I returned Home last week to the place of my origins ~ Ten Sleep, Wyoming. I wasn’t born there, but I’ll freely say that I am from those red hills & borne of that canyon ~ and what a thrill to go back and reclaim those eccentric and wild memories ~ those irreplaceable experiences of real rural living after moving there in my early 20s in February of 2010: falling so quickly in love with that special and roving land ~ so hungry to learn and experience everything that I possibly could about the Bighorn Mountains and in full capacity from the people who grew up there. It was a true family ~ raw and rooted in the cowboy culture and a flavor of tradition that is not unfamiliar to me, as all my aunts and uncles on my mother’s side are cut from that blood but I hardly knew them except for summer visits when I was younger, and I grew up in a transient and ever-moving environment ~ but this chosen family with its very fair share of toxicity and concerning dysfunction too ~ I’m talking about the salacious rumors and depraving alcoholism inherent of small Wyoming towns ~ but I was too young and full of energy to really be discouraged from diving so wholeheartedly into it despite those qualities. They were just minor details to a greater narrative; the ‘holy fuck, where am I?’ impression that struck me with such absolute emotion like I’d never known before.
When I first landed, having passed the hazing gauntlet of driving through a blizzard over that relentless mountain, I was:
Fiery, poetic, tipsy, spirited, naive.
I was: embraced.
Going back on this present round felt like too brief of a visit but it was relieving to be lighter of all the personal pain and struggle from the past 5 years; surviving a horrific domestic abuser and the myriad of chronic health issues surrounding a bad spine injury and stress related to finding the right treatments instead of getting surgery. I am much better now, and bade myself for patience, but I was lost and mentally fractured and unrecognizable, to say the least, and lacking the energy for any significant reunions throughout my recovery. I hardly ever drink anymore and my social circuits are much smaller; tighter; more discretionary after the political divisions and extremism that became concentrated in the social cesspools, when the power of intelligent conversation got belittled by a farce obsession with bigoted cruelty and blatant misunderstanding, fueled by single-serving internet echo chambers and a total disregard for human history and complexity involved in any relatable subject, indifferent of bipartisan standing, and that was the worst part: just about anyone was losing their bearings and dooming a historical repetition once again ~ including the COVID extortions that occurred and broke the face of every friendship that clearly needed to expire ~ no matter how painful, and some were easier to let go of than others ~ accepting that not everything can or should be repaired, and, many of us were not yet equipped with the tools to have the kinds of conversations necessary to move forward. Those moments of accountability came later, but with the right people who were available and willing for it. Shadows were exposed for what they really were and it was tough work to unlearn and seek common ground again. I did not grieve losing the people who treated me as a punching bag for their untapped emotions in that window of time, or excluded me from speaking for myself, or played their two-faced games.
Good goddamn riddance.
I can observe and celebrate every bit of change that has amended within me from age and circumstance and all that burthed out of the ‘2020 hindsight’ ~ and whatever tumultuous shifts that made uncertain footing in returning to Ten Sleep were gradually set free so that I could foster a refreshed gratitude for that chapter of explosive youth spent in a place as wild and unruly as the Bighorns ~ and how some part of me was longing to relive it all somehow, now that I am turning 39 next month, and grasping onto the glorious sentiment of those wonderful years.
But SHIT! I ain’t dead yet! I am just getting started! All that I absorbed in that early foundation of Wild West ‘frontier’ livin’ unveiled the way for my confidence to navigate the woods on my own and in my own way. I learned to drive on any sketchy backwoods road in a black ‘86 Cadillac DeVille from drunken cowboys spinning off from rodeo weekends, who floated those heavy metal beasts like feathers over ruts and cliffs without effort. I even loved one of those cowboys and chased him to Alaska in later years. I admired the mountain men and women of bygone days and was akin to the little kid who dreamt of becoming one. I have known and befriended the real ones, and those days and nights spent trekking through the high country with them, whether on foot or on horseback, and appreciating their generational knowledge are among the happiest moments of my life: where I felt the most alive, and the strongest. Those stories forever light a fire to my heart and are the kinds that I still adore to tell.
And how I have missed the animated breadth of storytelling that persists there: STORIES of people and land and history and all of it rolled up together as the same from then to now ~ of shenanigans and familial break-ups ~ the monumental rifts and then forgiveness if you got the will to mend those bridges. The litany of the West is a renegade tragedy of loss and revival and loss again. Live and let live. You expect half of the tales to be fairly true or just enough to get you through. Everyone was stirring up secrets because it is impossible to hide in places like that. Ten Sleep is a proving ground and your work ethic is part of how you are regarded. No detail or action goes unnoticed and that includes the merciless amount of dishing shit and teasing to accompany it. I loved it. I loved it, and I lived a whole novel of remarkable adventures and epic failures. Being home reminded me of that grit and spirit: my own legacy of starting a tattoo studio in a garage space where I also lived, sleeping on the gifted and beat up Harley Davidson couch and tattooing the rednecks off of a flimsy orange gurney that would sometimes flip the clients clear off if it wasn’t stabilized beforehand. Those were humble and cold beginnings and I cycled through a variety of side jobs to afford that ice box of a studio homestead while I gained my tattoo bearings: as a lift operator at the Meadowlark Lodge (where the legend Charlie Hicks taught me how to snowboard); as a dishwasher at the Ten Sleep Saloon; as a sheep midwife for the Andersons. I made a name by pure persistence against the initial backlash from the town council who opposed the idea of a tattoo shop in ‘their town’ and they tried to run me through some bullshit loopholes in the meanwhile. But it all came to be and I pushed back and had support from the locals, including my boss at the sheep ranch where I labored every spring for 4 years ~ proving that working worth in a place where people spoke up for it. Bighorn Tattoo was therefore founded in the early summer of 2010. I had that space for over a year until moving upstairs into the haunted mercantile building angled across the street ~ the Bighorn Mountain Stage Company ~ which sat vacant at the time, and was another cold, dark home to occupy. I endured that saga and then disrupted my life in 2014 when I decided to uproot everything and explore my other home of Alaska for a long winded spell..
but that’s another story, for another time.
..on, and on, and on..
and back again ~
I seen the end of an era in Ten Sleep, too. Many of the old-time ranchers have passed on or are in the process of transitioning. A heritage is changing and the encroachment of ungodly, disconnected wealth is still creep-creeping in on the margins. Gentrification and commodification threatens to sell-out authenticity no matter where or who you are. However, much of the downtown businesses are now owned by women who are from Ten Sleep or been there long enough to know the economic ebbs and flows ~ whether they moved with the early friction brought on by the ‘climber’s boom’ or still held fast to the traditional tethers ~ it was nonetheless wonderful to witness and notice the difference from my years of living there to being a visitor now. I say ‘visitor’ but I know better. Because I have also watched many of those rancher kids grow up to become strong, smart, and capable young adults. That I have been the one to give them their first tattoos is the coolest feeling that I just can’t describe. That is the only pinnacle worth illuminating on any legacy I could leave behind in the wake of whatever rowdy trail I blazed there.
There is a power in that mountain range that I am careful to speak of but anyone who is partial to such subjects will share the sensations knowingly ~ I’m talking about the ‘supernatural’ kind ~ or just the presence of something wholly and bigger: older than any of us can name, and reverently so in respects for those energies who still live and were woven there by the first nations and those who held the sanctity of that land in intimate and ceremonious proximity. I had heard some stories that the Bighorn Mountains were neutral grounds between warring bands. It is impossible not to feel something deeply sacred and protected there. I have seen and experienced moments in those hills that are best described as otherworldly and these are not isolated events. The closest I could compare them to are times I have spent out on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota to tattoo and offer intuitive work on Sundancers in the deep country near Parmalee. What I saw at house ceremonies and communal healings were breathtaking and unforgettable. Most of it is simply none of my business to share and I have no language for it. But on last week’s trip in Ten Sleep, as I was gathering up the final few tattoo appointments and preparing to come back to Laramie, I found it very hard to leave those mountains, and it took me a while to shake off the want to return. In fact, over the course of days spent wandering the old familiar haunts and finding new ones and swimming in the river up in the Bighorns, I felt a vibration frequency humming in my root chakra. It was involuntary and surprising, although I have had other ‘hums’ like this in my body before, and always related to a healing. Yet something about it reminded me of an encounter that I had had in the first stretch of moving to Ten Sleep over a decade ago. My original landing in that town was rough, as I had relocated abruptly from Kentucky to work for someone who I never met and who I almost immediately had personality conflict with. She was a known author who had made a ‘controversial’ fame for herself after she moved there and was not well-liked in that town, come to find out, and I began to see it in the condescending methods of her communications and I felt resistant to fulfilling tasks for her because of it. She was not who she proclaimed to be. Not knowing that beforehand, and already devoted to the leap I made, I began to lament how this risky move had cost me a whole world of comfort because of its reckless impulsiveness. But beneath the surface .. it was still, somehow, wildly intentional and right to be there, regardless of anyone’s opinion. It felt like a big, mysterious, and serendipitous pull towards something greater than the life of living in the small city of Louisville could have offered; of painting trains and lounging around with metal heads or running with D&D dorks at comic book & gamer conventions ~ as much as I loved them all and had such a fun traipse ~ or that I prematurely abandoned my tattoo apprenticeship to practice hundreds of miles away in pursuit of this unexpected undertaking and how oblivious I was to all that I had been given and thus held in my hands, only to flippantly discard it at the spin of a dial. Those disappointments from others were warranted. So because the shock of arrival was proving to turn sour too quickly, I was staged to leave Ten Sleep after only a few weeks of dipping my toes in. Jumping to start over was easy for me, given the household I grew up in and the discomforts of home I made efforts to escape, but staying? Commitment? I had no idea what those even meant.
On the morning that I woke up to pack up my car and go, I heard a voice. This voice, outside of me, told me to stay: to work it out with my host and not to run away. So I listened, and so I did: I continued to perform my duties for this person and began the foundation of Bighorn Tattoo on the side. Gradually the ‘smile and bear it’ attitude I adapted to keep peace in that situation melted back into the obvious weirdness of our polarizing differences: she accused me of taking advantage of her and it all fell apart in a dumb mess, resulting in a slew of angry hate mails from her adoring and unknowing internet fans. It was just so damn ridiculous. By then I had made waves on my own business ‘controversy’ and was glad for it, and it’s all just funny fodder to mull over now, and hardly an afterthought in any resounding memory that I have kept from living in Ten Sleep except to glean from it for my own growth; because my only regret was the timid spineless-ness of how I let her treat me the way that she did (echoes of childhood, anyone? Being shut down and insulted when you spoke up about something that was wrong? Raise your palm!). In this retrospect, I can recognize the reasons for why I did not stand up for myself in those specific moments, whereas elsewhere I had no problems being a stubborn tower or a fierce defender. Despite our grade school style fallout, I acknowledged what I did admire about her and what I later came to apprehend about her position ~ but above all I was touched by how strangely compelling and instrumental that spark of ‘otherness’ voice was in keeping me locked in a place that I loved, especially because I had never had an audio sensory reach like that before. This presence has since been identified as a blue light guide of mine who sometimes comes in through just a silent sense but then occasionally hosts a strong visual deliberation when it is needed beyond my own means.. and obviously, when that happens, I give it my whole attention..
and instead of falling victim to the fearful labels that became associated with these more mystical but quite common notions, I honored it. What has been known as a ‘mental illness’ for some who are not given context or lack the cleverness to perceive such things as they are, gratefully, never trapped me, although I certainly danced on those madness edges before I started to take the spiritual perception more seriously. Even if being a runner and honing in the skill of trusting my gut cost me some things, it inevitably brought me closer to understanding myself and what sort of primordial sensitivities have been stripped from the world, and that awareness is priceless and precious to me.
I considered this most recent ‘root therapy’ as part of it for whatever strings of fate are laced in the Bighorns, whether just for the cause in my own personal recovery or the profound psychic imprint of that land. I don’t know what it is, but I am undoubtedly tied to it, and constantly drawn to the archaic magnetism that rests in that area. Another part of me wonders if this root healing was also related to the unfavorable rumors that had been targeted towards me when I first lived in Ten Sleep: the rumors that enlisted me as being overtly promiscuous. I had a few flimsy flings as any young person stumbles through but they were trivial and how else do we figure that shit out except for trial and error? I eventually came to accept that I require a deep, emotional trust with a man first before I want to sleep with him ~ I need to know who he is ~ and otherwise I was only in one serious relationship that went off and on for a handful of years when I lived there. If anything, I was ‘guilty’ of being protectively aloof and largely disinterested in sleeping around. And how aggravating, additionally, to have the privacy of my sex life centered in these conversations and not intrigue or interest in my Art ~ the whole purpose of my life. Even if I was sexually open, why should that ever be a point of judgement? A product of petty and sterile minds. Thankfully I had friends who knew me well enough and defended my honor in those spaces and I’ll never forget them for that. I am a singular woman: an Artist, someone who thrives in alone-ness and craves creative solitude. I have been like this since I was a child. I preferred my own time and I was bullied at home and in school until I flipped it all on its head and became a class clown and humor built every bridge around the depression and anxiety that I wrestled with. I would hide in my room or go into the woods or I skipped school until I got caught. I struggled in relationships of any kind and never had rampant interest in pursuing clicky scenes or dating or the drama involved. Lack of clear communication was the culprit for my confusions, but Art is infinitely my means for expression and my avenue for developing emotional intelligence. Over time, when I finally received the influence of my mother’s common sense wisdom ~ and how lucky am I to have a mother like her ~ and through the demands of becoming a tattooer, where I had to be held accountable for the quality of good work, I found balance with enjoying the company of others, discovering that I love people and good humor and good talks, and sometimes my innate desire to connect with someone and their world was mistaken with a want for something more. In my observation, most people have no idea what it is like to be in communion with someone who has no ulterior motives: who is genuinely curious and engaging for no other reason than because it is what comes naturally. And if I did have an attraction, indifferent of the situation or outcome, I would tell him. Even with knowing this about myself and my own integrity, and keeping with what was true and dismissing those claims internally, there was still damage that arrived from those rumors, and that damage resulted in awful and exhausting contentions from ignorant persons both in that town and outside of it. By default, a person will isolate and close off to avoid that pain, and I certainly did after nearly losing my life to an ugly assault. With this root hum, I would like to think that the bullshit burden of old shame games that are plagued on sovereign women were finally sifted out of me after feeling condemned by those faulty projections for far longer than they were worth. And because I had injured my back 5 years ago in relation to not always knowing how to stand my own ground, this energetic gifting is all the more important to name.
I can see that happening for women at large in reflection of the current events we are living through. This short story glimpse is just the microcosm. Many of the women whom I tattooed while I was in Ten Sleep last week were having these sorts of revelations within themselves and it was empowering to be in that dimension of transformative revolution with them. Women who are picking up the sword or the chalice or the pentacle or the wand. Women who are going for it. Women who are done with it. Women who are uncovering their voices. And if I know anything about these women who were raised in those harsh rural environments: they are fucking tough and total shit kickers and I am fortunate to witness them as their tattooer.
As I scribe, the fires are burning rampant all over this state and Ten Sleep was shrouded in that thick haze of cleansing smoke: nights of falling ash and a blood red moon shine bright in my memory now, amidst dry lightning storms that rumbled and cracked over the limestone canyon pockets, and those long, halcyon hours of sober conversations riddled in grand reminiscence with people whom I love very much and whom love me equally.
Nutrition for the rest of these daze.
Old Growth ~
Making New Ways.
