Collecting | Yellowstone

There are many ways to remember a place.

You can take photographs. Buy the postcard. Bring home the sticker. Write down where you went and what you saw.

Or you can begin to collect the place while you are still inside it.

That’s what I found myself doing in Yellowstone.

I arrived with a battered old book I’d turned into a travel journal, a tiny watercolor palette, a little notebook for field notes, a vintage tobacco tin, a pen, and a canvas bag that said:

I notice because I make.
I make because I notice.

Which, it turns out, was exactly the right equipment.

Not because I intended to make beautiful pages while sitting beside geysers.

I didn’t.

I wanted something much simpler.

I wanted to pay attention.