I sat with this stone that has always reminded me of the land in a place I walk in the mountains here, the rich red earth and rock against the turquoise sky. New Mexico is a place to come and heal, the history is rich with people coming here carrying their physical and spiritual woes. Once you arrive, the land does its thing, fixing one up as good as can be and then it is onward with our journey. I am still learning the reasons it causes some of us to stay, why we were drawn here in the first place, and the ways we become contentedly entangled with the winds and rough things that eventually drive others away.

So all of that ran through my mind as I drew around this stone, free associating with line, not really paying attention to what was forming. It became a spade, the suit in a deck of cards that can be read to represent the sad, struggling, ill, difficult and dark turns of life—not to fear, a natural course at times. I love that this shape came through my pencil to be the silver around this stone, as if the land is saying: Put me in the dark places and I will heal them.

Comes on a piece of 36”, very soft, deerskin leather.