More Than a Rock

49Working from Home

He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Most of my work is created in the landscape that is now my home—the high desert of the Colorado Plateau. People who visit the town I live in often are surprised to realize how small and remote it is and they wonder how I ended up here. It is, in fact, a long and convoluted story, but I think it is worth sharing some of its highlights. How I came to live and work here is, in more ways than one, a love story.

In another life I was a soldier. This was not by choice. I grew up in a country where military service is mandatory. The experience changed me in ways too numerous to recount, but little did I suspect at the time how one seemingly ...