This statement excerpt is from a small solo installation in the John and June Allcott Gallery:

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
–William Shakespeare, As You Like It

My childhood memories are forested with trees. As a child I played endlessly in the pitchy white pines behind our house and hiding in the cool darkness under the hemlock. In the summers, my brothers and I spent every free moment among the spruce and juniper in our front yard.

Each July, we spent several weeks in the sandy-soiled woods near my grandmother’s house. It was there that I first began to understand my feelings about religion. It was there that I first had real feelings for a girl. It was there that I listened to the first great storyteller in my life.

Later, in college, it was in the woods on campus where I began to question my feelings about religion. It was in those woods where I first got to know my wife. It was there that I began to write my own stories.

Ten years ago, my older brother gave my younger brother and me a gift: the chance for the three of us to go on a week-long hiking trip through the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. That year, and every year since then, I have reunited with my brothers among trees. We have been to the mountains, to the desert, to granite-bottomed lakes, along swollen rivers, and always among trees.

I find comfort in the sun-splashed woods, and a mental space opens in me where everyday life is erased for those few hours or days. Then when the sun falls behind the tree line, my imagination wakes, taking turns to terrify and then illuminate me. The forest tells me a story, and I tell one back.