision. I set up my camera and remote and literally galloped out across the sand dunes to get this photograph.

The moon. My friend. I have no reason to fear the dark.

We have been in New Mexico for nearly two weeks, hunting quail and being a family and camping and living rough and working our beautiful, steadfast dogs in incredible country. It is the joy of my heart to be here. The joy of my heart. I think it’s because it is the joy of my heart, truly, that I was able to make a photograph like this (and many more that I look forward to sharing with you). I believe in creating from the light, from joy, from emotions that are rooted in beauty. It is from those places I experience a true welling up of originality.

More soon.

I just had a hot shower for the first time in nine days and it was SUBLIME.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: desert, new mexico, travel, upland hunting

Surviving White Sands

July 9, 2014 by The Noisy Plume

Anything that lives where it would seem that nothing could live, enduring extremes of heat and cold, sunlight and storm, parching aridity and sudden cloudbursts, among burnt rocks and shifting sands, any such creature, beast, bird, or flower, testifies to the grandeur and heroism inherent in all forms of life. Including the human. Even in us.

[Edward Abbey]

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I find the desert beautiful. It can be dismal, boiling, stinging, biting, terrifying and blinding. It can also be lush, gentle, sweet, fragrant and otherworldly. I would know, I lived in the low desert of Arizona for almost four full years and grew acquainted with the nature of the land there to a great degree. I love it and I hate it.

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White Sands is spectacular, a literal sea of white on this windy day wherein the sky meets the earth in a tempered blaze. My eyes hurt to look out at it. It’s like being in a 105F degree snowstorm. At the end of the day I will have tiny signs of snow blindness, M, too, will actually lay on her hotel bed with a wet facecloth across her eyes. Where is this place? Where have we come? What is it? Snow or sand, sun or ice? The very light of the place confuses the senses.

The sand is deep, mystical, pure white. By the time I climb in the car for departure, the fineness of the stuff is clinging to every inch of my skin. It’s in my underwear, my armpits, my eyelids. I’m pregnant with it, carrying a million minute grains, mother to a miniature desert creeping across my skin in moon shaped dunes.

Oh God! What is this place? Creation is too great to fathom at times. I want to blend in, creep across the shifting particles in jerky steps, like the purple lizard I watched take shade beneath the yucca. Was it really purple? I cannot tell the colors here for all the holy light.

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I begin to think about survival. I begin to think about the hero in myself, not just here in the desert, but in life. That small portion of my being that is capable of arriving in the nick of time, broad of heart, self-sacrificing in times of need, jovial, caring, important…where is the hero in me and how do I tend to it?

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Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration, for the life you deserved but never have been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.

[Ayn Rand:: Atlas Shrugged]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: best friends, desert, new mexico, roadtrip, white sands national monument

Southwest — All The Rest

March 6, 2014 by The Noisy Plume

If I may say so, you should prepare yourself for a visual feast! I didn’t think I did a lot of shooting on our trip to the Southwest in February but this collection of images would prove otherwise. These photos were taken in the Mojave Desert of Arizona and California, the foothills of Ramona, California and San Diego. When Robert and I set out to plan our February adventure we hoped to make it over to Texas to raft a portion of the Rio Grande after meandering through New Mexico but had to axe a huge portion of our journey in order to make it to a family fiesta in San Diego and then home to a wedding in Idaho (in which we played roles of bridesmaid, groomsman, wedding official and hip hop dancers…more on that at a later date). So, while this trip did not turn out how we planned, not at all, it was still a very, very fabulous time — we made some memories together which is, in essence, all I really wanted from this trip.

Thanks to all our friends and family who opened their homes to us, and special thanks to one of my favorite little boys who gave up his bunk beds in his man cave for us — you’re the best, Roo. We sure appreciated it.

Without further delay, please enjoy!

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: adventure, arizona, california, desert, dogs, mojave, nevada, sunshine, travel